samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Moreover, fixed investment in the petroleum sector has expanded sharply, which has led to rising demand for goods and services supplied by mainland enterprises. Mainland fixed investment also picked up after a period. Since the recovery started, quarter-on-quarter mainland GDP growth has averaged 3½ per cent annualised. Growth has been steady. The economic upturn has continued this year. On balance, demand is expected to remain relatively high in the near term. Expectations of continued low albeit rising interest rates and real income growth should support growth in household consumption and fixed investment ahead. Brisk investment growth in the petroleum industry, moderate wage growth and high profitability in many enterprises suggest further investment growth in the mainland enterprise sector. The economic upturn is now broadly based. In manufacturing, the order backlog is at a record-high level, which implies continued production growth over the next quarters. Statistics Norway’s business tendency survey for manufacturing points in the same direction. Activity has remained buoyant in the construction sector for a long period. New orders in this industry are rising, which points to a further increase in production. Growth in turnover in property management and commercial services has increased to a high level. Higher activity in goodsproducing industries and the prospect of solid growth in household demand provide a basis for continued growth in service industries. However, cost levels in the Norwegian business sector are high. This challenge may become more visible when the upturn slows.

Maintaining a stable macroeconomic environment, and the improvement of the level for a better law and order, and land and property rights, fair competition, are very important factors that will improve business financing in Albania. As supervisory authority we will try hard for microfinance future growth to be sound. The credit bureau project that our bank is undertaking shortly is also expected to boost credit through ameliorating information problems. Thank you for your kind attention. BIS Review 88/2005  3
The Federal Act on Currency and Payment Instruments stipulates that the money issued by the SNB is legal tender in Switzerland and that the Swiss franc, which is divided into 100 centimes, is the Swiss currency unit. 3 Central bank money and its unit of account thus form the anchor of our monetary system. The SNB’s money defines the value and characteristics of our currency and thus also provides the basis for bank money. Bank deposits are not legal tender, however. They are instead much more a private claim against a bank. On demand, these claims can be exchanged one-to-one for central bank money, i.e. banknotes in the case of non-banks. Economic agents are prepared to hold bank deposits instead of central bank money as long as they have confidence in the bank’s ability to pay and as long as the bank deposits offer them added value compared with central bank money. For instance, bank deposits facilitate the settlement of transactions – most of us would probably find it highly impracticable if wages and rent had to be settled in cash, for example. Bank deposits also offer protection against theft and are often a better means of preserving value than central bank money in that they normally generate a return. However, they do entail a certain degree of credit risk. In Switzerland, bank deposits account for more than 90% of the money held in Swiss francs by households and companies, with less than 10% being held in banknotes.

The increase in margins may reflect banks’ efforts to build up their capital. Household debt is rising in Norway, but household income is growing at a solid pace. Given the present economic situation, households can tolerate higher interest rate margins in the  4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  banking system. Banks’ owners must also make a contribution, which they can do by participating in equity issues or by accepting that a smaller share of profits is distributed as dividends. In addition to raising more capital, banks must base their lending on more stable funding sources. Improved capital adequacy and more stable funding will be an advantage for banks, and not a disadvantage, in an environment of intensified global competition. Although growth in our part of the world is weak and real interest rates are low, many banks are still operating with high return targets, which could lead to excessive short-term risk taking. Banks and their owners should accept that return on equity will be lower, but also safer, in the years ahead. A more robust financial system will benefit us all. The forthcoming regulatory framework for banks in the EEA includes a countercyclical buffer – a capital requirement that can be increased in upturns and turned off in downturns. When banks are required to build up an additional buffer, they are better equipped to cope with periods of rising losses. Banks will be less likely to reduce lending in order to comply with the minimum capital requirements.
I would also like to express my appreciation to our distinguished panelists for today – Governors and other honorable guests and to thank all esteemed guests, delegates and speakers for contributing to another successful event. Finally, jubilees like this don’t come together over night. Allow me to express my recognition and appreciation to the whole team that each year coordinates the Conference. It is your strong commitment and dedication that we owe our achievements to. I wish you many more years of 2/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  continued success! Thank you! 3/3  BIS central bankers' speeches

Ladies and gentlemen, As the Thai economy gradually recovers and inflationary pressure remains subdued, monetary policy will ensure that monetary conditions are adequately supportive to growth. At the same time, we must not forget to chart a course towards the country’s long-term economic development. As the Thai economy is in need to upgrade growth potentials and increase competitiveness, the Bank of Thailand will contribute to this process of economic transformation by taking a proactive role in the financial sector development policy. Ongoing in this sphere, there are at least three development plans under implementation, namely, the Financial Sector Master Plan, the Payment Systems Roadmap, and the Capital Account Liberalization Master Plan. Although the three plans have different objectives, they complement each other and together form a strong foundation for the country’s financial sector development. I will highlight a few key elements we hope to get out of these plans. The first one is the Financial Sector Master Plan (FSMP) Phase III. Approved by the Cabinet in March this year to set out strategic directions for the next five years (2016 – 2020), FSMP III is aimed to promote a competitive Thai financial sector, to support more diverse needs at fair and undistorted prices, as well as promote regional trades and investments, with proper supervision to ensure macroeconomic and financial stability. In short, this plan’s motto is to promote a “competitive, inclusive, connected, and sustainable” financial system.
In line with this, the Committee proposes a general clause for the Bank’s activities and that the Council of State be authorised to lay down further guidelines in a number of areas”. Carsten Smith (1992): Rettstenkning i samtiden [Contemporary legal thinking], p. 410. Universitetsforlaget. BIS Review 154/2010  11  In its consultation statement on the new Norges Bank bill, the Ministry of Justice through its Legislation Department expressed the view that the right to issue instructions should be in closer keeping with ordinary rules relating to government administration, adding: “We note for the record our agreement that there are strong arguments for limitations on instructing Norges Bank on the exercise of its authority. From a legal standpoint, however, there should be no doubt that the power to do so exists and that this power should be formulated in a manner which does not make it virtually impossible to exercise it in practice”. The views of the Legislation Department were not taken into account. The relevant section of the Act was worded in such a way as to make the power to instruct the Bank virtually impossible to exercise in practice. Nor has it ever been applied in individual cases, except when the inflation target was introduced in 2001 after consultations with Norges Bank. Norges Bank has, in Getz Wold’s words from 1972, followed up the inflation target loyally and actively. The instruction section does not prevent Norges Bank from setting the interest rate independently of pressures from the central government authorities.

So I had placed myself on the sideline, but I compensated by offering to chair a number of public commissions.” 26 Governor Knut Getz Wold wrote in 1972 that: “Norges Bank’s position today in relation to the government authorities is not, however, defined by a formal right to make decisions on specific issues, but by its role as advisor …”. He went on to say: “Norges Bank has limited direct power. This is as it should be. But it has, and should have, influence. If store is to be set by its word, it must keep abreast of developments at home and abroad. The Storting and the government have the final word. Having said that, Norges Bank will loyally and actively follow up their decisions.” 27 In 1973, the efforts to develop an economy under strong centralised coordination and control culminated in a proposal to establish an incomes policy council with regulation of wages. 28 The proposal was logical. It was the last wall in the structure erected after the war. Coordination and regulation were important key words.
b)  Credit Reference Law and Services  Following the issuance of the Credit Reference Services (Licensing) Guidelines and the Credit Data (Privacy) Code, the Bank of Zambia has drafted the Credit Reference Law. The draft law is currently undergoing legal review and is expected to be effected in the course of next year. Meanwhile, the licensed credit reference bureau – Credit Reference Bureau Africa Limited (CRBAL) has not yet commenced operations as some commercial banks are yet to provide the required data to the CRBAL. c)  The National Payment Systems Law  The National Payment Systems Law has been enacted and became effective on 15 June 2007. The Law is intended to mitigate the shortcomings that were in the legal framework and provide legal backing to international best practices in the payment systems. To all of you gathered here, I would like to implore you, not to only inform the public about these and other developments but to interpret what these mean to ordinary Zambians. It is only when ordinary Zambians, who are the key stakeholders, have an unquestionable understanding of these developments that they shall fully support our developmental policies and strategies. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to remind you that our quest for development will in no doubt be without challenges. The continued higher and unstable international oil prices poses one of the strong challenges to our targeted growth of 7% this year and end year inflation of 9%.

Furthermore, in 2009, the Government approved the extension to the initial five-years of the FSDP in order to continue the national strategy of strengthening our financial sector and enhancing financial inclusion. The second phase of the FSDP will focus on three main pillars namely: (i) enhancing market infrastructure; (ii) increasing competition; and (iii) increasing access to finance. Overall, the vision is to have a dynamic and inclusive financial sector that supports all aspects of the economy. Therefore, the theme for this workshop and exhibition “Enhancing Financial Access for Women: A Tool for Poverty Reduction” is timely and appropriate. Our aim is to recognise and heighten awareness of women’s issues within this context. More specifically, the main objective of this forum is to showcase a variety of financial services and products available and sensitize the general public on: (i)  how financial institutions are contributing to increasing gender financing in Zambia;  (ii)  bringing awareness to the women on the opportunities that are available for them to access finance and mitigate related challenges;  (iii)  the role of the Bank of Zambia and other financial institutions in meeting the objective of financial inclusion;  (iv)  how the United Nations as the lead international organisation and other local agencies are supporting women in Zambia; and  (v)  sharing experiences in running businesses, and the opportunities and challenges in accessing finance in order to grow the income base.
Joseph S Tracy: A strategy for the 2011 economic recovery Remarks by Mr Joseph S Tracy, Executive Vice President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at Dominican College, Orangeburg, New York, 28 January 2011. *  *  *  Good morning. It is a pleasure to be with you this morning to look back on the tremendous events impacting the economy over the past several years, and to assess the outlook for the economy going forward. Let me note that the views that I will discuss with you are my own and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or the Federal Reserve System. On September 20, 2010, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) determined that the “Great Recession” officially ended in June 2009. The Great Recession did not earn its moniker due to its length. At 18 months, the length of the Great Recession was only slightly longer than the average of 17.5 months for the 33 recessions tracked by the NBER since 1857. In fact, the longest recession was 65 months and lasted from October 1873 to March 1879. The Great Recession distinguished itself from earlier recessions in terms of its severity rather than its length. There was a decline in real output relative to trend of $ trillion or 8 percent (Chart 1). This contraction brought the level of real output back to its level in 2006. In most recessions, consumption growth slows but remains positive.

Total completed foreclosures including short sales and deeds-in-lieu from the beginning of 2008 until the end of the third quarter of 2010 represent around 58 percent of all foreclosure starts over that same period. In addition, in each quarter the pace of foreclosure starts has exceeded the pace of completed foreclosures. At best, then, we are only halfway through the resolution process. To conclude where I began, the name “Great Recession” is also appropriate in that it reminds us not only of the severity of what took place, but also of the travesty that was avoided – that is, the second Great Depression. This was only possible with the aggressive monetary and fiscal policy actions that were undertaken both domestically and abroad. Much was learned in the process about how to effectively deal with a financial crisis, and much remains to be learned about how to prevent them from recurring in the future.
The last paper of the session, by Dean Corbae and Pablo D´Erasmo, studies monetary policy design in a detailed model of a banking sector with heterogeneous banks. Finally, the keynote lecture by Novel Price laureate Thomas Sargent and the policy panel composed of James Bullard, Esther George, Claudio Borio, and Pablo García , will for sure shed some light on the importance of all these topics for current monetary policy and its expected evolution, including important questions that may remain unanswered. 5. Acknowledgements  4/5  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  I would like to especially thank Gianluca Violante for being the external organizer of this Conference, as well as Sofia Bauducco and Andrés Fernández for putting together such a wonderful program. I also thank all the speakers and contributors and look forward to the Conference volume that will be published thereafter. Let me finish by thanking María José Reyes, Constanza Martinelli, Carolina Besa, Daniela Gaete, Álvaro Castillo, and both the Public Affairs Department and the Economic Research Department of the CBC for all their invaluable help managing the logistics of organizing the first hybrid Annual Conference. Thank you and have a fruitful discussion over the next two days. 5/5  BIS - Central bankers' speeches

This is precisely why, the role played by data labs, such as the BELab of the Banco de España, is of paramount importance. Our BELab has been created with the aim of providing the research community with greater access to high-quality microdata, in a controlled environment that ensures data confidentiality, through on-site or remote means, depending on the sensitivity level of the data. In any case, although there has been some progress, the truth is that Spain is still lagging behind this global trend that is a genuine “data revolution”. To change the situation in Spain it is crucial to make citizens and governments aware that there is a cost to restrictions on access to data by the research community, as they will eventually result in less effective public policies. I trust that discussions of the papers to be presented at the conference over the next two days will bring us up to speed with the most advanced practices across the globe. Thank you very much and enjoy the sessions! 2
Second, leverage can evolve greatly over a short period of time. Third, and perhaps most importantly, there are different forms of leverage, some of which are unlikely to be captured reliably by any aggregate industry data. The most basic form of leverage pertains to financial intermediaries such as global investment banks extending credit facilities to hedge funds to allow them to invest funds in excess of their own capital base. Such credit facilities are usually at the root of industry-wide or strategy-specific estimates of leverage in the hedge fund industry. Following the collapse of LTCM, much of the regulatory discussion focused on this type of leverage by attempting to strengthen the relationship between financial intermediaries and hedge funds to improve counterparty risk management. A second, more recent form of leverage in the hedge fund industry is related to the rapidly growing fund of funds industry. A number of fund of funds managers have begun to leverage their products by either using their own balance sheet or, alternatively, borrow credit facilities from other financial firms with large balance sheets. 2:1 leverage ratios are typical. In some cases, leverage ratios can be as  BIS Review 8/2005  3  high as 4:1. This form of leverage, though probably still limited, is unlikely to be captured by any industry leverage figures. Finally, the most complex form of leverage that hedge funds employ is what I would refer to as instrument leverage. This type of leverage is embedded in the use of most kinds of derivative instruments.

Current estimates suggest that approximately 7500 hedge funds manage assets totaling close to USD 1000bn (graph 1).3 Remarkably, according to the CSFB/Tremont Hedge Fund Index, there have been only a few quarters with net outflows since 1994.4 These figures demonstrate that the hedge fund industry has matured at an extraordinary rate and today constitutes a non-negligible component of the global asset management industry.5  1  A more detailed study on hedge funds will be published in the forthcoming Quarterly Bulletin of the Swiss National Bank (March 2005). 2  Alfred Winslow Jones is credited for the creation of the first hedge fund in 1949. His strategy consisted in combining long positions in undervalued stocks and short positions in overvalued stocks, in an attempt to minimise the influence of overall stock market moves. To magnify his portfolio’s return, Jones added leverage. 3  According to Hedge Fund Research Inc., 7436 Funds managed USD 973bn of assets at the end of 2004. Other sources may come up with different figures. 4  The CSFB/Tremont Hedge Fund Index is the largest asset-weighted hedge fund index. The CSFB/Tremont Index is broadly diversified, encompassing around 400 funds across ten style-based sectors, and representative of the entire hedge fund industry. Assets included within the CSFB/Tremont Hedge Fund Index amounted to USD 615bn in September 2004. Performance is calculated net of fees.
Admittedly, prior to the presentation of the State Budget, Parliament and the Senate have approved the budget targets, both for overall general government and for each of its sub-sectors, on the proposal of the Government and following a report by the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council and the Local Government National Board. Yet clearly the budgets of each regional government and each municipality are approved separately, there being no document containing information on all of them, together with that on the State and Social Security Budget. Hence, although we do have ex-post information that enables the public spending outcomes and outturn for the four major spending groups – central, regional and local government, and the Social Security system – to be analysed, we do not have an ex-ante or prior document that provides a detailed analysis of budgetary projections for overall general government and its compatibility with the objectives set. It should be recalled, however, that the new Budgetary Stability Law introduced substantial improvements in this respect. Specifically, it stipulates that, before 1 October each year, regional and local government shall submit information on the essential items contained in their forthcoming budgets to the Ministry of Finance and General Government. Then, before 15 October, the Ministry of Finance and General Government will release a report on the alignment of this budgetary information with the stability objectives, in such a way that the Ministry may make recommendations should it perceive slippage.

The projected tax revenue for 2013 is subject to downside risks because it is based on the assumption that the revenue targets for 2012 will be achieved. However, on the information currently available, it cannot be ruled out that revenue performs worse than expected in 2012. If this risk materialises and is not countered by appropriate action in the remainder of the year, that would make it difficult to achieve the targets set for 2013, compounding the possible effects of a bigger decline in GDP than that assumed in the budgetary programming. Expenditure On the expenditure side, the weight of three items should first be underlined: Social Security system contributory pensions, unemployment benefits and the interest on government debt. In 2012, these three items are equivalent to 20% of GDP and will account for approximately 36% of total public spending. In 2013, these percentages will foreseeably increase significantly. 6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Noteworthy among the measures considered on the expenditure side are: the freezing of civil servants’ and public-sector employees’ salaries, although they will recover their December extra payroll, which, together with not filling vacancies, will result in a very low increase in personnel costs in relation to serving employees of around 0.1%. Real investments are reduced by 46%, whereas the interest burden increases by more than € billion. In the Social Security system, spending on contributory pensions, sickness and other benefits will grow by slightly more than 5%, factoring in the raising of pensions by 1%.