samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
7  The figures are based on calculations using data from WFE, IMF, Datastream and Eurostat. 8  Financial Stability Board (2011), “Shadow Banking: Strengthening Oversight and Regulation”, October 2011. 9  See, e.g., Arcand, J.-L., Berkes, E. and Panizza, U. (2011), “Too much finance?”, on www.voxeu.org. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  This applies in particular to our assessment of the years before the crisis. Beyond merely stating – somewhat bluntly – that “the financial sector had become too big”, I think that we can draw the more specific conclusion: “The financial sector had stepped out of its role of serving the real economy.” Let me explain in more detail what I mean by this. It has long been recognized that the financial sector does not exist in the economy “for its own sake”, but its role is one of servicing the real economy.

Or as Joseph Schumpeter put it in 1934: “He (the banker) stands between those who wish to form new combinations and the possessors of productive means… He is the ephor (the overseer) of the exchange economy.”10 In fact, all the elements that have been identified in the finance and economics literature as the key functions of the financial sector are eventually directed towards the support of the real economy:   providing information about investment projects and allocating capital;    monitoring investments and exerting corporate governance after providing finance;    facilitating trading, diversification and management of risk;    and mobilizing and pooling savings.11  In providing these services, the financial industry plays its role to contribute to sustainable economic growth. I would argue that, during the recent years, the financial sector has lost focus in playing this role. In a period characterized   by search-for-yield with inadequate risk assessment and pricing,    by weak underwriting standards,    by inadequate risk management practices,    by fragile short-term funding of long-term assets,    by a proliferation of opaque financial products,    and by excessive leverage,  the financial sector has become to some extent self-referential. Rather than helping with a proper diversification and management of risk, the financial sector itself created a huge tail risk for the rest of the economy.
Setting standards  Remarks given by Dave Ramsden, Deputy Governor for Markets and Banking ISO 20022 Conference, Bank of England 6 December 2018  With thanks to Carsten Jung, Amy Lee, Varun Paul, Neil Pearston, Cameron Penny, James Southgate and Tom Smith. 1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/default.aspx  Welcome all to today’s ISO 20022 conference. ISO produces a lot of standards, but it’s those related to financial messaging, and in particular payments data which is what we’re here to talk about today. I’m going to open this event by talking a little more about why the Bank, along with Pay.UK and the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR), is so keen to work with the payments industry to deliver this important change to create the conditions for the next generation of innovation in UK payments and internationally. To the Bank of England, data, and the ability to collect, process and interrogate them, is vital to its ongoing ability to deliver its mission. Careful analysis of economic data is a key input into the Monetary Policy Committee’s deliberations. The Bank collects large quantities of data from the firms it supervises; that lets us understand their businesses individually and collectively, and so underpins the decisions of the Financial Policy Committee and Prudential Regulation Authority. In my own area, Markets and Banking, financial market data are crucial for calibrating and managing our own operations and risk management.

This is not just a ‘wholesale’ question of improving the efficiency, security and functionality of the huge cross border flows of transactions driven by financial globalisation: a global capital market and an integrated global financial sector. It is also increasingly a ‘retail question’ both about improving global financial inclusion and also about facilitating the increasing use of cross border retail transactions that technology has made possible. I will look briefly at each of these questions. Availability and acceptability of cash  The provision of secure physical cash is a core part of our mission. The Bank has made clear its commitment to continuing to produce cash for as long as people want to use it. Last week, we launched our new polymer £ depicting JMW Turner and containing the latest cutting-edge security features to ensure its safety and reliability. But as we have seen from other countries, and are beginning to see in the UK, the availability and acceptability of cash requires more than its physical production. Availability requires distribution by the 6  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches  6  private sector – banks and ATM providers. The declining use of cash means loss of economies of scale. That changes the economics of such distribution. Acceptability requires not just that banks distribute and ‘bank’ cash. It also requires that merchants accept it. That depends on the all-in cost and convenience of using cash versus electronic payments.
Ravi Menon: Two problems for FinTech to solve - cross-border payments and ESG data Keynote speech by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Annual SWIFT International Banking Operations Seminar (SIBOS) 2022, Amsterdam, 10 October 2022. *** Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. I am grateful to SWIFT for the opportunity to speak to this distinguished gathering of finance and business leaders from across the world. Most of us here have an affiliation to finance or to technology, or more likely to both. Indeed, the extensive application of technology to enhance the design and delivery of financial services has become a defining feature of the last decade – the FinTech phenomenon. FinTech is increasingly pervasive across not just traditional financial institutions but also non-financial players ranging from small start-ups to large technology firms providing financial services. If its benefits are properly harnessed and its risks well managed, FinTech can be a powerful force for good – solving problems and creating opportunity. In keeping with the theme of this conference, I want to focus today on two challenges in financial services where FinTech can potentially play a positive transformative role:  one, cross-border payment and settlement; and two, high quality, trusted ESG data. These two challenges are what I would call foundational issues that need to be addressed before broader progress can be made. Payments is the life blood of the modern economy.

6/8  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  Companies' one-time inputs can be automatically mapped across a range of major sustainability standards and frameworks, allowing them to cater to different investor requirements. Sustainability reports can also be automatically generated from these inputs. MAS will draw on the learnings from ESGenome to ensure that the ESG Disclosure Portal caters over time to the reporting needs of a broader universe of corporates, notably small and medium-sized enterprises, supply chain partners and suppliers. The ESG Registry draws on a blockchain solution to record and maintain the provenance of green certifications issued by various sectoral bodies. Titled ESGpedia, the ESG Registry was developed with the help of local Green FinTech firm STACS and launched in May this year. It allows banks to access green certifications issued by various bodies for their green and sustainable financing decisions. MAS will continue to work with STACS and our industry partners to build up the Registry's network of certifications, thereby providing more confidence to the users of these data. The Data Orchestrator aims to aggregate ESG data from multiple data sources. This will include major ESG data providers, utilities providers, sectoral platforms, and of course the ESG Data Registry. The Data Orchestrator will provide consentbased access to these sources. It will also allow new data insights to be generated through data analytics to better support investment and financing decisions. We aim to launch the Data Orchestrator next year.
A Swedish export company with income in dollars, but paying out wages and taxes in kronor, must exchange dollar income for kronor. The company transfers the foreign exchange risk to the bank, by selling dollars for kronor. This can be done in two ways: either the company sells the dollars when it receives them, on the spot market, or it sells its future dollar income as soon as it receives an order, on the forward market. In both cases the bank buys dollars and thus takes over the foreign exchange risk. The bank also makes a charge for doing this. Today the margins in foreign exchange trading are 0.02 per cent. The bank's foreign exchange risk thus increases, unless another client happens to make an equally large foreign exchange transaction in the opposite direction at exactly the same time, ensuring that the bank's holdings of various currencies remains unchanged. This is, of course, very unlikely. The export company's foreign exchange transaction therefore gives rise to several transactions between banks, with the aim of distributing the foreign exchange risk throughout the banking system. This means that the clients' purchases and sales of various currencies and in various banks are matched against one another, to avoid an increase in the total risk in the banking system. The first foreign exchange transaction will therefore lead to many new transactions before all of the banks have once again achieved a healthy level of risk taking.

However, if MiCA is a regulatory milestone, it deserves to be complemented in the next few years with additional requirements. Indeed, MiCA partially covers crypto-asset service providers that combine multiple functions and activities in different jurisdictions, so-called crypto conglomerates. To improve this coverage, it is notably crucial to limit and control the concentration of activities in these conglomerates through strict governance requirements and to enhance investor protection by addressing conflicts of interests and reinforcing redemption rights and the protection of reserves. In addition, MiCA does not cover the DeFi ecosystem and its challenges in terms of regulation, given its specificities. To do so, I believe that we should not try to replicate existing financial regulations at all costs, but draw inspiration from regulations in other sectors to regulate for instance "products" even when their "producers" or "issuers" are not clearly identified. Furthermore, we have to recognise technical specificities and pay particular attention to the three layers that schematically constitute DeFi, namely, infrastructures, applications and access gates. To contribute to the development of that extension of MiCA, we recently published a discussion paper outlining possible avenues for regulation. This document is open for consultation on the ACPR website and we encourage industry stakeholders to provide their input. 2) The challenge of international coordination for an effective and global regulatory framework That being said, these regulatory issues are global, which means that we need to ensure that national regimes are consistent with each other in order to avoid any risk of regulatory arbitrage.
A recent report cited by Financial Times (FT, 6 January 2007) shows that the Northern members of the eurozone are likely to profit and the Southern members to suffer from the climate change. Nevertheless, whatever the likelihood of shocks, it remains of crucial importance to maintain a balanced fiscal perspective and flexible labor market which can absorb shocks, should they arise. Now let me move to the possibility of rising micro- and macroeconomic imbalances. Such imbalances can take the form of lending booms, current account deficits or increasing inflation pressure. Such a set of symptoms in a monetary union member country reveals in most cases one common cause – real interest rates that are too low. Economists have for a long time argued that each  2  BIS Review 6/2007  economy has an appropriate, long-run level of the real interest rate called the natural rate of interest (Wicksell 1898). Keeping interest rates at this (unfortunately unobserved) level should guarantee that the economy will remain in equilibrium – output will not exceed production capacity and inflation will remain stable (Woodford 2003). This is what implicitly or explicitly most inflation targeting central banks are trying to achieve. One of the problems with joining a common currency area might be that real interest rates in this area will be lower than the natural rate of the new member. Recent research shows that this might be the case for Poland, where the natural rate has remained in the past above the euro area level (Brzoza-Brzezina 2006).

However, the estimated scale seems to be much exaggerated. One problematic issue is related to the  BIS Review 6/2007  1  fact that before the eurozone, we did not have examples of currency unions between developed countries. So the Rose study was based on data on currency unions involving poor and/ or small countries. As noted by Micco, Stein and Ordonez (2003), “one does not need to be a eurosceptic to wonder whether such findings are directly applicable to Europe’s single currency”. Follow-up studies (e.g. Rose and Wincoop (2001), Kenen (2002), Persson (2001)) attempted to correct the Rose estimates but arrived, rather inconclusively, at anything between a 50% and 150% growth of bilateral trade. Recently, the first studies based on euro area data emerged. These show that the trade creation effect of the euro was substantial, although (until now) by an order of magnitude smaller that the original Rose estimate (e.g. Micco, Stein and Ordonez (2003)). Our knowledge about trade creation effects of the euro is still far from complete and we will probably have to wait another 10+ years to have enough data to draw firm conclusions about its magnitude in the eurozone. Now let me move to the cost side. As already noted in contrast to the benefits, some costs have a contingent character. They are tail-events – rather unlikely but with a possibly high impact if they happen. Let me concentrate on two issues: -  asymmetric shocks,  -  arising micro- and macroeconomic imbalances.
An Accenture survey revealed that aggregators account for 70% of new business premiums in the UK private automobile insurance market. Indeed, two product aggregators platforms are already operating within Bank Negara Malaysia’s Regulatory Sandbox. The Bank is reviewing the regulatory framework to enable the aggregators to operate by the end of this year. 1/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  These are headwinds that the industry has to tackle head-on, and like it or not, they will further intensify. While we cannot stop these changes, we can certainly choose how we respond to it. With challenges are opportunities. These can only be reaped through a combination of traits – greater proactiveness, a willingness to adapt and clear strategic thinking. I do not doubt that this is much harder than it sounds, but I believe a good place to start would be focusing on three priorities. Allow me to elaborate on each in turn. Technology that matters The vision for the life insurance and family takaful industry is to achieve a penetration rate of 75% of the Malaysian population. Within this, the takaful industry has set a 25% target to be achieved by 2020. For this to happen, it is crucial that the industry gets to grips with the shift in market demographics, especially where interactions with technological platforms are concerned. It is imperative that agents embrace technology. A 2017 study 1 by Bain & Company indicates that nearly 60% of insurance customers in Malaysia are digitally active.

This is done mostly in collaboration with other financial centres and overseas authorities, including the Banque de France. Back in 2014, the HKMA and Banque de France signed a memorandum of understanding to strengthen cooperation between the two financial centres. To me, this collaboration can go beyond China opportunities to cover other new market developments, including Fintech and green finance. 7. Let me start with the opportunities in Mainland China. As you are aware, last year marked the 40th anniversary of the reform and opening-up of Mainland China. Throughout these years, Hong Kong remains as the gateway to Mainland China. Today, as Mainland China continues to open up its capital markets, we serve as a major platform for international investors to access the world’s second largest stock market and third largest bond market. Take Bond Connect as an example. It provides a convenient channel for international investors to access the Mainland’s bond market using international market practices such 1/2  BIS central bankers' speeches  as the nominee holding structure. Similarly, Stock Connect provides access channel for international investors to invest in the Mainland’s stock markets by engaging brokers and custodians in Hong Kong through existing structure. 8. With the smooth inclusion of A-shares into MSCI Emerging Markets Index last year, more global indices are planning to add RMB products into their constituent assets. For example, RMB bonds will be included in the Bloomberg-Barclays Global Aggregate Index starting this April and FTSE’s Global Equity Index Series will also include A-shares from this June.
As a euro participant, however, Sweden would be in the same boat as other member states as regards many of what appear to be likely supply shocks, for instance oil price fluctuations. As regards the lack of knowledge, there are clearly no simple institutional solutions. But this does not mean that the institutional frameworks for conducting policy do not affect the accumulation of knowledge. As I mentioned earlier, the Stability and Growth Pact has led to a rapid development of EU work to arrive at a better understanding of the interaction of public budgets and capacity utilisation. In Sweden, the acquisition of knowledge about potential growth, the output gap and so on has been stimulated in that the Riksbank has been made accountable for safeguarding the value of money and we have placed this mandate in a clear intellectual framework that calls for deeper analyses. This in turn has had consequences for how both the Ministry of Finance and the National Institute of  4  BIS Review 6/2002  Economic Research are now working on these matters. Another reason why Swedish authorities have reason to be more involved in a broad discussion and analysis of questions such as these is perhaps that euro participation could lead to the financial markets becoming less interested in analysing specifically Swedish conditions. I consider that the importance of a high level of competence in such institutions as the Finance Ministry, the Riksbank and the National Institute should be emphasised.

I will not name the bank here, because the HKMA is currently a tenant in a building that bears its name. To avoid giving the impression that the HKMA is a subsidiary of that bank, we have always tried to pretend that the building is called something else, by refraining from mentioning the name on our stationery, or to deliverymen or taxi-drivers, or to anyone else. It is sufficient to say that the bank in question is this year celebrating its 100th anniversary in Hong Kong. Steve has gone to the opposite end of the two-corner solution by entering the floating world of academics and consultants. Since leaving the Reserve Bank of Australia six months ago, he has taken up an appointment as Adjunct Professor at the National Centre for Development Studies at the Australian National University. He also works as an economic consultant, mainly, I understand, on Asia-related topics. Whatever corner Stan and Steve have chosen, the important thing is that they will continue to give their expertise to the region through organisations which, though very different, have an important presence in Asia. They are also here to share that expertise with us today. So without further delay, let me welcome them both and call first upon our speaker, Dr Stanley Fischer, to deliver the Fifth HKMA Distinguished Lecture. Dr Fischer, please. 2  BIS Review 33/2002
It is important to take advantage of the conditions in place so that the wage moderation begun in the first half of the year may take root in the coming quarters, and so that ailing companies may maintain employment and ensure their survival by drawing on the new avenues of flexibility offered to them, through negotiations with their workers. The austerity measures adopted in the public sector, which include wage cuts, will help bring about the adjustments the private sector needs to entrench its competitiveness. On top of wage restraint in those companies that need it to restore competitiveness, there should be genuine productivity gains based on greater efficiency, since so far their expansionary behaviour chiefly reflects the severity of the employment adjustment. A further key ingredient to ensure gains in structural competitiveness is the continuation of the current low-inflation scenario once the recovery firms. The return of the core inflation rate to its low level before the VAT rise, once the base effects are stripped out in the second half of next year, would be a good indicator that cost- and price-setting processes are moving in the right direction and are capable of surviving comfortably within an area of price stability. The absence of indexation clauses in wage bargaining for 2011, as stipulated in the agreement in force, will help prevent the rise in VAT from exerting second-round and inflation-inertia effects.

At the moment, the only open issue for us is the inflation criterion, but things are not clear-cut regarding it either. On the one hand, inflation is at high rates not only in our country but also in the entire EU. On the other hand, in October for the first time in more than a year the rate of inflation in our country reversed its trajectory of constant growth. We will closely monitor how this process develops, but it must be actively supported by adequate anti-inflationary measures, including by sufficiently disciplined budget. What we are currently focusing on as a central bank in relation to the euro area are two issues: the legal framework and the technical preparation. Regarding the legal framework, we expect the amendments to the BNB Law to be submitted to the National Assembly literally within days, with which to overcome legal non-compliance found in the convergence reports of the ECB. Serious progress has also been made in the preparation of a draft Law on the introduction of the euro within the framework of a working group under the Coordination Council for the preparation of the Republic of Bulgaria for membership in the euro area. Of course, this is just the beginning. I have no doubts that the country has the expertise and capacity to prepare all draft legislation on time and with good quality. What is needed is to have a Government to introduce them and a Parliament to approve them.