samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The use of explicit, numerical minimum leverage ratios as part of the capital regulation of insured depository institutions and bank holding companies (BHCs) and their broker-dealer subsidiaries has a long history in the United States, dating back to 1981, but in recent years the scope of their use has broadened considerably as many large broker-dealers were not subsidiaries of BHCs prior to the financial crisis.17 The U.S. intermediate holding company (IHC) operations of foreign banking organizations including their broker-dealers will also be subject to the leverage ratio requirements starting on January 1, 2018. Finally, reflecting the lessons learned during the financial crisis and recognizing that excessive leverage could be built up from off-balance-sheet exposures, the leverage exposure definition was expanded to include off-balance sheet exposures. This new leverage ratio is called the supplementary leverage ratio and applies to the largest U.S. institutions.18 Balance sheet costs tend to make it more expensive for financial institutions to act as intermediaries in money markets.19 If these costs are economically large in the context of the ultra-low-risk, ultra-low-margin world of money markets, this could operate to reduce dealers’ incentive to make markets and act as financial intermediaries, so long as the leverage ratio is the binding capital requirement relative to the risk-based capital requirement for such firms.20, 21 In calculating the leverage ratio, all assets, including cash held at the central bank, are included. Because of the large outstanding stock of reserves in the system, this might have the effect of making the leverage ratio more binding for some firms.

According to various statistical methods, there has been no clear trend for the real exchange rate since the mid1990s (see Figure 7), which may indicate that the long-term value of the krona is close to the average during this period. 20 The period with large current account surpluses can thus not be associated with any tendency towards a real strengthening of the krona. 20  10  Lagerwall and Nessén, 2009. BIS central bankers’ speeches  Figure 7 Real and nominal exchange rate, TCW index Index, 18 November 1992=100 24  24  22  22  20  20  18  18  16  16  14  14 Sweden - total Sweden -excluding housing  12  12  EU -total EU -excluding housing  10  10 80  82  84  86  88  90  92  94  96  98  00  02  04  06  08  Source: The Riksbank  In this context it is worth noting that Sweden, despite so many years with a large current account surplus, is estimated to have a negative net external position. 21 In other words, the value of Swedish assets abroad is lower than the total value of Swedish liabilities abroad. Last year, Swedish liabilities abroad were 2.5 times greater than GDP. The fact that stocks on both the asset and liability sides are large means that variations in the value of these stocks are important to the development of the external position.
The Riksbank has obtained greater independence in relation to parliament and this is why its management has been given greater breadth – five deputy governors compared with two previously. The change towards greater independence for the Riksbank coincided with the clarification of the bank’s monetary policy task. It is now written in the Sveriges Riksbank Act that the bank shall maintain price stability. This is a development that has also taken place in many other countries. Inflation was for a long time a major problem in many parts of the world, but since the shift in monetary policy towards a greater focus on price stability, inflation has been brought under control. In addition to Sweden, twenty or so other countries currently have inflation targets, although not all of them have chosen exactly the same system for inflation targeting. Sweden was one of the first in this context. The increased independence has entailed greater demands for the Riksbank to explain its decisions. When I worked at the bank prior to 1999, work had already begun on improving analyses and communication and aiming for increased openness. This is a continuous process. During my years abroad I have seen several examples of the prominent role played by the Riksbank in central bank circles, particularly bearing in mind that we are a small central bank in a small economy. The Riksbank is now regarded as one of the most open central banks in the world.

The task of safeguarding price stability had to make way for other central bank tasks. It was partly therefore that almost the entire western world lived with a rising inflation rate during the late 1960s and the 1970s. At the same time, the upswing in inflation did not go hand in hand with higher growth and employment. When the world economy and world trade grew, the regulations became increasingly ineffective. Interest rate regulation, credit restrictions and exchange rate regulation hindered capital from flowing to where it could give the highest return. In addition, the regulations became more difficult to maintain when an increasing number of companies began to conduct operations in several countries, while new, unregulated companies and operations arose in the financial markets. In Sweden, as in many other countries, credit and exchange rate regulations were gradually abolished during the 1980s. This of course radically altered the conditions for monetary policy. The fixed exchange rate system was also subjected to considerable strain during the 1970s and 1980s. This had long been perceived as the best means for a small, open economy to promote international trade and at the same time maintain a low inflation rate. The idea was that a fixed exchange rate would lead to an inflation rate in Sweden that was roughly the same as that among our  2  BIS Review 8/2006  most important trading partners. However, for various reasons, economic policy did not manage to achieve this target.
22  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  22  The UK faces perhaps no greater challenge, economically and socially, than its productivity challenge. Meeting that challenge would deliver benefits to workers in improved wages and skills and to companies in greater efficiency and profitability. It would also contribute to closing inequalities of income, wealth and opportunity which have rightly and increasingly pre-occupied policymakers over recent years. The UK has a rich, in some respects world-leading, endowment of innovation and talent. This is, however, unevenly spread. Developing an institutional infrastructure, which draws on the UK’s comparative advantage in innovation but which spreads its benefits more widely, would support the long tail of UK companies and the people who work for them. It would help close the pay and productivity gaps between the best and the rest, the present and the past, the in-crowd and the out. It would put the rhyme back into R&D. The returns to doing so are difficult to quantify precisely. As a thought-experiment, imagine the bottom three quartiles of the UK productivity distribution saw their productivity gap with the quartile above closed. That would boost UK levels of productivity by around 13%. 58  This would close a large part of the productivity  shortfall relative to its pre-crisis trend. And it would make inroads into closing the productivity gap with the US and Germany. In today’s prices, it would boost the level of UK GDP by around £ billion.

Few are those who can define it and fewer still those who can measure it. Yet it has entered the popular lexicon and with good reason: the one thing we do know is that productivity is crucial to our pay and living standards over the longer run. Productivity is what pays for pay rises. And productivity is what puts the life into living standards. History, distant and recent, makes this only too clear. It is no coincidence that productivity, pay and living standards have moved in lock-step over the past millennium – flat-lining for the first three-quarters before sky-rocketing in the final quarter - as each new industrial revolution has dawned (Chart 1). Pay and living standards have increased over fifteen-fold since 1750. Productivity explains why. More recent experience has been more painful. Since 2008, productivity in the UK has essentially flat-lined. This is almost unprecedented in the modern era, a “lost decade” and counting. And it has been mirrored, as in the past, in a lost decade for pay too (Chart 2). Inflation-adjusted pay has stood still since the crisis, something also almost unprecedented in the modern era. 1  This prolonged pause has become known as the productivity problem. In the UK, the problem is a big one by any historical standard. And it is cold comfort that the UK shares this problem with much of the Western World and a decent chunk of the emerging market world.
While it is imperative that takaful operators seek to provide as seamless an experience as possible in terms of online content for consumers, this does not have to lead to the substitution of agents. On the contrary. Agents can in fact enrich the process by being trained and equipped with useful tools to guide and advise potential customers. Agents should also work with aggregators as a means to develop an online presence, in the same way real estate agents are featured on property websites. It is important to note, however, that technology is only a platform, a tool. Without strategy or purpose, the adoption of tech alone cannot spur change. What is needed to complement this is a fresh approach to business. This means broadening one’s horizons beyond given market conventions, and being courageous to compete in new, unexplored strategic areas. Compete better – and more broadly To truly capture the market of the future, agents will need to sharpen their competitive edge. There are many ways to go about this, but I’d like to talk about two in particular: Doing what you already do better, and doing it for a much broader market. 2/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  Akio Morita, the co-founder of Sony, once said about his company’s products – “We don’t ask consumers what they want… We focus on what they need, what they will want and make sure we’re there, ready.” I find this relevant to the role of agents today.

In a few months’ time, the Bank will be issuing an Exposure Draft on Fair Treatment of Financial Consumers which will set out heightened regulatory expectations for all players. Agents will need to exercise greater care, skill and diligence in their dealing with customers. But rules and regulations are in themselves not sufficient to create a pool of agents trusted by customers: That would require all-round, holistic professionalism – an agent who is technically qualified, fully committed and uncompromising on ethical standards. To me, it is this integrity and calibre that will ultimately guarantee the continued success of agents into the next decade, more so than any other factor. Faced with a more demanding and complex business environment, agents must continuously develop and equip themselves with skills and knowledge that are relevant, and that will continue to remain relevant well into the future. There are plenty of formal programmes available to help agents progress in their technical competencies. There is also a whole host of open online courses which can be accessed anytime, anywhere, with the desire to learn is the only prerequisite. It is encouraging that various professional training courses are already being offered through NAMLIFA’s Financial and Life Practitioners Council, and that one of the programmes has been accredited by the Financial Accreditation Agency (FAA).
For instance, in 2010 McAfee Labs recorded about 60,000 new malwares per day, but by 2017 that number had risen almost ten folds to 500,000 or about 350 new malwares per minute. It is also estimated that the cost of cybercrime will be in excess of USD 600 billion this year. As such, organizations must build up sufficient cyber resilience by putting in place safeguards to improve threat prevention and detection and ensure preparedness for response and recovery should a cyber attack occur. Third, on inclusivity: economic development without fair distribution can induce social and economic instabilities, threatening long-term sustainable growth. This is one area we must improve as a country. According to Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report, 58 percent of the nation's wealth is controlled by the richest 1 percent of the people. Meanwhile, 61 percent of land is owned by the top 10 percent of the land owners, and three quarters of the population do not own any land. Like previous industrial revolutions, the digital revolution brings with it challenges in income and wealth distribution, as those with higher skills and access to capital are much more likely to reap the benefits and get larger pieces of the pie. This calls for increased efforts to address this issue to make sure that no one is left behind. If this issue is neglected, the digital divide will widen inequality gap even further. 4  Ensuring easy and affordable access to technology and innovation can help reduce inequality and promote Thailand’s inclusivity.

“Rising Above Disruptions: A Call for Action” Keynote Remark by Dr. Veerathai Santiprabhob Governor of the Bank of Thailand National Directors Conference 2018 Thai Institute of Directors 21 June 2018, Plaza Athenee Hotel, Bangkok Thailand Dr. Bandid Nijathaworn, Mr. Andrew Sheng, Secretary General Rapee Sucharitakul, Chief executives, Directors, Distinguished guests, Ladies and gentlemen. A very good morning to you all. First of all, I would like to express my sincere thanks to the Thai Institute of Directors (IOD) for inviting me to be a part of this exciting and important event. I have always had strong appreciation for IOD’s mission and work to improve director professionalism and corporate governance in Thailand. I would also like to commend the IOD on organizing this year’s conference with a proactive and forward looking agenda that goes well beyond its focus on corporate governance. This year’s conference program concentrates on areas that we need to collaborate to ensure the future success of our country. It is therefore such an honor to be here today to share my thoughts with distinguished directors and key leaders who play an integral role in driving Thailand forward. Ladies and gentlemen,  We are living in an unprecedented period of profound changes where exponential advancement in technologies is transforming everything we know. The speed, scope and impact of this technological change are unlike anything we have experienced before. It is disrupting and transforming the whole value chains, across all sectors in all corners of the globe, at an extremely fast pace.
Under the influence of the neo-classical synthesis of Samuelson and Solow, the long-term correlation between inflation and growth was perceived as positive in the early 1970s: a slight increase in inflation would have led – within limits – to an increase in employment and growth.3 But by the end of that decade, studies by Bob Lucas and Tom Sargent were to show that long-term inflation and growth are not correlated.4 Monetary policy, while very effective in the short term, only affects inflation in the medium and long term. It is, in other words, neutral. Today, new models and advanced computational techniques allow us to simulate the effects of inflation on incentives to save and to work, on the formation of physical capital, and therefore on the prospects for growth. The correlation has become negative: higher inflation reduces growth and employment. For example, vector autoregressive models with  3  Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow published their article entitled “Analytical Aspects of Anti-Inflation Policy” in the May 1960 edition of the American Economic Review. The article discussed the causes of inflation and the Phillips curve. 4  Bob Lucas then assembled the empirical evidence which motivated his study on the theory of neutrality in his Nobel lecture entitled “Monetary Neutrality”, 7 December 1995. The absence of a correlation between inflation and growth is documented in McCandless, G.T. and Weber, W., “Some Monetary Facts”, Federal Reserve of Minneapolis Quarterly Review, No 1931, 1995.

The unequal sharing of the “cost of flexibility”, only affecting young people, an eternal flexibility with no hope of stabilisation, leads among other things to companies not investing in young people, whose skills and talents often decline in jobs with low added value. The underuse of their resources reduces growth in various ways: it makes the creation of start-ups less likely – and they are on average more innovative than others – it causes a decline in skills in the long run, slowing down the assimilation of new technology and acting as a brake on efficient production  1  Tiberi, M., “Ricordo di Federico Caffè”, in Rivista italiana degli economisti, April 1997, p. 132. 2  Caffè, F., La solitudine del riformista, edited by Acocella, N. and Franzini, M., Bollati Boringhieri, Turin, 1990, p. 258. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  processes. In addition to undermining society’s sense of fairness, it is a waste that we cannot afford. I think it’s essential to ask how economic policy conducted in various Member States has done its duty in the way desired by Caffè.
This is a commendable achievement but we still have a lot to do. As Malaysia moves forward with the economic transformation programme, the demands for the financial sector as enabler, catalyst and driver of growth will increase. The financial sector as a whole is expected to grow in size, from 4.6 times GDP now to 5–6 times GDP by 2020. The significance of financial markets, relative to funds raised through financial intermediaries such as banks, will continue to rise. In meeting the needs of the new high value added economy, our financial sector needs to be developed further and innovative in its approach in order to facilitate higher levels of domestic and international trade and investments. One such innovative approach is the development of a comprehensive and vibrant Islamic financial industry. It is our aspiration to transform Malaysia as the Islamic Financial Hub. Crucial to the transformation is intensifying of our efforts to further develop the foreign currency markets in Malaysia. In particular, we should seek to capitalise on our competitive advantage in Islamic financial markets and move beyond our previous focus of advisory and promoting primary market issuances and move up to build an end-to-end value chain capability – where we should also focus on secondary market trading, settlement and custody services. But this aspiration of ours could only be achieved if there is a collaborative effort between the industry and the authorities.

The country’s improved economic fundamentals and the resilient financial system have enabled the gradual pace of liberalisation of the FEA rules since 2003. A fact that is often over looked is that, during the recent crisis, contrary to actions undertaken by many, Malaysia had further liberalized the FEA rules to promote greater efficiency in the conduct of international trade, promote a conducive business environment and to allow the use of domestic currency in the settlement of trade with the country’s major trading partners. This is a timely measure, given the country’s strong linkages with the global and regional economies in particular, the Asian economies. The various measures put in place by the authorities have enabled Malaysia to be ranked as the Top 10 most competitive nation in the World Economic Report by IMD, Switzerland. On ease of doing business, FEA’s ranking had also improved significantly from 13th (which is one of the most problematic) in 2005/2006 to 2nd place (easiest for doing business) in 2009/2010 reflecting partly the stakeholders’ positive assessment on FEA to support the conduct of business in Malaysia. The country’s easy and facilitative regulatory environment including FEA rules, had also contributed to Malaysia’s recent upgrading from a “Secondary Emerging Market” to a “Advanced Emerging Market” status in the FTSE’s Country Classification Index, hence the potential increase in non-residents’ investments in Malaysia following the increase in Malaysia’s weightage in the index from the current level of 2.41% by June 2011.
And what has become obvious, given the present scale of public spending derived from the deterioration in employment, is that the viability of any credible budgetary consolidation strategy in the Spanish economy depends on swift and far-reaching changes to the trends currently prevailing in the labour market. Without a significant reduction in unemployment it will be very difficult to reverse the course of public spending and ensure a sustained recovery in the tax authorities’ capacity to raise revenue. The downturn in employment and the rise in unemployment are the most serious problem facing the Spanish economy, and that most hampering the recovery and fiscal consolidation. Unavoidably, then, reforms to labour institutions must be promptly undertaken that draw our unemployment rate closer to that of the more developed countries, thus checking flows to unemployment and enabling workers who have lost their jobs to return as soon as possible to an active working life. The reforms should encompass a wide range of institutions. Innovation in hiring arrangements is needed to provide for maximum job creation. We must rectify the pronounced segmentation currently characterising a labour market with a high temporary employment ratio, with most adverse consequences for job stability and for efficiency and fairness in the economy. In turn, collective bargaining needs reforming. This is so as to allow wage settlements to be tailored to a greater extent to each company and to the business cycle, but also to equip companies with the necessary flexibility to increase productivity and wages wherever possible.

But what is important is to realise that the deficit generated over these two years has a significant structural component, given that current primary public spending has maintained a high growth rate and the sizeable extraordinary revenue linked to the real estate sector has been lost for good. The deterioration in the fiscal position is manifest in a strong increase in public debt. As our own experience shows, the dynamic of rising indebtedness can prove difficult to break, especially when it is inconceivable that we can count in the future on some of the factors that significantly helped reduce debt in the past, such as interest-rate cuts and high economic growth over a very lengthy period. Overall, all these factors increase the risk that, in the absence of corrective measures, the fiscal position will continue to worsen. Further, they lead to the conclusion that the room for budgetary policy to expand has been completely exhausted, and that it is vital that a credible strategy of budgetary consolidation be adopted for the medium term. If not, the increase in public debt and its influence on the net borrowing costs of our economy, and even on the very soundness of the financial system and its capacity to properly channel resources, may become a very heavy weight holding back our possibilities of recovery. Given the fiscal imbalance that has built up, the scale of adjustment needed is most sizeable and will therefore require the adoption of highly ambitious measures on all budgetary fronts.