samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
That has been the story of the UK economy over the last 150 years. We ran continuous surpluses in the 50 years before the first world war (Chart 1) and built up a large stock of foreign assets. Partly as a result of that, we benefited from a surplus on our investment account for most of the period since the 1870s. There are two key differences between that period of the UK’s investment abroad and the situation today. 100 years ago the developed countries were investing in emerging markets (at the time in the Americas and Australia) which had abundant land and natural resources but scarce capital and so the returns were high. Currently, capital is flowing “uphill” from emerging to mature economies. Secondly, the investors before were mainly in the private sector and were seeking out the best returns on capital. Today the investors are mainly EME central banks and governments and the build up of foreign assets reflects their policy choices. 1  There is some fuzziness at the edges of this definition. Central bank reserves in some countries, which traditionally have been invested mainly in liquid and safe instruments, are increasingly being switched into riskier assets. Also, in some countries, state-owned banks and companies invest in foreign assets where some of the policy issues are the same as for sovereign wealth funds.

One angle of this issue is how the membership might impact the overall economy, and hence what challenges as policy makers we could face. The second angle is more specific, as the economic integration is the stepping – stone towards the monetary integration, and the adoption of the Euro as a single currency. Observing the first angle, one should probably try to draw conclusions from the experience of other peer economies that already went, through this process. Entering the EU, for these countries provided confidence anchor and significant reduction of their risk premiums. It enabled strong influx of capital, which underpinned their real and financial convergence. In some of these countries, the finance flows went to productive and tradable segments, making the economies more resilient to shocks and less vulnerable. But, in some of them the allocation of capital was less conducive to sustainable growth, it created excessive imbalances, high leverage and less room for policy makers. The occurrence of the global crisis was a “natural halt” and painful correction of this unsustainable economic matrices. At this juncture, with the global crisis behind us and all the lessons learned, I think as policy makers we are more knowledgeable to reap the benefits of the EU entrance more wisely, and to better deal with the challenges ahead. At this point I must say, that Macedonian economy is already well integrated both in terms of trade and finance with the EU.
For the prospective polytechnic graduate, this 12–18 month work-study programme will allow him or her to gain valuable employment experience at a financial institution and to receive training which counts towards a Specialist or Advanced diploma upon completion of the programme. These work-study programmes will be designed in collaboration with financial institutions, the polytechnics and the Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA). 41. I am pleased to see that the major banks in Singapore have committed to provide at least 200 places for polytechnic graduates in the coming year, through the Earn and Learn Programmes or their in-house structured programmes. (They include all three local banks – DBS, OCBC, UOB – as well as ANZ, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citibank, JP Morgan, Maybank and Standard Chartered Bank.) These will be in the banks’ core functions of technology, consumer banking, operations and risk management. 42. Wherever you start, we will help you progress. To give an example, Oryan Ang, graduated from Nanyang Polytechnic and joined DBS in 2004 as a Home Advice Specialist. He was given opportunities to learn on the job, demonstrate his abilities and rise through the ranks, and is today a Vice-President in Consumer Banking (Deposits and Secured Lending) at the bank. Developing strong core of Singaporean Leaders in Finance 43. Let me turn finally to the second thrust of our initiatives to develop professional talent and skills, which concerns leadership development. This too is a key priority under SkillsFuture.

The development of a strong core of Singaporean leaders in finance, working in diverse global teams, will define our continued success as a financial centre. MAS takes this very seriously. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  44. We have in recent years introduced several initiatives to promote the development of Singaporean leaders in the financial industry. •  The Finance Associate Management Scheme (FAMS) offers promising young professionals exposure to different aspects of a financial institution’s global operations and mentorship by senior leaders. •  The International Posting Programme (iPOST) has supported more than 35 overseas postings of Singaporeans in finance since its launch in 2013. They have acquired valuable practical experience in diverse working cultures over their 6 to 24-month attachments to regional and global offices of financial institutions. Asian Financial Leaders Programme (AFLP) 45. To further strengthen these efforts, I am pleased to announce the launch of the Asian Financial Leaders Programme (AFLP). •  The AFLP will take advantage of Singapore’s strong and expanding linkages in the region, including ASEAN, China and India, and aim to strengthen those links through leadership development. •  It is aimed at equipping finance professionals aspiring to C-suite roles with the knowledge and capabilities to operate effectively across diverse business, regulatory, and legal environments. •  Participants will be given the opportunity to learn from and interact with top policymakers from the region and to also build networks with fellow financial sector leaders.
Given the recourse to the asset by investors, it provides the incentive for disciplined and appropriate governance of the management of the project. Additionally, multilateral development banks may also facilitate this process by providing credit guarantees to these countries to reduce the financing cost and improve the quality of the sukuk issuances. On this front, multilateral development banks such as The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) Group and The Asian Development Bank (ADB) commenced initiatives to support member countries to leverage on Islamic finance for sourcing of funds, through the provision of advisory services, capacity development and technical assistance. Allow me to now share Malaysia’s experience in the development of the sukuk market in our Islamic finance marketplace. The Islamic capital market in Malaysia has been systematically developed to ensure accessibility whilst ensuring the protection of investors and efficiency in the intermediation process. The initiatives to develop the market are also strongly backed by the legal and Shariah framework which is further supported by a robust financial infrastructure, including the settlement and bond information system that enables Malaysia to provide a complete sukuk issuance and trading platform. Since the first sukuk issuance in 1990 by a multinational corporation in Malaysia, the sukuk outstanding in the Malaysian marketplace is now $ billion. In 2002, the Malaysian government issued its inaugural global sovereign sukuk, raising $ million, which became an international benchmark for the issuance of global sovereign sukuk.

As a result of this partnership JA Zambia receives annual grants which are utilized to deliver JA entrepreneurship and work-readiness education to the local young people. I further wish to acknowledge the contribution that Barclays Bank Zambia Plc continues to make to the development and deepening of the banking sector in Zambia. Clearly Mr. Masud  BIS Review 18/2010  1  has been a key factor in the process and our expectation is that the incoming caretaker Managing Director Mr. Bret Packard will continue to progress this process. It is in this vein ladies and gentlemen that I request you to join me in formally wish Mr. Masud success in his future endeavors as we welcome Mr. Bret Packard, the new Acting Managing Director at Barclays Bank Zambia Plc. Thank you. 2  BIS Review 18/2010
However, as these temporary factors dissipate, economic slack declines further and inflation expectations remain stable, inflation should slowly move up toward the Federal Open Market Committee’s longer-run objective of 2 percent. Using data from the National Income and Product Accounts, this expansion so far has exhibited unusual features compared to previous long expansions. Most notably, the pace of growth during the early years of this expansion was well below that of the early years in previous long cycles (Table 1). Among the factors for the slower growth were unusually low contributions from residential investment and from nondurables and services consumption. In contrast, the contribution from durables consumption, particularly for motor vehicles, was similar to that observed in previous expansions. Even though real GDP growth has picked up some in the past two years, these patterns are still evident (Table 2). The slow growth during the current expansion, what we might call the long shallow recovery, is likely a result of a confluence of many factors including constrained monetary and fiscal policies, demographic factors and economic and financial developments abroad. Today, I’d like to consider developments in credit markets in the context of this shallow recovery. Credit availability is a crucial ingredient in any advanced economy’s recipe for economic growth because credit can support investment in productive enterprises and can smooth household spending from fluctuations in income. Credit is the means through which financial assets accumulated by savers can earn returns by being put to productive uses.

The first batch of CIFP graduates received their scrolls in February 2009 and all 32 have gained employment or have continued their studies further. This year, INCEIF will see the first batch of Masters in Islamic Finance graduate and next year will see the first batch of students to graduate from the PhD programme. This is indeed a significant milestone for INCEIF that is achieved in such a short period of time. As the Chancellor of INCEIF, it is my hope that the setting up of the INCEIF Chair of Islamic Finance will contribute to the development of expertise of the academic faculty and students at INCEIF in addition to expanding further understanding of Islamic Finance by the financial community. Please join me in welcoming Dr Abbas Mirakhor to deliver his lecture. 2  BIS Review 9/2010
As a counter-example, in 2008 Google launched a predictive model of flu outbreaks based on searches for phrases such as “indications of flu”. 10  This did a terrific job of tracking flu outbreaks in the US in 2009-10. 11  But that model’s predictions broke down spectacularly in the following years. That empirical fragility arose, I  would suggest, from an over-reliance on empirical regularities and an over-adherence to inductive methods. Or, put differently, from too little focus being placed on the deep medical causes of past flu outbreaks. In the first case, empirical fragility arose from too tight a set of axioms and restrictions, from placing too great an emphasis on theory over real-world correlations and historical experience. In the second, empirical 5  Haldane (2016). Popper (1934) and Popper (1959). Bacon (1620). 8 Anderson (2008). 9 For example, Stiglitz (2018). 10 Ginsberg et al (2009). 11 Lazer et al (2014). 6 7  3  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  3  fragility arose from too loose a set of axioms and restrictions, from observed empirical correlations being given too great a role relative to theory and causality. In both cases, these mistakes might have been reduced had inductive and deductive approaches been used in a complementary, or iterative, fashion. This iterative approach has a strong pedigree in other disciplines.

The history of advance in many scientific disciplines has involved a two-way process of learning between theory and empirics, with theory motivating measurement at some times, and measurement motivating 12  theory at others, in a continuous feedback loop. One example of this approach, discussed by Governor Carney at the time the Bank’s own data analytics 13  programme was launched, concerns the dynamics of planetary motion. It was Sir Isaac Newton (a fellow  money-printer, as former Master of the Royal Mint) who developed the physical theory of celestial motion. But this theory was built on the empirical shoulders of another scientific giant, Johannes Kepler. When it comes to planetary motion, empirics first led theory, the inductive led the deductive. The same has been true, at times, when understanding the motion of economies and financial markets. Keynesian and Monetarist theory were both built on empirical experience during the Great Depression. The Phillips curve began life as a Kepler-esque empirical regularity, which was only subsequently given a Newtonian theoretical basis. Many puzzles in finance, which have taxed theorists for decades, began as 14  empirical anomalies in asset markets. In each case, empirics led theory, the inductive led the deductive. My lesson from all of this is clear. If that iterative learning process between empirics and theory is to continue to bear fruit in economics, then deductive and inductive approaches may need to share a broadly equal billing.
That in turn may lead them to set higher wages and prices to compensate and thus to the elevated level of inflation persisting. Measures of inflation expectations for the year ahead, for both households and businesses, have moved upwards, though no more than one would expect given the outlook for inflation (Chart 11). Measures of inflation expectations further ahead, which might be more indicative of a fundamental shift in perceptions of the inflation climate, have though mostly remained well anchored (Chart 12). But this is something we are watching closely, in particular for any signs that higher inflation expectations are leading businesses to raise pay and prices. There are elements of all these mechanisms present in our latest projections, but there is a risk that they will turn out to be more powerful than in our central view. And, as noted earlier, there is the risk of further increases in the prices of commodities, especially that of oil. Certainly, my own judgment is that, if anything, inflation may prove a little more persistent next year than presently embodied in our projections. 7  This is sometimes referred to as the “battle of the mark-ups” in the unemployment literature; see e.g. P. R. G. Layard, S. J. Nickell and R. Jackman (1991), Unemployment: Macroeconomic Performance and the Labour Market. 6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  On its own, that might appear to imply that Bank Rate needs to rise faster than implied by the market yield curve that underpins our projections.

But even abstracting from the snow, activity seems to be have been broadly flat. How much should we read into that? One possibility is that the figure is simply erratic or will be revised away in due course. But other indicators – particularly some measures of consumer and business confidence – also weakened during the second half of the year,  3  While some outside commentators regarded that projection as being on the optimistic side, it would still have left output below its pre-crisis level until 2011 Q4 and broadly in-line with the average experience after banking crises recorded by the IMF (Chart 1). 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  suggesting that something more substantial may have occurred. It could just be a short-lived soft patch – after all, recoveries are rarely smooth. Indeed, that is the judgement incorporated in the projections we published a couple of weeks ago (Chart 2). But it could instead be the harbinger of a more durable slowing – only time will tell. Let me now turn to the sources of the recent elevated inflation and the chances of inflation remaining above our 2% target into the medium term and beyond. A year ago, in our February 2010 Report, our central expectation was that inflation would be around 1% in the first quarter of this year. Yet in January, CPI inflation reached 4% and is likely to move higher in the coming months, in part reflecting the recent surge in oil prices.
In such an environment, productivity increases become the main factor in competition. Sectors with the highest productivity increases became the sectors, which grew most rapidly and increased their exports the most. Studies to increase productivity and specialization in technology and capital-intensive sectors that create high value added are more critical for the sustainability of increases in exports in the long term, than the advantage of exchange rate movements. In order to be able to persevere in such a strong competitive environment, medium and long-term strategies – rather than short-term perspectives – are needed. To this end, public and private sectors should act in cooperation and harmony. In this framework, the public sector should try to create an environment for the private sector, in which it can compete with competitors in international markets under market conditions. In the meantime, the public sector should continue to take measures in order to increase its productivity, build robust and transparent balance sheets, turn towards capital markets, attend to risk management principles and try to allocate resources for research and development activities. When we look at the course of growth in 2006, we see that indicators of consumption and investment expenditures provide signals for a rapid course of growth in the second quarter of the year. Meanwhile, it is anticipated that the environment of uncertainty created by the fluctuations in financial markets in the second quarter will affect domestic demand in a slightly unfavorable manner and hinder the rapid growth process, starting from the third quarter of the year onwards.

The declines in the Central Bank Business Tendency Survey indicators and domestic sales of automobiles as well as the fall in the Consumer Confidence Index also support this anticipation. Thus, it seems likely that the rate of growth will decelerate to a certain extent in the second half of 2006 and the first half of 2007. At this stage, I would like to draw your attention to the following point: What Turkey needs is to sustain growth at levels close to its potential. The uninterrupted course of growth in recent years is just the beginning. This process is a dynamic one. Structural reforms are extremely important and should be reinforced with micro measures, and a strategic vision should be adopted in line with changing needs and new structures. The Ninth Development Plan provides significant ground in this regard and should be put into implementation immediately. I would also like to say a few words about employment, which is another important issue on the agenda of Turkey. The number of people employed is gradually increasing in line with the high growth performance in our country. In the last one-year period, nine hundred seventeen thousand (917,000) new employment opportunities were created in sectors excluding agriculture. Moreover, in accordance with the structural transformation process in the economy, the sectoral distribution of employment is changing and a rapid shift is observed from the agricultural sector to other sectors.
This would push down real interest rates and thereby increase the probability of the lower bound not creating too many problems. But for this to work requires a lot from the communication of the central bank as well as from economic agents’ ability to take in and comprehend the temporary change in the formulation of the target. Such a change could even be counterproductive in that it would become more difficult rather than easier to understand what monetary policy involves. Raising the inflation target would of course also entail problems. However, my assessment is that it is easier to affect inflation expectations by stating a clear figure to aim at. There are a number of earlier examples that this has been possible in practice. Admittedly, this has usually concerned bringing down inflation expectations, but that is no simple task either. Not least in the case of Sweden, there were strong headwinds and considerable doubts that we would succeed. My most important message Let me conclude by briefly summarising my most important messages. In the short term, within the current framework, the Riksbank has a number of tools to counteract the next economic downturn. But the low neutral interest rate, combined with need to conduct a very expansionary policy in recent years, may create certain problems, depending on how soon the downturn comes and how deep it is.

The Central Bank expects to direct economic activities and outcomes within its control to meet the Reserve money and Broad money targets. Such activities would include changes to the policy interest rates if considered necessary, conduct of open market operations, moral suasion, public communications and other available actions. Regular reviews of the general policy stance will also be made and intensive public awareness campaigns would be used to manage inflation expectations. In response to our policy measures and actions, we believe that both headline inflation and core inflation would moderate. It is also our belief that inflation will respond over the months in the manner as set out in the charts that follow, but nevertheless we shall be watching developments with very keen interest. Figure 6:  BIS Review8/2007  9  Figure 7: Forecast of Core Inflation 2007-2008 30 25 20 15 10 5  Lower Bound  Oct.08  Jul.08  Apr.08  Jan.08  Oct.07  Jul.07  Apr.07  Jan.07  Oct.06  Jul.06  Jan.06  Apr.06  0  Upper Bound  The Monetary Programme for 2008 and beyond will be based on the high growth path targeted by the government in the medium term, and containing money supply to maintain inflation at a low level. In this context, inflation will be targeted to gradually decrease to a level of 4 per cent within a 10 year time period. Such a target would be in line with the Government’s 10 year plan.