samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The challenge lies in specifying a model that fits together seamlessly with other  4  BIS Review 34/2004  international accounting guidelines and at the same time aligns well with sound insurance risk management and supervisory objectives. Given some of the issues we’ve faced in other areas of accounting, that seems unlikely to be a quick or easy job. That same challenge to align accounting guidelines to sound risk management objectives as well as supervisory objectives exists across the financial services sectors. It explains why financial supervisors, and especially the Basel Committee, attach great importance to playing an active role in the international debates on accounting. In the Basel Committee’s case, we seek to represent the supervisory perspective on key accounting issues relevant to banking, and we support the work underway in the accounting profession towards convergence in accounting standards globally. With regard to Basel II, the Committee worked closely with our colleagues in the International Accounting Standards Board to avoid conflicts between Pillar 3 and the broader accounting standards. In fact, the Committee views Pillar 3 as a further refinement of the accounting standards that apply to banks’ specific exposures. Because we recognise that we have much to do in this area, we will continue to monitor accounting and market developments in the light of Pillar 3. Our dialogue with accounting standards-setting bodies and the accounting profession will continue to grow in the years to come.

I should add that the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS), a fellow association of supervisors in the insurance area, is now discussing a supervisory framework that would apply to all insurance regulatory systems globally. Evolution in risk management and the reform of financial supervision should complement and reinforce each other, and the progress in each area will be influenced by the work underway globally to revise accounting guidelines. The Geneva Association has taken a great interest in this topic, so I will conclude my remarks with some brief thoughts from my perspective on the convergence of accounting standards, advances in risk management, and supervision. II. Trends across financial services sector  Allow me to begin with an overview of recent trends in risk management. Last year, a body representing major financial supervisory agencies conducted a study of 31 banks, securities firms, and insurance companies in 12 jurisdictions. This body - called the “Joint Forum” - consists of expert supervisors from member agencies of the Basel Committee, the International Organisation of  BIS Review 34/2004  1  Securities Commissioners (IOSCO), and the IAIS. The Joint Forum seeks to identify best practices and develop guidance for activities across the financial services sector. In its report, which was published in August 2003, the Joint Forum identified two important and recent trends among large, complex firms engaged in banking, securities, or insurance, or in some mix of these activities. A. Integration of the risk management function.
The Banking Sector Restructuring Program and other measures that were taken following the 2001 crisis, led to the formation of a very strong and resilient financial system. This contributed to the high growth rates achieved after the crisis. I can comfortably say that today the banking sector in Turkey compares well with those of new members of the European Union. The Banking Law enacted in 2005 is in line with the best international practices. Asset size of the Turkish banking sector increased by more than three-folds in the last six years and reached USD 500 billion as of 2007. Still, there is a huge and unexplored potential in the sector taking into account the size of Turkey’s young population and low rate of credit utilization among households and private business. Capital adequacy ratio (CAR) of the banking sector stood at 18.8%, well above the minimum legal requirement of 8% and the average of the European Union, which is 12.1%. Short-term liquidity ratios comfortably meet the legal thresholds. Thanks to sound and resilient structure of the sector, foreign direct investment to the Turkish banking system has surged since 2005 and the share of foreign investors in the total capital of the sector is now more than 40%. Rather than financing government deficits, the banking sector has returned to its core function, which is being intermediary between borrowers and lenders.

It never crossed my mind back then that one day I would be working on the problem of how to provide monetary accommodation in an economy with massive unemployment, very low inflation (perhaps even too low) and a policy rate stuck at the zero lower bound. With the exception of scholars of the Great Depression, back in the 1980s today’s policy challenges were not on anyone’s radar screen. Of course, that changed with the developments in Japan during the 1990s. More macroeconomists began thinking about liquidity traps and the monetary policy tools to help escape from them. These analyses gained momentum following Paul Krugman’s Brookings paper in 1998.1 They focused both on the use of the central bank’s balance sheet to provide accommodation and on communication about policy goals and forward guidance about the path for policy instruments. Much of this latter work was done within the New Keynesian paradigm, since communications are central to the policy transmission mechanism in those models.2 For obvious reasons, such research has come back into vogue today. The nonstandard policies emphasized by these lines of research have been important elements in the Federal Reserve’s toolkit over the past four years. The Federal Reserve engaged in two waves of large-scale asset purchases (March 2009 and November 2010), and, more recently, extended the maturity of the assets on our books (September 2011).
The parcelling out of agricultural land impedes the effective organisation of production, decreases the profitability and raises the agricultural mechanics utilization cost. The Bank of Albania deems that energy remains our main challenge in the short-run and in the medium-run. We have been faced with underlined power supply constraints for about a decade. The current crisis coincidence in time with a global environment that is rather sensitive to this problem has relatively increased the energy import costs, which could be unsustainable in the long run. It has resulted out of Bank of Albania surveys that the negative consequences arising from this situation are numerous and directly related to the economic activity of the productive sector, in both levels, corporate and small and medium sized enterprises. The frequent recurrence of such situation poses the risk that periods of significant power constraints are no longer regarded as accidental shocks, but they are more and more classified as permanent factors that should be factorised in the production cost, and hence should be taken into account in pricing policies and their expectations. To this end, the Bank of Albania estimates that, starting from 2007, all the respective decision-making stakeholders should apply a new concrete management policy, different from the 15-year practice. An integral part of it should be not only the management of current energy resources, but also concrete steps in the distribution network, as short-term measures to pass to long-term operations, which would imply the establishment of alternative energy sources.

Bandid Nijathaworn: Are there limits to transparency? Remarks by Mr Bandid Nijathaworn, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Thailand, at the IMF Conference on Central Bank Communications, Mumbai, 23 January 2006. *  *  *  First, let me thank the IMF and the Reserve Bank of India for the invitation. It is a pleasure to be here in Mumbai. And I should also congratulate the IMF for putting up what seems to be another useful and successful seminar. My contribution today is to speak on limits to transparency. Given the limitations of time, I want to begin by looking at the needs of central banks for limiting transparency, especially in the context of central banks’ own operations. Then, I want to speak on the challenge facing central banks in designing appropriate disclosure policy. And finally, I want to share with you my thought on how to approach transparency in the context of monetary policy. Transparency has now become an important policy aspect of central banking. Not only is transparency linked directly to the governance issue, but greater transparency also imparts important benefits to the effectiveness of central bank policies. In broad terms, three benefits from greater transparency are often cited. First, greater information provided by the central banks allows market participants to accurately evaluate the behavior and the performance of central banks. This is most important for public organizations like central banks. Second, financial markets tend to work more efficiently with greater transparency.
A well-functioning bond market serving a broad spectrum of international issuers and investors needs to be supported by a deep foreign exchange market, and Singapore is the largest foreign exchange market in Asia and the third largest globally. Based on the triennial survey by the Bank for International Settlements, average daily turnover reached USD 517 billion in April 2016, a 35% increase from three years ago. Our share of global market has increased from 6% to 8%. Singapore exchanges offer a suite of 21 Asian FX currency futures and option contracts. The Singapore Exchange’s Indian Rupee and Renminbi futures contracts are amongst the most liquid globally. The next decade 13 As we chart our next lap in developing Asia’s capital markets, we need to take into account trends and driving forces that will shape capital markets in the years ahead. Let me highlight three of them: 14  First, technology is transforming capital markets in significant ways. a. This is most obvious in foreign exchange, which is the most advanced in contract standardisation and market practices. New electronic trading platforms are blooming alongside mature systems, and are beginning to enter emerging markets. Technology is also enabling OTC platforms to clear on exchanges, and for exchange3/7  BIS central bankers' speeches  traded futures to be distributed on OTC platforms. b. Even in bond markets, technology is being used to improve premarket price transparency by pulling price feeds from traders directly.

Vipps’ market dominance reduces these challenges, but this assumes that all market participants will be connected to the system. This assumption may be too strict. Other payment service providers and payment solutions will also wish to enter the market on equal terms. The alias registers are important here. An alias register links account numbers to telephone numbers and other ways that identify account holders. Today, separate registers are compiled in each solution. In my opinion, there are clear advantages to having a central register that is used by all banks and other service providers in the Norwegian payment market. This should be part of a common infrastructure and not be part of private closed systems where ownership can change. A common register facilitates interoperability and high register quality. The greater the level of activity is, the more up-to-date the information is. We would also then avoid contradictory information in the various registers, which can arise, for example, when customers do not update their information everywhere at the same time. Insufficient register information may be a barrier to competition. An alias register shares similarities with a public good that should be organised as common infrastructure and be available to all service providers, for a price, if necessary. Service providers should compete on other aspects of the services they offer. I look forward to seeing initiatives from Finance Norway and Bits in this respect. It is often most appropriate for the industry to arrive at satisfactory solutions on its own.
The economy grew rapidly in the early years but the communist system, plus upheavals like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, led to inefficiency, backwardness and chaos. In 1977, after Mao Zedong died, Deng Xiaoping returned to power. He made a decisive break with Maoist dogma, and launched far-reaching market reforms under the slogan "Reform and Open Up". The profit motive, and the new social attitude that to get rich was glorious, unleashed huge energies and transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of Chinese people. By producing widespread benefits across the country, Deng's reforms became entrenched and irreversible, even though they are still far from complete. Deng had accomplished what successive reformers and modernisers had tried and failed to do for a century. 2  BIS Review 19/2003  UK Post-war Britain offers a third example of a remaking of an economy, although on a smaller compass. Emerging from the post-war reconstruction of Europe, Britain shared in the world economic boom of the 1950s and early 1960s. But by the mid 1960s, the "English disease" had set in. The country was plagued by militant trade unions, poor management, and unsustainable state welfarism. Industries that had once been world leaders fell behind. British governments were trapped in a cycle of stop-go policies, chronic balance-of-payments difficulties and sterling crises. The heavy involvement of the state in economic activities and transfers had led to a dead end.

But those that have come further along the liberalization road have to face a different music. 4  From the new External Wealth of Nations Mark II (EWN II) dataset, compiled by Lane and Milesi-Ferretti (2006). 5  Ibid. BIS Review 99/2007  3  Rapid appreciation in the exchange value of the currency renders part of the domestic industries less competitive in the global markets. It is true that with this appreciation, commodity imports such as fuel and energy as well as metal and raw materials have become more affordable despite rising world price trends. But these benefits are spread-out while the cost is centered on labor-intensive, high domestic-content primary sectors, such as agriculture and low-end manufacturing. As a result, even for net primary commodity importing economies, the nature of the problem is as much political economy as it is economic. There are strong and vocal constituencies in emerging markets that are averse to currency appreciation and part of them averse to variability in the exchange rate itself. Meanwhile, hot money, or indeed large inflows in general, can fuel asset prices and encourage excessive risk-taking behavior. Central banks may wish to counter that excess in the interest of financial stability. If the central bank chooses to maintain a high interest rate stance, the pressure on the currency to appreciate will likely mount. Not unlike today’s political economy in advanced countries, emerging market politics also risks being less favorable to openness, but more partial to protection of selected industries or protectionism in general.
For example, when in late 2004 the Bank announced our intention to introduce reforms, the European treasury department of one of the largest companies in the world wrote to me in the following terms: “I write to express our support and appreciation ….. The excessive volatility in the overnight market precluded high-quality issuers .. from participating. …The steps you are taking will surely increase the depth, stability and overall liquidity of the sterling money market.” That kind of support has been a great encouragement. In terms of risk management, many companies swap fixed-rate term borrowing (and other cash flows) into floating-rate. This can be into a six or three-month LIBOR rate of interest, or into a stream of payments linked to the overnight money market rate. In the UK, the Overnight-Index-Swap market has developed rather less than its counterpart in the euro area, which is used by large non-financial companies. One obstacle seems to have been the intra-day volatility in the sterling market, which has entailed uncertainty about the spread between the average overnight rate on any particular day (as measured by the Sterling Overnight Rate Index Average, or SONIA) and the rate actually paid on overnight cash at different times during the day. Many market participants believe that if the reforms introduced yesterday significantly reduce intra-day volatility, the sterling OIS swap market will grow, making it a more useful risk management tool. The evidence of corporate treasurers as placers of short-term money is more concrete.

For a few years now, UK companies’ domestic operations have been producing surplus cash flows: £ or  2  BIS Review 47/2006  about 1% of GDP, in 2005. The counterpart has, of course, been an accumulation of financial assets. A lot of that has gone in to the money markets – in particular, holdings of call-deposits with banks (Chart 4) and investments in money market funds. In placing that liquidity, you should be in a position where you need to negotiate only the spread paid relative to a stable money market rate, not the underlying rate itself. Our overhaul of the system should deliver that. By taking the noise out of the sterling money markets, we aim to achieve greater stability and greater transparency. That won’t revolutionise your businesses, but I trust that it will bring a welcome reduction in the avoidable uncertainties you confront. Business risk management and pension-scheme uncertainties At an aggregate level, the recent financial management of the company sector has, in fact, posed some puzzles about your assessment of uncertainty and risk. This has been important to our understanding of what is going on in the money markets, and indeed financial markets more generally, as part of the backdrop to our role of promoting monetary and financial stability. The surplus cash flows I described earlier, in the context of your treasury management, are a product of UK cash profits having exceeded, by some margin, business investment (Chart 5). The same is true across the G7 economies as a whole.
The new frameworks should be guided by the FSB’s new international standard for resolution regimes, as endorsed by G20 Leaders at their Cannes Summit of 4 November 2011.5 This standard could mean a substantial improvement, since it not only contains a broad arsenal of effective resolution tools, but also provisions to facilitate cooperation among national authorities. Nonetheless, in my view, a greater centralization of crisis management and resolution responsibilities for cross-border SIFIs would also be needed, with a strong coordinating role for the home authority. In this regard, I would very much welcome a move towards an EU-level resolution authority, the same way as our supervisory system moved already partly from national to the EU level. 3. A bird’s eye view: the size and role of the financial sector  With this quick résumé of where we stand in overhauling financial regulation in mind, let me turn to the more general question what role the financial sector is playing in our economies at large. A major German newspaper recently published a poll that had asked respondents to name those five professions for which they have the highest respect.6 The results of the survey found the respect for “Bankers and bank employees” ranking at the bottom. Even the profession of “Politicians” was considered more – albeit marginally – respectable. Only “TV moderators” fared inferiorly to bankers. Such a derogatory view of the financial industry is not a new phenomenon, though.

BIS Review 10/2007  13  In this example, we have been able to reconstruct (approximately) the reference path in Inflation Report 3/06 by minimising a loss function under commitment in a timeless perspective. To reconstruct the reference path, the weight on the output gap in the loss function, lambda, has been set at 0.3. We also had to place a weight on changes in the interest rate in the loss function. This weight, which penalises large changes in the interest rate, can be defended based on considerations regarding robustness and financial stability. What is the outcome if we depart from our established response pattern? 14  BIS Review 10/2007  The chart illustrates what might happen if the central bank reoptimises today, but promise never to do so again. In the model, this will result in a marked rise in interest rates today. But such an approach has been criticised in the literature. If the central bank departs from its response pattern today, it is easy to believe that it will do the same in the future. It may therefore be difficult to gain credibility for such a policy. Even if it may feel tempting, it is important to be aware of the costs associated with departing from an established response pattern. It will then be more demanding to influence private-sector expectations. Frequent reoptimisations will in practice undermine the benefit of commitment and lead to a discretionary policy. The benefit of commitment hinges on the credibility of the central bank’s actions and communication.
This action was taken within a scenario where some of the risks foreseen in March had materialized, and others had dissipated. In particular, as I will review shortly, output grew above expectations during the first quarter, so we are revising upward its annual expansion rate from our March estimate. In contrast, commodity prices have shown a more benign behavior in external markets, as they ceased to increase and posted some declines in the margin for oil prices and some food items. In our June meeting (last week), we slowed the pace of MPR increases, taking it to 5.25 percent. In addition, we said that, in the most likely scenario, further increases in the MPR would be necessary, the timing of which would depend on the incoming information and its implications. Changes in monetary policy operate with lags on output and inflation. In the baseline scenario, which I will be presenting in a few moments, the full transmission of the monetary stimulus withdrawal will help in moderating the current economic dynamism and stabilize it near the growth rate trend, contributing at the same time to help inflation stand at three percent over the projection horizon. But the risks are still there. So let me describe the factors that shape our baseline scenario and the risks that might affect it. Macroeconomic scenario Headline inflation is still around three percent annually, while core measures, although on an upward trend, continue to be contained, both below March’s forecasts (figure 1).

Sabine Lautenschläger: Monitoring, regulation and self-regulation in the European banking sector Speech by Ms Sabine Lautenschläger, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank and Vice-Chair of the Supervisory Board of the Single Supervisory Mechanism, at the evening reception at the Deutsche Aktieninstitut, Frankfurt am Main, 21 April 2015. * 1. *  *  Introduction  Dear Mr Baumann, dear Mr Engels, ladies and gentlemen, My topic today, “Monitoring, regulation and self-regulation in the European banking sector”, cannot currently be discussed without asking ourselves the following questions. Do we need to do more to make sure that we never have to experience another financial market and banking crisis like that in 2008–09, or have we done too much and thus prevented the European banking industry from being able to offer financial services to the real economy? After a long phase of deregulation, a comprehensive re-regulation has been in vogue since 2009. At the global, European and national level, we have tackled almost everything that can limit, reduce or prevent risks to and risks caused by banks. The general public, politicians, academics, supervisors and even bankers – simply everyone – called for comprehensive and tough rules for banks and for their close supervision. But the mood seems to have changed over the past year. In Germany and Europe, more and more people are complaining of overregulation. In the rest of Europe, a connection is being made between the words “credit crunch” and “regulation”.