samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Of course, it goes without saying that Asian banks should guard against complacency and continue to meet high prudential standards and strengthen their risk management capabilities. Many of you will be presenting your thoughts over the next two days on these and other issues on the future of Asia’s banking and finance. I look forward to hearing your insights. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5

Fundamental to this is the development of the institutions, the markets, the range of financial products and services and having in place the accounting, legal, regulatory, supervisory and shariah frameworks, as well as, for the monetary authority to have the capacity to manage its financial policies within this context. With the development of these respective components having made significant progress, we are now seeing the Islamic financial services industry enter a new phase of development. Following increased liberalisation, the progress in the development of the international financial architecture for Islamic finance and the increased innovation resulting in the development of new products and services, the international dimension of Islamic finance is becoming increasingly more significant. Islamic financial institutions are now also venturing their operations beyond their domestic borders. Islamic-based papers are also being issued in international financial markets, generating significant interest from global investors. The international financial architecture for the development of Islamic finance has also been strengthened with the establishment of the international boards to set the accounting and prudential standards. These developments have cumulatively evolved the Islamic financial system to increasingly become an integral component of the international financial system. The Malaysian experience has been to evolve a comprehensive domestic Islamic financial system that is diversified in terms of its institutions, markets and players. The strategy has been to institute the entire financial system chain to ensure the efficient functioning of the system.
We will benefit from more rapid growth in the rest of the world, but at the same time we need to be more attentive to addressing a range of challenges that could ultimately damage the prospect for future growth in living standards here at home. I want to talk about challenges we face in four areas: •  sustaining support for global economic integration,  •  the role of public policy in education and other areas that are critical to our capacity to adapt to change,  •  regulation and the role of the market, and  •  macroeconomic policy. Let me start with openness. The pressures that have come with globalization and technological change have led many to suggest that we should become less open as a country, that we should slow the pace of integration, or that we should provide greater insulation or protection from competition for selective parts of the U.S. economy. Moving in this direction would, I believe, be a fundamental mistake. More than ever before our fortunes are linked to those of the global economy. If anything, we need to become more open, not less; more open to trade in goods and services, but also to investment, to people and to ideas.

Platforms such as this contribute to the rich marketplace of ideas that will spur us to think of innovative policies and effective ways to implement them. Tackling the issue of affordable housing requires us to be creative, proactive and holistic in our solutions. This will require collaboration and commitment from all parties involved; policymakers, the private sector, developers and the public at large. It will not be easy, but it is necessary for us to build a better future not just for our families, but for our future generations. 3/3  BIS central bankers' speeches
This found that, when a business invests £ in employability-related employee volunteering, the social return is over £ for society. 27 Of course, the precise social multipliers are likely to vary, charity by charity. To give you some idea of scale, the lowest multiplier we have found from one of PBE’s studies to date is around 2.5, while the highest runs into double-figures. And while the number of studies conducted by PBE is too small to constitute a representative sample – there are around 161,000 UK charities 28 – these studies demonstrate clearly two things. First, that evaluating these social benefits is usually possible, if sometimes with difficultly and imperfectly. And second, at least in the cases we have considered so far, the social returns from the voluntary sector, and hence from volunteering, can be significant multiples of the labour input cost. Social multipliers are typically well in excess of one. Despite this, the number of charities who have actually undertaken social cost-benefit analyses is depressingly small. Research by New Philanthropy Capital in 2012 found that 25% of charities surveyed, and nearly half of those with income below £ do not measure their impact at all. Given that charities with income below £ make up roughly 80% of all general charities, this means there is a huge number whose activities are not evaluated. 29 This has all the classic symptoms of a market failure: social welfare externalities which are not being understood, much less tackled. The reason is not difficult to fathom.

Andrew G Haldane: In giving, how much do we receive? The social value of volunteering Speech by Mr Andrew G Haldane, Executive Director and Chief Economist of the Bank of England, at a Pro Bono Economics lecture to the Society of Business Economists, London, 9 September 2014. *  *  *  Accompanying figures can be found at the end of the speech. The views are not necessarily those of the Bank of England or the Monetary Policy Committee. I would like to thank Lynne Berry, Martin Brookes, Karen Hancock, Sue Holloway, Jane Walsh (Pro Bono Economics), Stephen Burgess, Jeremy Franklin, Charlotte Hogg, Joanna Konings, Lee Robinson (Bank of England), Daniel Fujiwara (SImetrica and London School of Economics), Matt Hill (Institute for Volunteering Research) and Valerie Fender (ONS). I am delighted to be giving this joint Society of Business Economists (SBE) and Pro Bono Economics (PBE) lecture. The issue I want to discuss is volunteering and its contribution to the economy and wider society. This issue provides a natural link between the work of SBE with its interest in promoting the economy, and PBE with its interest in promoting volunteering by economists. And, indeed, the work of both in improving societal welfare. Let me start with a word on PBE, for those unfamiliar with our work. PBE is a charity, which I co-founded around five years ago with Martin Brookes.
As for households, despite a reported rise in household debt by the National Statistical Office, the current level of household debt in Thailand is still much lower than average levels of both industrial and regional economies. While the Thai household debt to GDP ratio stands at 33 percent, the corresponding figures for Australia, Singapore and South Korea are 84, 85, and 63 percent respectively. If we look at the components of household debt, we see that mortgage loans increased by a reasonable rate of 15 percent, while we see an increase of over 30 percent in credit cards loans. Therefore, as a precaution, the Bank of Thailand has implemented a number of prudential measures to curb possible build-up of imbalances in the credit card loans. In November 2002, we have raised the minimum income levels for credit card qualification. And later on in April 2004 we have raised the rate  2  BIS Review 58/2004  of minimum monthly payments from 5 percent to 10 percent. These proactive measures so far have yielded desirable and positive results. Let me now move to the financial sector Stability of Thailand’s financial system, in particular the banking sector, has improved remarkably in the past few years. The 1997 crisis has weakened our financial system. Commercial banks’ returns on assets were persistently negative, and NPLs stood at a record high level. Since 2001, the Bank of Thailand has tackled these problems in two steps.

The History of Inflation Targeting Before I look forward, it’s worth looking back and highlighting that it’s now 30 years since the inception of inflation targeting. In 1989, the central bank of the small country of New Zealand announced that the main objective of its monetary policy was to target the inflation rate.1 In the subsequent decades, most central banks in major economies coalesced around this approach of aiming for a low, publicly announced inflation rate. For the past three decades, this approach has been remarkably successful at keeping inflation low and stable.2 The inflation targets have acted as a nominal anchor for inflation expectations, which play a big role in determining actual inflation. For anyone who was trying to get a mortgage at a double-digit interest rate or seeing prices go up and up back in the days of high inflation, it’s almost unthinkable that in 2020 central banks are pondering the opposite challenge: how to prevent inflation from being too low. But it’s the reality most policymakers face, and the one our monetary policy frameworks will need to grapple with long into the future. The Future of Inflation So, how did we arrive where we are today? Why is low inflation the current challenge, and why will that likely persist? 1/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  To answer these questions, we need to look at r-star, or the longer-run neutral rate of interest.
Christian Noyer: Current policy debate challenges – a euro area perspective Welcome address by Mr Christian Noyer, Governor of the Bank of France and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements, at the 4th Bank of FranceDeutsche Bundesbank Macroeconomics and Finance Conference, Paris, 24 May 2013. *  *  *  Ladies and Gentlemen, dear colleagues, It is a great pleasure for me to speak in front of such a distinguished audience. As you might know, this is the fourth time that the Banque de France and the Deutsche Bundesbank have jointly organised a conference of this type. It is held every other year, alternately in Germany and in France. The fact that these two institutions sponsor an event of this nature sends a clear signal to the community of researchers: it illustrates the importance of research for the conduct of monetary policy. This is especially relevant at the current juncture as our understanding of the interactions between financial markets and the real economy remains incomplete. The work of outstanding quality presented during this conference could help influence the design and the conduct of monetary policy. The programme of this conference is very rich. It covers topical subjects that are of the utmost importance from the point of view of current policy debate. Let me take as an example the topic covered this morning: unconventional monetary policy, which have been my bread and butter as a member of the ECB Governing Council for the already six years.

Taking a euro area perspective, these results are interesting in at least two respects. First, the level of US interest rates are an essential feature of the world economy and the economic and financial environment of the euro area. Second, the experience of other major central banks is a natural benchmark for the design and the monitoring of our own policies, on which I would like to share with you a few thoughts. The predominant objective of our first wave of unconventional measures, which we have labelled the “fixed rate full allotment” supply of liquidity, was to ensure that liquidity shortages do not escalate into defaults, especially in the financial sector. This has mainly consisted in ensuring the correct provision of liquidity to the banking sector against the backdrop of a major confidence crisis. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  Yet, by the end of 2010 the crisis had taken on a new form. The fiscal constraint became binding in a number of periphery countries. Investors started to price in sovereign credit risks. By 2011, it appeared clear that investors were also factoring in the risk of a euro area break-up. This, in turn, entailed an increased degree of market fragmentation within the euro area, with borrowers facing different credit conditions depending on their country of origin. Our Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) programme was specifically designed to reaffirm the irreversibility of the euro. The OMT allowed investors to discard a specific form of systemic risk.
In addition, the EU/IMF programme foresees a rapid and substantial downsizing of the domestic banking sector, from about 550% to about 350% of GDP at the beginning of the programme. This is indispensable to reduce future contingent liabilities from the banks to the sovereign. The EU/IMF programme also foresees the full protection of deposits below 100,000 euros which will not suffer any loss from the resolution strategy. Despite the unprecedented steps taken so far, the banking sector has not yet been stabilised. The burden sharing arrangement negatively affected depositor confidence and required the introduction of temporary and proportionate capital controls and restrictions on deposit withdrawals. Short term risks are high, as the deep recession is expected to take a toll on banks’ balance sheets. The reliance of the largest bank on ELA continues to be exceptionally high. Hence, firm steps are needed to complete the financial sector reform so as to rebuild confidence in the viability of the banking system. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Let me now turn to the lessons which we can draw from the experience in Cyprus. Lessons from the Cypriot experience  The Cypriot case has been a salutary reminder of the importance of establishing banking union as swiftly as possible. Only then we will be able to break the negative interaction between sovereigns and their banking systems. First, it has shown that the speedy entry into force and implementation of the single supervisory mechanism (SSM) is essential.

The two largest banks, which account for half of the domestic banking sector, had prospective capital needs of close to EUR 8 billion – or 44% of GDP. This is what the independent due diligence exercise revealed in February 2013. If the sovereign had shouldered these massive recapitalisation needs, debt would have risen to 145% of GDP. This would have critically endangered public debt sustainability. At the same time, traditional ways of burden sharing by the private sector bank creditors were limited, given little junior debt outstanding in banks. All this made the situation in Cyprus highly challenging and exceptional. One needs to bear in mind the starting conditions when assessing the design of the EU/IMF programme, to which I will now turn. Key elements of the EU/IMF programme  Three key objectives guided the negotiations of the MoU: first, to reduce the risks posed by the financial sector; second, to preserve debt sustainability; and third, to restore the conditions for sustainable and balanced growth. Combining these three objectives has proved to be a challenge, to say the least. Not only did the programme have to strike the right balance between short-term financial stability concerns and long-term debt sustainability considerations. It also had to be framed within a political context which requires unanimous decisions in the Eurogroup and ESM decision making bodies. Due to these exceptional economic and political circumstances, programme negotiations dragged on for too long, and the situation of the banking sector became critical. This forced the ECB to act.
Mr Heikensten speaks on monetary policy with a focus on exchange rate Speech by the Deputy Governor of the Bank of Sweden, Mr Lars Heikensten, to Riksbank’s primary dealers in Stockholm on 19 April 1999. Since November 1992, when the defence of the krona’s fixed exchange rate was abandoned, much of the discussion concerning monetary policy has involved the exchange rate. At this traditional meeting with the Riksbank’s primary dealers, I should like to consider four issues connected with Sweden’s currency. One of these issues is the function of the krona in a monetary policy regime that targets inflation with a flexible exchange rate. Another issue is the actual path of the exchange rate in recent years and the conclusions it warrants. The euro’s introduction at the beginning of January has revived the question of Sweden’s participation in EMU; this raises the other two issues, namely the process towards ERM membership, if this is envisaged, and aspects of setting the future ERM rate that would then ensue. Monetary policy significance of the exchange rate The floating exchange rate regime that was introduced for the Swedish krona in November 1992 was regarded by many people as a fairly temporary arrangement. They considered that for Sweden, as a small country dependent on foreign trade, a fixed exchange rate was most advantageous, so the Riksbank ought to try to reintroduce a fixed rate regime as soon as possible.

But, the slow process of decision making in Europe, the difficulties of policy implementation and the debate around the burden-sharing of the crisis have limited the positive effects of those policies on confidence and credibility. In this setting, the ECB and the Eurosystem have played a central role. While safeguarding their paramount objective of price stability, their actions have been directed to re- establish the proper functioning of the transmission mechanism of monetary policy, as shown by the recent decisions by the Governing Council on the O[utright] M[onetary] T[ransactions] initiative. Some big steps have been taken on the institutional front at the European level. Fiscal rules have been strengthened and refined, governance reinforced and, in the financial sphere, great progress is being made to establish a common supervisory framework. In parallel, national constitutions have been adapted in several countries – Germany, Spain and others – to comply with these new requirements. This overview of the problems and challenges in Europe may be compared with the evolution of Latin America during the crisis and its aftermath. The Latin American performance during the crisis shows that these countries have drawn the lessons from the similar episodes they went through in the late nineties and early 2000’s. In particular, I would highlight two characteristics of the economic setting that has made the region so resilient to the external shock this time: the improved macroeconomic framework – underpinned by price stability – and the reinforcement of financial stability.
Speech by Sylvie Goulard,  Deputy Governor Banque de France, Green Swan conference 3 June 2021  I would like to thank all the organisers of this Green Swan conference, and especially Luiz Awazu Pereira da Silva from the BIS. Luiz has been the soul of the organising team we set up some months ago with the authors of the Green Swan ‐ Prof Bolton, Morgan Després, Luiz Pereira da Silva, Frederic Samama, Romain Svartzman1 – to whom I wish to pay tribute. As the Green Swan was published in January 2020, we were living in a pre‐Covid world. The authors warned of the severe risks associated with climate change and of “other human‐caused caused environmental degradation such as the loss of biodiversity”. The title of the Green Swan is a play on the concept of Nassim (Nicholas) Taleb’s – the Black Swans,2 i.e. events affecting the financial sector that are unexpected, of a large magnitude and can be only explained afterwards), with analogies but also differences: ‐ It is quite certain that climate events will occur even if we don’t know when and how; ‐ They could be even worse than the ones caused by Black Swans, because climate change and many of its impacts are largely irreversible; ‐ no single agent (household, firm, financial institution, government) can hedge against these risks on her/his own. This means that managing Green Swans requires an unprecedented level of cooperation. 1 2  I thank Romain Svartzman for his assistance in preparing these remarks. Taleb, N.N. (2007).

I must hasten to mention, however, that in striving to meet these demands, banks must always comply with the regulations as stipulated in the Banking & Financial Services Act of 1994 as amended in 2000, to ensure the safety of customers’ deposits and stability in the financial sector. Any activities by banks, which do not meet the minimum standards provided for in the law, will invite close scrutiny and possible sanctions from the Bank of Zambia to bring the banks in line with the legal framework. Mr Chairman, following implementation of sound macroeconomic policies, the economy is relatively stable as shown by various indicators: •  Inflation is under control;  •  The Kwacha is stable; and  •  Interest rates are going down, although not yet as low as we would like them to be. The cost of borrowing has remained high in spite of the progress that has been made in the monetary and fiscal management of our economy. This high cost has, in turn, stifled the growth of the productive private sector, in particular the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) sector, which should be the engine of economic growth of our country.
This point was already raised almost ten years ago by Miller et al. (2001), who argued that eliminating  3  4  See, for example, Acharya and Naqvi (2010). BIS central bankers’ speeches  downside risk of asset prices feeds the bubble, so more bubbles were not only the result of irrational exuberance but was also “exaggerated by the faith in the stabilizing powers of Mr. Greenspan.” Regarding the second question, on the instruments for financial stability, this is what has been termed macroprudential tools, as opposed to the microprudential regulation, which targets the health of specific financial institutions. One of the first tools used for financial stability was the dynamic provisions to housing loans implemented in Spain in 2000. It is still too early to have a full evaluation of this instrument, since it did not avoid a housing bubble, many small institutions dedicated to housing finance, the “cajas”, went bust during the crisis, but the overall Spanish financial system fared well through it all. On the time dimension, the idea of macroprudential tools is to avoid the buildup of financial vulnerabilities in the upturn of the business cycle, and to have a cushion for the downturn. Financial systems tend to be procyclical, and hence some break system should be implemented to avoid excessive risk-taking. This has been underlying the new rules in Basel III, especially in the definition of the countercyclical buffer of new capital requirements.

This resulted in rising allocation to the bonds of countries with increasing debt. The risk linked to this strategy became clear in the wake of the financial crisis. A reallocation of government debt on the basis of GDP weights will reduce this risk. Moreover, we have started investing in government debt issued by emerging countries. The consequence of this is a reduction in the Fund’s European holdings. Increased demand for the safest government bonds may be regarded as an adjustment to the climate of high spreads and volatility that we have witnessed in recent years. In a market environment characterised by general uncertainty, market expectations might cause a slight increase in risk premiums to mount rapidly, unless the underlying cause of the increased risk premiums is dealt with by the relevant authorities. To sum up: a downweighting of Europe, the introduction of GDP weights as the basis for asset allocation, and increased risk premiums of certain bonds have all contributed to our present positions. During the past year, the Fund has reduced its exposure to some European government bonds, most notably Italian and Spanish bonds. Slide 15: Risk has many facets Credit risk is not the only risk attracting attention in portfolio management. It is our view that unequal treatment of investors during the restructuring of Greek government debt in March this year, contributed to increase European risk premiums.