samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
In other words, the inflation target is the Riksbank’s and only the Riksbank’s. This interpretation is, however, both incorrect and unfortunate. So whose is the inflation target, then? The decision to introduce an inflation target of 2 per cent was taken in 1993 by the General Council of the Riksbank. At that time, the General Council had a different role to the one it has today and was the Riksbank’s decision-making body. The then Governor, Bengt Dennis, has described the prevailing regime as follows (Dennis, 2003, p. 182): “The General Council consisted of eight members. Seven members were elected by the Riksdag while the eighth, the Governor of the Riksbank, was appointed by the General Council. It was a council elected on political grounds and the majority of its members were active politicians”. At the outset, the inflation target received a fair amount of criticism, even from politicians. But quite soon, when the advantages of the target had become clearer, broad support emerged for it. For many years now, the Riksdag Committee on Finance has performed a review of monetary policy and every few years has also tasked two foreign economists to review monetary policy. These reviews largely concern the policy that the Riksbank has conducted but there is of course nothing in principle to prevent framework issues being addressed, which has also happened on occasion.

Urban Bäckström: The inflation targeting approach  Speech by Mr Urban Bäckström, Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank and Chairman of the Board of Directors and President of the Bank for International Settlements, at the 28th Economic Conference of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank, Wien, on 15 June 2000. *  *  *  First a word of thanks for the invitation to attend this conference and discuss challenges for monetary policy together with such a distinguished panel. In the last decade a growing number of countries have chosen to conduct monetary policy with an explicit target for inflation. One reason behind this choice has no doubt been these countries’ poor experience with a fixed, but adjustable, exchange rate regime. The first country to formally adopt a policy of targeting inflation was New Zealand, in 1990. Canada did the same in 1991, followed by the United Kingdom, Sweden and Australia. Since the early 1990s other countries have also introduced some variant of inflation targeting. It is interesting to note that before the 1990s the predominant view was that a floating exchange rate regime was not suitable for a small open economy. Today, I believe that experience among those countries that are targeting inflation has been exceptionally good. In fact, even some emerging market countries are now building the same kind of regime.
This slowdown is partly counteracted by a continued weak krona and by the Swedish repo rate being low in relation to the corresponding interest rates in most other industrial nations. At the same time, we can see signs of a high level of resource utilisation and price rises in certain industries. The collective wage negotiations are not yet complete, either. The question of how the threatening international slowdown will affect the Swedish economy in greater detail is still open. It is in this light that one should regard the Riksbank's decision last Thursday, 26 April, to hold the repo rate unchanged. On 15 May the minutes of the monetary policy meeting will be published, enabling a view of the detailed reasoning behind the decision. It will be time for the next monetary policy meeting  4  BIS Review 34/2001  on 30 May. A lot can happen before then and perhaps the economic picture will have become a little clearer by then. BIS Review 34/2001  5

15 The debate about the plans to split up some very large European banks demonstrates the difficulty of measures aimed at size. At the same time, the debate illustrates that such measures are not impossible. The extent to which we are required to travel down this difficult path will depend a great deal on how much genuine progress we are able to make on the reforms I have tried to outline this evening. Competitiveness All the measures to improve financial regulation which I have discussed tonight raise the delicate issue of banks’ competitiveness. Of course, it is not the intention of any regulator to hurt banks. However, somebody has to bear the costs of preserving financial stability. Up to now, through the implicit and now explicit government guarantees, taxpayers were bearing a considerable part of these costs. By strengthening regulation, these costs are to be shifted to the banks. In economic terms, the new regulatory framework endeavours to internalise the externalities caused by banks. 13  See, for instance, Group of Thirty, Financial Reform: A Framework for Financial Stability, p. 59: “To guard against excessive concentration in national banking systems, with implications for effective official oversight, management control, and effective competition, nationwide limits on deposit concentration should be considered at a level appropriate to individual countries”. 14  Cf. for example, Y. Altunbas et al., “Efficiency in European banking”, European Economic Review 45, 2001, pp. 1931-1955. 15  Cf.
In my view this trade-off explains why we have raised Bank Rate progressively since last December in increments of 0.25% after the first rise. We have judged what we need to do in the face of these very big external shocks which, assuming Bank Rate following the market path used for the May MPR forecast, will see inflation fall very rapidly next year, and return to target in 2023, and then go below target. But other things may not be equal, and we have been clear that we see the balance of risks to inflation as on the upside. Here, I would pick out the risks from domestic price and wage setting, and this explains why at the MPC’s last meeting we adopted language which made clear that if we see signs of greater persistence of inflation, and price and wage setting would be such signs, we will have to act forcefully. In simple terms this means that a 50 basis point increase will be among the choices on the table when we next meet. 50 basis points is not locked in, and anyone who predicts that is doing so based on their own view. We do not pre-announce Bank Rate decisions for the very simple reason that MPC decisions are based on deliberation at the time among nine people focused on returning inflation to the 2% target sustainably.

That made me very proud. Thank you. I am grateful to Jamie Bell, Alan Castle, Rashmi Harimohan, Jonathan Haskel, Bob Hills, Karen  Page 6  Jude, Nick McLaren, Rhys Phillips, Huw Pill, Andrea Rosen, Michael Saunders, Martin Seneca, Fergal Shortall, Silvana Tenreyro, and Laura Wallis for their assistance in helping me prepare these remarks.
It would therefore be impossible for the Eurosystem to conduct a successful policy by mechanistically following a simple rule whereby policy decisions are closely linked to a few indicator variables or to a central inflation projection at a particular point in time. Two key features of the ECB’s communication with the public and the markets are our Monthly Bulletins and the monthly press conferences. The latter usually directly follow the first Governing Council meeting of each month. By these means we publicly conduct a detailed review of current monetary, financial and other economic developments in the euro area against the background of the strategy. This aims at illustrating the application of the strategy in practice, guiding market expectations. Although the strategy is complex, we generally try to end with an overall assessment which summarises the opinion of the Council on the future situation. The press conference provides prompt information in an even-handed way, and it offers the opportunity for immediate two-way communication. As far as I am aware, no other central bank regularly communicates with the public in such a prompt and open manner immediately after its monetary policy meetings. We are convinced that this contributes to reducing uncertainty in the markets and thus gives important and clear guidance, also with regard to short-term policy moves. In this respect, one should recognise that the ECB is facing a completely new environment.

However, after deducting the effect of certain defence-related payments outstanding from previous years, as well as the possible spending arising from liability associated with legal proceedings relating to the insolvency of the toll motorways, this item is projected to grow only very moderately this year and over the next few years. Under these plans, therefore, the downward trend in public investment as a proportion of GDP, which has already lasted more than a decade, would continue. Interest payments are expected to continue to decline as a result of the expected favourable developments in financing conditions, although at a more moderate rate than over the last two years. The increase in revenues included in the Stability Programme is based mainly on the measures approved in December last year in Royal Decree-Law 3/2016. Notable among these is the amendment to corporate income tax to broaden the tax base, the increase in duties on alcoholic drinks and tobacco products, the increase of 3% in the maximum social contribution base and the 8% increase in the minimum wage. Notwithstanding the positive impact of these measures, achievement of the government’s medium-term revenue target is subject to some uncertainty, as revenue will need to perform more favourably relative to activity than it would if the historical relationship between these two variables were to remain unchanged.
Some people argue that the dollar will move proportionately with the size of the import tax, so the import prices won’t go up at all in dollar terms. But, you know, that’s theory, and people worry about how it will actually work in practice. So, I think this is just going to be a very heavily debated topic in Washington in the coming weeks and months. Maureen O’Hara: I think we have time for maybe one or two more. Let’s let some people in the back again. Audience Member: Hi, Mr. Dudley, nice to hear from you. I’ve got lots of questions, but I guess everyone gets to only ask one. President Dudley: You can ask more than one, but I’ll only answer one. Audience Member: Okay, so, I was going to ask some sort of structuralist post-Ricardian question, but I’ll set that one aside. President Dudley: Thank you. Audience Member: On a similar vein, to what degree do you think that this challenging of facts and these threats about what is truth and, you know, journalistic integrity, to what degree did this affect the financial system and to what degree did this confidence in what the Wall Street Journal might say or the New York Times might say as a fact can affect confidence in financial institutions? And what remedies do you have, or does the Fed have, to combat that? President Dudley: 12 / 13  BIS central bankers' speeches  I don’t think I have any good real answers to that.

4 June 2021  Remarks for the panel discussion at the BIS-BdF-IMF-NGFS Green Swan 2021 Global Virtual Conference  Many thanks, Morgan, and thank you also to the BIS, Banque de France, IMF and NGFS for the invitation to take part in this panel. As you perfectly know in both my capacity as Governor of the Bank of Spain and member of the Governing Council of the ECB, and as Chair of the Basel Committee I can say that the topic of climate-related financial risks is one of the top priorities over the coming years. In both cases, I think the right way to frame the issue is to take our mandates as the starting point. In the case of the Basel Committee, as the primary global standard setter for banks, our mandate is to strengthen the regulation, supervision and practices of banks worldwide with the purpose of enhancing financial stability. If we combine this mandate with the fact that, as has been discussed in various sessions during this conference, climate change poses risks to the financial sector (physical and transition risks) that can be significant in magnitude and therefore can impact financial stability at the global level, one should conclude there is a need for supervisors, regulators and, of course, the Basel Committee to act. In particular, we need to guarantee that individual banks and the banking system as a whole are adequately prepared to identify, measure and mitigate climate-related financial risks. This is the approach we are following at the Basel Committee level.
If we ignored the fact that vacuum cleaners were a rare luxury item in 1910 and applied today’s quantities to calculate the 1910 consumption basket, we would greatly understate the increase in the average cost of living. And, of course, Harrods today is not exactly the typical place to go shopping - there was not much talk in 1910 of suburban shopping centres, or of Internet shopping. Ignoring developments in retail practice introduces an outlet bias. Had the bias remained constant over the years, this would have been less of an issue for measuring retail price inflation, but it clearly has not. Quality change bias, new product bias, substitution bias and outlet bias - these are some of the issues 7 that the Boskin Commission discussed in their report on measuring inflation in the United States. The finding of the report, which generated wide national and international interest, was that the US CPI might have overstated changes in the cost of living by between 0.8 and 1.6 percentage points per year. The examples I have given show how difficult it is to measure changes in the price level over time. Precision is not to be had. According to the official retail prices index, the general level of retail prices rose by a factor of 52 between 1910 and 2002. But changes in the nature of the goods and services available, and the nature of retail selling, make such comparisons treacherous. Does this matter for price stability? Probably not.

demand growth (1997-2002 Q1)  3.8  3.9  2.3  –0.6  Cumulative difference  –7.5  –4.2  0.8  0.9  Note: Growth rates are calculated as the total increase in output (and domestic demand, respectively) over the period 1997 Q1-2002 Q1, based on quarterly data, expressed as a four-quarter growth rate. Cumulative difference is the cumulative growth rate, expressed as a percentage, of output less domestic demand. Source: ONS (for UK data); Thomson Financial Datastream (for data on the Euro Area, US and Japan). Three possibilities deserve consideration. First, the rapid growth in household consumption averaging over 4% for the last five years - may reflect an adjustment to higher real disposable incomes. Consumption growth would then slow naturally as spending and debt reach their new levels. The imbalance between domestic demand and output would unwind as steadily as it built up, with no reason to fear a sudden correction. For this to occur the source of higher disposable incomes must be permanent. In part the increase in recent years has resulted from the improved terms of trade - 7% up on five years ago - which raise real national income for any given level of output. The main threat to the persistence of that improvement is the possibility of a fall in sterling that may be a necessary part of the rebalancing of the UK economy. It is very hard to assess the risk of that over any given time horizon.
At this point, I would like to pinpoint several examples that clearly demonstrate the value added of data granularity from policy perspective. How can we explain the phenomenon of slow credit growth despite the massive monetary policy accommodation? Obviously we need to dive into individual/ more granular data to understand the causes of the impaired transmission – is it demand or supply side? In our case, scrutinizing the individual balance sheet pointed to different obstacles for different  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  banks – although in some cases it was the liquidity issue, mostly it was capital constraints in the context of deleveraging, new Basel regulation, as well as relatively high level of NPLs. It raised the question of the effectiveness of monetary policy transmission and factors which hinder it. In this respect, the aggregate data was not informative enough, but micro bank-bybank data were needed to detect constraints in a more proper manner. The scrutinization of the balance sheets of individual banks revealed that the main obstacles varied for different banks. For some of them the limited capital was the main constraining factor for expansion of their activities. Given that at that point in time the space for increasing the capital through profit retention or injection of additional capital was limited, the banks were not in a position to expand more, without jeopardizing their capital adequacy ratios. In other banks, the quality of the current credit portfolio and the large amount of NPLs were obstacle for providing more credit to the economy.

In general, innovations in monetary frameworks and instruments go hand in hand with innovations in statistics. The non-standard measures underline a need to devise a specific dataset, produced on a regular basis, for monitoring the effectiveness of the measures undertaken. The financial crisis has underpinned the importance of the financial stability, which forced many central banks to place much higher priority to the financial stability concerns. The focus has shifted from the stability and risks pertaining to individual financial institution to the systemic risk concept. In other words, what matters evenly is the potential instability of the financial system as a whole, and the risk of adverse loops with the real sector. More importantly, the crisis has stressed the time dimension of the systemic risk that is the procyclicality of the financial behavior and the structural dimension, which arises from the interconnectedness among the financial institutions and the possible contagion effects. Hence, the macro prudential analysis and measures are gaining more and more weight, and so are the new datasets requirements for pursuing the macro prudential role. I think that even prior to global crisis, central banks were well equipped with a wide range of macroeconomic, monetary and financial data. What was probably missing was a wellestablished platform for pursuing strong macro-financial analysis, higher frequency of some of the indicators, and uniformity in the way indicators were calculated.
Tharman Shanmugaratnam: Singapore – a widely respected centre of Asian and global finance Keynote address by Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) Annual Dinner, Singapore, 30 June 2015. *  *  *  Chairman and Council Members of the ABS, Ladies and gentlemen, 1. Thank you for inviting me to join you this evening. 2. We meet at a time of renewed uncertainty in global finance. Greece has imposed capital controls and declared a banking holiday to stem a full-blown financial crisis. 3. No one has been able to predict each step in the game of brinkmanship that we have seen over the last few weeks. But the underlying reality of a sharply deteriorating economy in Greece, and the prospect of bankrupt Government, has not been a surprise. It is too early to say if some form of Grexit becomes a reality, but it is a contingency that Eurozone governments and financial institutions have been preparing for. 4. The direct impact of a collapse of the Greek economy is not significant, even in the Eurozone. The ECB and the EU are also likely to take all steps necessary to safeguard the Eurozone financial system in the coming weeks. Markets have hence not shown great panic, with credit spreads widening only slightly in the Eurozone periphery. 5. But there are downside risks we should be mindful of.

18  J.-M. Grether, M. Olarreaga, “Preferential and non-preferential trade flows in World Trade”, WTO Staff Working Paper, September 1998. 19  M. Bacchetta and M. Jansen, “Adjusting to Trade Liberalization – the Role of Policy, Institutions” and WTO Disciplines, WTO Special studies No 7, April 2003. 20  Based on the data of the IMF, Word Economic Outlook Database 2005. 21  Based on the data from national accounts, source: ONZ. 22  E.g. B. O. Sascha et al., “Location choice and employment decisions: a comparison of German and Swedish multinationals”, CESifo Working Paper No. 1374. BIS Review 19/2006  5  indicates that differences in remuneration constitute a significant factor that leads to relocation of jobs in manufacturing to the countries in our region. Hence, the result of production fragmentation is the optimal use of the advantage of location of particular production stages and the reduction of the average cost. However, its side effect are additional costs related to linking of the particular stages into one via activities that have the nature of services (e.g. transportation, co-ordination and management). The phenomena inseparable from all those mentioned above are offshoring and outsourcing. Offshoring consists in relocation of jobs and production or orders from the country where the company is based abroad – usually to countries with lower employment costs 23 . Offshoring does not have to necessarily take place within a single enterprise. Outsourcing, on the other hand, consists in relocation of a part of services outside the company. OECD calculations have shown that ca.