samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
It should be bipartisan in nature so that the plan is viewed as sustainable across the political cycle. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Meanwhile the crisis in the eurozone has resulted in a sharp slow-down in economic growth in Europe and tighter financial conditions globally. It has hurt U.S. consumer and business confidence and is already a material drag on U.S. growth. Economic momentum in many other regions of the world has also slowed somewhat and this is also restraining the demand for U.S. exports. Assuming that Congress avoids the fiscal cliff and European leaders successfully manage through their challenges, there are solid grounds for expecting that growth will gradually strengthen in coming years. U.S. banks are healthier and credit conditions, while still tight, are gradually easing, the housing sector is showing early signs of recovery, and households appear quite far along in the deleveraging process. On the inflation side, we have succeeded in delivering inflation very close to our 2 percent price stability objective. Over the past year or so, price trends have been a bit stickier than one might have anticipated given the large amount of slack in the economy. To some degree, this likely reflects earlier upward pressures on commodity prices, the anchoring exerted by stable inflation expectations, and the stickiness of nominal wages. With gasoline prices now falling sharply and upward pressures from apparel prices now appearing likely to dissipate, I expect that inflation will decline a bit in coming months, falling somewhat further below our 2 percent objective.

High unemployment and low labor force participation are especially serious problems for young workers and are perhaps the clearest evidence that Puerto Rico needs to make better economic progress. Many of the current problems facing Puerto Rico relate not just to cyclical weakness but to deeper structural challenges. This brings us to the subject of the report we issued today. I do not presume that this report is the last word on these important questions. We do not presume to claim that we have all the answers. Rather, I hope that it is the start of a constructive and bipartisan debate that will advance good public policy and a better future for the people of Puerto Rico. I also hope that it will be read and considered beyond the business and government community, across the society at large. The goal we seek is not simply business success and expansion, but broad-based prosperity with rising standards of living and greater opportunities for all Puerto Ricans. I want to thank you again for the opportunity to address the Chamber. Jamie McAndrews, executive vice president and director of research, will now talk about the report we released and lay out its findings and recommendations. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches
And we were obviously wise not to change the inflation target of 2 % over recent years despite many different calls to do so.   Consistency: We acted consistently with what we have previously said as was the case in our previous packages of December 2016 and October 2017. This consistency helped to have, at least since March, an “alignment of the planets” between the Governing Council’s views and those of outside forecasters, including market expectations. It was important that we announce the end of the net asset purchases as soon as we felt the SAPI criteria would be met.   Clarity: Uncertainty is today the number one enemy of growth and financial stability. By providing clear guidance on the path of asset purchases and interest rates – once more several months in advance - we have done our best to reduce uncertainty about future monetary policy conditions, at least out to the horizon that it is prudent to do so. The consistency, credibility and clarity of the Riga decisions was reinforced by the fact that they were agreed unanimously, demonstrating strong cohesion within the Governing Council. In this divisive world, in this divisive Europe - unfortunately, on tough issues like migration this cohesion was our shared responsibility and duty to protect the common good of 340 million Europeans: their currency, the euro. They support it at an overwhelming majority of  Page 3 sur 5 74% - confirmed in the Spring 2018 Eurobarometer, with an increasing majority in Italy.

Page 2 sur 5 The Euro-system staff projections of economic growth of 2.1% in 2018, 1.9% in 2019 and 1.7% in 2020 remains consistent with an ongoing solid and broad-based recovery; the French economy, which is sometimes considered to be a good proxy for the Euro-area average, is likely to follow a similar growth path with 1.8%, 1.7% and 1.6% in 2020 according to the Banque de France. On the inflation outlook, as part of the SAPI criteria, recent ECB and Euro-system staff projections have become more and more stable giving us increasing confidence that the improving economic growth we have seen will translate into rising wage and price inflation. In other words, whilst we might be a bit less certain precisely where we are in the cycle, we are more confident that we are heading in the right direction on inflation. Monetary policy decisions When would the Governing Council end the net asset purchases? When would it announce this decision? These were questions left hanging and the subject of market speculation before our meeting in Riga. Besides the famous and important three “Ps” – perseverance, patience and prudence - the Governing Council’s decisions were also guided by three “Cs”: credibility, consistency and clarity. Each element is important.   Credibility: Our actions are credible because they stick to our mandate and our economic forecasts, in particular with respect to the inflation outlook.
Cumulative real wage gap explains a large share of the inflation gap, in particular in the countries which experienced severe economic recessions and subsequent material wage adjustments. When aggregated for all OECD countries, having a large number of observations (197 for the first wage adjustment and 525 for the second one), the estimated slopes of the postcrisis Phillips Curve are statistically significant at the 5% level, in case of the first wage adjustment episode, and at the 1% level, in case of the second wage adjustment episode. The coefficients’ sign is positive, in line with the theoretical assumptions. 6  The individual results also confirm the strong and positive relation between cumulative real wage gap and inflation gap. In the case of the first wage adjustment episode, out of 21 countries, 8 of them have positive and statistically significant coefficients; other 7 countries have positive but not statistically significant coefficients, while the remaining 6 countries have negative but not statistically significant coefficients. In the case of the second wage adjustment episode, out of 33 countries, 16 of them have positive and statistically significant coefficients; other 9 countries have positive but not statistically significant coefficients, while the remaining 8 countries have negative coefficients, out of which only 2 are statistically significant. Regarding the third wage adjustment episode, out of 2 countries, one has positive and statistically significant slopes and one has positive but not statistically significant slopes.

Disaster risk reduction and disaster management has thus become a focus of Governments to effectively reduce financial and economic losses. In an industry that is exposed to risks both natural and man-made, this Convention’s theme of “Today’s Risks, Tomorrow’s Claims” is highly relevant especially with regards to the challenges of insurance claims. There are three pertinent challenges that I can think of this morning. Let me briefly share my thoughts on these challenges with you. Firstly, the critical role of insurers in the various aspects of the claims management value chain, that is, claims intimidation, fraud detection and prevention, claim assessment and settlement, and complaint resolution are areas requiring close monitoring by insurers and,  BIS Review 53/2010  1  where necessary, timely intervention to detect and prevent leakages. Insurers have to assess their vulnerability and address the risk of fraud efficiently to reinforce a positive image of the industry to the public. Customers must be kept informed of the progress of their claims and be given clear explanation when a claim is rejected or not settled in full. Any delay or perceived delay in claims processing, particularly for claimants in urgent need of compensation, may be misconstrued as a deliberate attempt to delay claims settlement resulting in bad publicity and ill repute for the insurance industry. Each insurer’s claims management philosophy should therefore set out the broad principles for providing high quality service standards.
Our recent surveys show that the primary concerns of smaller firms are: unfair competition; difficulties in finding markets to sell the products; and, to a lesser extent, limited access in financing or the cost of providing banking products and services. 1/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  We are aware that the growth of productivity, in particular for smaller firms, is very important for the economic convergence of Albania. The fulfilment of needs for investing capital is a main challenge for small producers, as they have less or no borrowing history in the financial system. For this reason, the analysis with micro data are already subject of discussion in the activities and conferences organised by the Bank of Albania, to understand the needs of small firms and how we can help to improve the infrastructure, aiming to increase their financial inclusion in the future. Productivity is important as it determines the convergence speed towards the advanced economies. So far, the productivity convergence of our countries with advanced countries is guided mostly by a re-allocation of resources from state-owned firms to private firms. Nevertheless, this process has not succeeded to move further forward to the development of innovative products. Unless these trends change, the Albanian and regional firms will likely lose competitiveness against their EU partners. Overall, it means that the economic convergence and the equality of income with EU countries will be considerably delayed.

Another potential for the transition to an innovation-based economy is “The green economy”, where the convergence capacity of the existing producing processes in other processes releasing less carbon may be considered as an opportunity for the further development of our region. Regarding the future, the report assesses positively the reforms undertaken by the Albanian authorities. The macroeconomic environment is assessed as stable and prospects show the positive growth pace will be maintained. Trade, construction, transport and industry, as well as the narrowing of the deficit in the external sector of economy contributed most to the economic growth in 2017. At the same time, the financial system activity continued to reflect considerable improvement and showed good resilience to operational risks. The indicators of financial result, capitalisation and liquidity evidence the considerable improvement of credit quality and show the importance to continue the implementation of the measures undertaken by the Bank of Albania. 2/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  Also, the Report evidences that the projects and investments in infrastructure have contributed to economic integration of Albania with regional countries, providing a positive effect on higher productivity and more opportunities. We assess that TAP investment will provide positive effects on the energy infrastructure and will contribute to higher productivity through lower costs and covering the needs for energy capacities, thus reducing one of the structural weaknesses of the Albanian economy (the reliable supply with energy).
The apparent strength in U.S. productivity growth, our greater overall flexibility as an economy and the resilience of our financial system puts us in a stronger position to deal with the challenges in the transition ahead. But we face a number of difficult long-term challenges as a nation—in our fiscal position, in how well we equip our citizens to prosper in a more competitive world and in our ability to sustain political support for the policies, including our relatively open trade policy, that have been an important source of the improvement in U.S. prosperity. Our external imbalances make it more important that we invest in meeting those challenges. Thank you. 3/3

More importantly for the real economy, sterling investment-grade corporate bond spreads have fallen over three and a half percentage points since the start of Quantitative Easing (Chart 4). And equity prices have risen by almost a half, the fifth largest increase in a six-month period over the past three hundred years (Chart 5). Accompanying this, UK companies have issued over £ billion worth of bonds and equities since January, compared with an annual average of around £ billion in recent years (Chart 6). Moreover, the spread between the three-month interbank rate over expected Bank Rate, which had been unusually elevated during the crisis, particularly after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, has fallen by almost 1½ percentage points and is now more or less back to pre-crisis levels (Chart 7). All this suggests that Quantitative Easing is having the expected effects on the economy. However, there may also be other reasons why asset prices have recovered in recent months. Early in the year, there were considerable fears that the recession would continue to deepen, whereas it now seems that activity here and elsewhere has probably troughed, so some of the worst downside risks look unlikely to crystallise. And asset prices have been rising not only here, but elsewhere, though that could reflect the aggressive monetary policy measures adopted by other central banks too.
José De Gregorio: Adjustment in the global economy Keynote address by Mr José De Gregorio, Governor of the Central Bank of Chile, at the 2011 Institute of International Finance (IIF) Latin American Economic Forum, Calgary, 27 March 2011. *  *  *  I am grateful to Luis Oscar Herrera, Enrique Orellana and Tatiana Vargas for valuable comments. Thank you very much for the invitation to speak at this 2011 IIF Latin American Economic Forum. The last few years have been the most challenging for economic policy around the world in many decades. From an unprecedented inflationary shock in 2007–08, the global economy went through a financial crisis and a recession in 2008–09, of a scale not seen since the Great Depression. Now, we are experiencing a process of recovery with strong inflationary pressures and tensions in the world economy as a result of asymmetries in this process. The purpose of my talk today will be the global adjustment, how it has been proceeding and what the current challenges for policymaking are, with special focus on the asymmetries and their implications for economic policy. The uneven recovery The world economy is growing unevenly and subject to many tensions. Most advanced economies are recovering from the crisis, but they still have high rates of unemployment and excess capacity, and this is expected to last for some time.

On the one hand, to accumulate reserves, strengthening our international liquidity position, and on the other hand, to provide some transitory relief to sectors that need to undergo an adjustment due to current international conditions. A more debated tool is the use of capital controls. This is particularly important for countries that are going through a period of important net capital inflows, which is not the case of Chile. Capital controls are part of the central bank’s toolkit in EMEs. However, their effectiveness is still a matter of discussion, and instead of discussing this evidence I would like to point to distortions that they may bring about. First, they may redirect capital inflows from controlled segments of the financial system to uncontrolled ones, fostering the shadow banking system. And second, they may generate discriminations in the corporate sector as some firms may have access to foreign financing free of controls, while other firms, especially small and medium sized enterprises, have to seek financing from more expensive domestic sources. Capital controls are not only a macro tool, but have recently been considered “macroprudential” measures as well. Their purpose is to avoid the building up of financial vulnerabilities, in particular currency and maturity mismatches. But, this can also be achieved with regulation directly introduced to prevent these mismatches and through appropriate risk management. Finally, given some recent calls for the use of capital controls in EMEs, there is a collective action problem.
They have undertaken reforms in the areas most important for competitiveness, growth and the sustainability of public finances such as labour markets, products markets, social security, pension systems, etc. These reforms are a prerequisite for dynamic and sustainable growth in the future and they must be vigorously pursued. In addition to this very clear determination at the different national levels to reduce deficits and introduce the necessary reforms, Europe has equipped itself with a new disciplinary framework. The Heads of State signed a new fiscal compact over a year ago that fixes very strict rules and gives very extensive powers to the European Commission to assess the compliance of Member States. This new compact goes hand in hand with the introduction of rules for monitoring macroeconomic imbalances. It is important to understand what these institutional advances represent: in effect, they represent a new Treaty creating very strong commitments for the States via rules that are far better calibrated and far more binding than those in place when European monetary union began. 3. Monetary Union is to be enhanced with a banking union  As well as being a year that saw a considerable strengthening of fiscal and macroeconomic discipline in Europe, 2012 also saw significant progress towards a banking union. Why has a banking union suddenly become such an indispensable and urgent project? Simply because we are now certain that many of the problems we have experienced could have been avoided with a banking union.

A number of elements support this view: •  Our accommodative monetary policy stance – which will remain so for as long as necessary – should contribute to underpinning this recovery;  •  Recent developments in economic sentiment survey data have shown some improvement from their low levels;  •  Looking ahead to later in the year and to 2014, euro area export growth should benefit from a recovery in global demand, while domestic demand should be  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  supported by our accommodative monetary policy stance and by the recent real income gains due to lower oil prices and lower overall inflation. •  Furthermore, the significant improvements in financial markets seen since last summer boost confidence and generate wealth effects and should work their way through to the real economy, as should the progress made in fiscal consolidation. Nevertheless, the Governing Council continues to see downside risks surrounding the economic outlook for the euro area. They include the possibility of weaker-than-expected domestic and global demand and the slow or insufficient implementation of structural reforms in euro area countries. Overall, the June 2013 Eurosystem staff macroeconomic projections for the euro area foresee annual real GDP declining by 0.6% in 2013 and increasing by 1.1% in 2014 thanks to three main drivers: export growth, accommodative monetary policy and low inflation. 2. How can we boost growth further in the euro area? A strong fiscal stimulus obviously appears unfeasible, given the necessity to rebalance public finances.
While we continue to believe that the growth in the advanced economies will remain low relative to historical levels, and there are a number of reasons for that, the signs are that these economies are finally able to achieve steady growth. And that is obviously good for the global economy. As for the emerging market economies (EMEs), they have done relatively well in the years since the crisis. Domestic demand had been supported by high commodity prices as well as expansionary fiscal and monetary policies. However, growth in the EMEs now seems to have hit a bump in the road. The commodities boom has tapered off and this has impacted incomes. The fiscal stimulus has increased government debt making further fiscal expansion less sustainable. On top of that, the low interest rate environment has led to an increase in household debt. These developments are now beginning to act as a brake on economic growth. This experience highlights the risks and limits of domestic demand driven by easy monetary policy, cheap credit and fiscal stimulus. Therefore, domestic demand in EMEs will grow at a slower pace. Nevertheless, EMEs will still be contributing a bigger share to global growth than the AEs. The re-emergence of growth in the crisis-affected AEs could be expected to strengthen external demand for the exports of EMEs, thereby mitigating the effect of slower domestic demand. Among the Asian economies, we do expect to see similar trends. Again, sustained domestic demand, while lower than in the past, will continue to support growth.

After the crisis, there was some excitement about domestic demand being the driver of growth, and there was some justification for such enthusiasm. There was certainly a component related to the growth in incomes and private demand. But there was also a significant component related to public spending and the rapid growth of domestic credit. The outcome is higher debt levels for both households and the Government. This is clearly not a sustainable strategy for growth. Indeed, the experience has shown that there are limits to how fast and how sustainably we can grow by relying on domestic demand alone. Therefore, going forward, while domestic demand will continue to support growth, we really need to strengthen our integration with both the regional and global economy, and by implication, strengthen our overall level of economic competitiveness, if we are to achieve sustainable growth over the long term. Returning to the economic outlook, the good news is that we are seeing more sustained growth around the world and that is already beginning to benefit Malaysia and creating more balanced growth of the Malaysian economy. Now what are the potential clouds over this rather sunny outlook? There are several, but in the interest of time, I will just mention five. The first of this is the slow recovery of investment in the AEs after the crisis. It has been noted that this recovery, unlike recoveries from past recessions, has been accompanied by rather lackluster investment. This is despite the fact that companies are sitting on large piles of cash.