samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Notes: Data for the United Kingdom and the United States are derived from nominal bond yields deflated using inflation swaps. The Germany/EA figures are based on nominal Bund yield deflated using euro-area inflation swaps (as a proxy for the euro-area risk free rate). The measure of inflation used is RPI for the United Kingdom and CPI for the United States and the euro area. Data are to close of business 9 February 2015. BIS central bankers’ speeches  25  Chart 15: Population growth Annual percentage change 3  2  2050  2040  2030  2020  2010  2000  1990  1980  1970  1960  1950  1940  1930  1920  1910  1900  1890  1880  1870  1860  1850  1840  1830  1  0  Source: United Nations population projections (http://esa.un.org/wpp/) for 1950 onwards; The Maddison-Project (http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/maddison-project/home.htm) prior to 1950. Chart 16: Business expenditure on Research & Development South Korea  Japan  China  United States  United Kingdom  France  R&D Expenditure as a % of GDP  3.5 3.0  Germany  2.5 2.0 1.5 1.0  1981  1985  1989  1993  1997  2001  2005  2009  2013  0.5  Source: OECD.

Hills, Thomas and Dimsdale (2015 forthcoming), Bank of England. Homer, S and Sylla, R (1991), “A history of interest rates”, ISBN: 978–0471732839. Hutton, W (2015), “How Good We Can Be: Ending the Mercenary Society and Building a Great Country”, ISBN: 978–1408705315. IMF (2014), “Redistribution, Inequality, and Growth”, IMF Staff Discussion Note, available at: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2014/sdn1402.pdf. Hall, R and Jones, C (1999), “Why do some countries produce so much more output per worker than others?”, Quarterly Journal of Economics Vol 114. Kahneman, D (2012), “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, ISBN: 978–0141033570. BIS central bankers’ speeches  15  King, M and Low, D (2014), “Measuring the ‘world’ real interest rate”, NBER Working Paper 19887. Koopmans, T (1965), “On the Concept of Optimal Economic Growth”, Volume 28 of Pontificiae Academiae Scientiarum scripta varia. Kremer (1993), “Population growth and technological change: One Million BC to 1990”, The Quarterly Journal of Economics Vol 108 No 3. Levine, R and Renelt, D (1992), “A sensitivity analysis of cross-country growth regressions”, The American Economic Review Vol 82 Issue 4. Malthus, T (1798), “An Essay on the Principle of Population”, reprinted in 2010 as ISBN: 978–1450535540. Mazzucato, M (2013), “The entrepreneurial state”, ISBN: 978–0857282521. McKinsey Global Institute (2010), “Farewell to cheap capital: the implications of long-term shifts in global investment and saving”, available at: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/global_capital_markets/farewell_cheap_capital. Mischel, W (2014), “The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control”, ISBN: 978– 1469249087. Mokyr, J (2014), “Secular stagnation? Not in your life”, in VoxEU (2014). Morris, I (2010), “Social Development”, available at: http://www.ianmorris.org.
Mention should be made that banks showed caution in managing CHF-denominated assets and liabilities. III. The current economic environment  The analysis of the current economic environment reveals two significant characteristics. First, Romania has maintained sustainable macroeconomic balances over the last years, also as a result of the counter-cyclical monetary and prudential policies implemented by the National Bank of Romania. Romania further enjoys robust economic growth and solid growth prospects, of 2.7% in 2015 and 2.9% in 2016. The annual inflation rate has remained on a  4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  downward path, while the general government balance and the current account balance stand at sustainable levels. These arguments show that the movements in the CHF/RON exchange rate should not be seen as a depreciation of the domestic currency (which is supported by strong economic fundamentals), but as CHF appreciation following the Swiss National Bank’s decision. Second, the downtrend in interest rates on leu-denominated loans, also as a result of the NBR’s decisions to gradually cut the monetary policy rate and to pursue adequate liquidity management, is supportive of the solution of converting foreign currency-denominated loans into the domestic currency in the case of currently unhedged borrowers.

In the identification of its policy orientation, the ECB bears in mind that an inflation rate too close to zero restrains the conduct of policy in deep recessions and it also filters out a host of factors that distort the measurement of the policy-relevant drift in prices. 3 Third, the strategy describes and structures a host of economic and monetary variables which can signal risks to price stability before they materialise. This set includes important monetary and financial variables which influence the way monetary policy intentions are transmitted to price-setting decisions in the medium term. As I said, the strategy turns the Treaty assignment into an action plan which, if I may borrow from performance management jargon, I would call S.M.A.R.T. — Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely. Let me focus on the “M” and “A”. The action plan is measurable, and we can assess the ECB’s progress towards that goal by looking at its record. Prices since the start of the euro have indeed been stable and in line with our definition. The average inflation rate over the past 13 years has been slightly higher than 2%. 4 The goal was attainable and it was attained. Monetary policy and lack of trust in the integrity of the euro area Over the summer the price of bonds issued by some governments in the euro area fell on concerns that investors’ claims could be discharged by the issuer in a currency other than the euro, the currency of denomination.
The business opinion survey conducted here in the West Midlands earlier this year by the Institute of Chartered Accountants and the IOD - which had over 85% of respondents agreeing that red tape and bureaucracy are stifling business - suggests that some of you have noticed! But for the most part such regulation doesn't tell us what activities we can and cannot undertake, rather it sets the criteria we must meet and the standards we must observe in doing whatever it is we choose to do. It leaves more room for both consumer and producer choice, and more room, and more incentive, therefore for competition and innovation. Our experience in the UK is, of course, just part of a very much broader and continuing evolution internationally - often associated with increasing political democracy - from varying degree of centralised administration to an increasingly open, market-based, approach in all parts of the world reflected also in increasingly free international trade and investment. At the macro-economic level the economic advantages of freer market competition are familiar. No one could claim that it's perfect - especially in the light of the current volatility! But profitability is the best means that we have so far discovered for directing resources - whether human or material or financial resources - into those activities in which they can be most productively employed.

While the leu was strengthening, up until the summer of 2007, the issue of adopting the euro was not on the agenda of economic agents. The crisis highlighted the fact that the leu was overappreciated and the market made the necessary correction. Over a relatively short period – from July 2007 to date – the leu weakened by around 35 percent. Over the same period, the prospects of economic growth changed dramatically: from an almost 9.4 percent growth rate in 2008 Q3 to a most likely significant decline in 2009 Q1. The monetary and fiscal policies will be resorted to with a view to adjusting to the new environment. In face of the crisis, the relatively large stock of private foreign debt and the increased market volatility made some economic agents believe that the early adoption of the euro could supersede the need for economic policy adjustments. Yet this is not a viable option, as adopting the euro prior to having achieved the main stages of convergence with the EU might pose serious threats in the future. The adoption of the euro today would mean to relinquish monetary policy before having ensured convergence sustainability, namely before removing all the imbalances we are facing today. The outcome would consist in monetary policy being designed by the European Central Bank (ECB). But the ECB policy might prove inadequate from the standpoint of the specific problems facing the Romanian economy.
Here, it is also necessary to have an interplay between the central banks and supervisory authorities to implement existing regulations in a good manner. And the more integrated the financial sector becomes within the EU, the larger the number of people who will potentially be affected by such tensions or crises, which will make further demands for well-oiled channels for monitoring between different countries and concerning different types of financial activities. This involves not merely having good systems for mutually providing information on what is happening when things are going smoothly, but also maintaining a readiness to identify problems and intervene in acute crises that might arise and that could threaten the stability of the system. It is complicated to build up this kind of readiness when it comes to authorities in different countries with different traditions, different principals, responsibility for different parts of the financial system, etc., but it is nevertheless extremely important that the network co-operation in this field be developed further. New requirements for co-ordination in supervision and oversight The basic model for financial supervision within the EU is that it shall be carried out by national authorities and this is, in my opinion, the most natural and efficient means of keeping a watch over financial operators and markets. However, this requires that the supervision of other operations and markets that can affect financial conglomerates is also sufficiently co-ordinated.

The tighter the labour market is, the higher wage growth will be. Demand for goods and services determines to a great extent how tight the labour market will be. High levels of private and public consumption, investment and exports will sustain the demand for labour. When the supply of labour is limited, the competition for labour pushes up wages. A tight monetary policy stance with a high real interest rate will curb domestic demand. In many countries, low and stable consumer price inflation is the goal of monetary policy. Consequently, we can assume that imported price inflation will remain subdued. However, price inflation will nonetheless vary in pace with global economic developments. The krone exchange rate also plays an important role in determining import prices. A strong krone exchange rate will curb prices for imported goods, while a weak krone exchange rate will result in higher prices. When there is a rise in the interest rate in Norway and a widening differential between domestic and foreign interest rates, investments in NOK will increase, and the krone exchange rate will rise. Price inflation may vary considerably from month to month. This variation may be due to random or temporary conditions, such as fluctuations in electricity prices or petrol prices, or the effects of changes in real taxes. When we assess the interest rate, we disregard these effects. Statistics Norway has constructed an indicator for adjusted price inflation - CPI-ATE - which is the measure we use to examine the results of monetary policy performance.
And out of this, loans taken by foreign-based banks operating in Romania from their parent undertakings abroad account for the largest share. We have started to address this issue by taking measures aimed at discouraging foreign currency-denominated loans. If that risk materialised and parent banks diminished their flows to Romania, the effect would be rather beneficial as it would remove the base for an unsustainable expansion of foreign currency-denominated credit which has been a headache for so many years. Therefore, I do not consider these arguments that solid to place Romania in a group of countries with high likelihood of witnessing hard landing. Do you think, therefore, that high economic growth in Romania will go on? I believe that Romania will see further economic growth in the coming years. A growth much closer to the potential which our experts had estimated at around 6 percent annually. It is true that, with weakening economic activity worldwide, especially in the EU which is our main trade partner, economic growth might be a bit slower than 6 percent. No doubt that economic growth will be affected by several factors next year, placing it over or below 6 percent: the oil price, the farming year, heightened efforts to develop the infrastructure and also to create conditions to boost labour productivity, the level of foreign investments, and so on. In any case, a 6 percent annual economic growth in the present context is a remarkable achievement.

Mugur Isărescu: Hard landing unlikely for Romania Interview with Dr Mugur Isărescu, Governor of the National Bank of Romania, by Mediafax news agency, Bucharest, 8 September 2008. *  *  *  Mr. Governor, foreign analysts have placed Romania along with four other states – Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Bulgaria – in a group of countries heading to a hard landing. In fact the economies of Estonia and Latvia have contracted sharply, with growth plunging from levels of around 10 percent into negative territory; inflation has reached two-digit levels and the external deficit exceeded 15 percent of gross domestic product. Is it possible for Romania to witness similar negative growth dynamics? Is it fair to include Romania in that group? Reading what those foreign analysts said, I have hardly found a solid rationale that would justify Romania's being placed within the hard-landing risk zone. On the contrary. Turning now to comments, I will underline that there are some similarities among the countries in this group: GDP per capita is below the EU average, they all have registered high growth rates in the catching-up process. However, there are also fundamental differences, among which the most important in my view is the monetary policy mechanism. Three of the four countries mentioned in the group have currency boards in place, and the fourth, i.e. Latvia, has a mechanism close to a currency board. Of course, currency board has its clear benefits.
But they are, and always will be, a second best. There will always, for example, be a risk of reputational contagion. Counterparties might refuse to deal with a member of a failed group because they are unwilling to take the risk that the firewalls may be flawed, or that cultural or control weaknesses which led to the failure are repeated in that entity also. This, of course, is a hypothetical risk but one which does concern supervisors. Secondly, as the firm will incur additional costs in order to comply with these ringfencing arrangements, while possibly at the same time being denied the risk reducing benefits of group wide controls, it is unlikely to provide the most efficient solution. Concern about these deficiencies has heightened as we have learned more about the way in which many global financial groups are managed. The lack of overlap between legal entities and the management of business lines means that the amount of true ring-fencing which is possible for a globally managed institution is open to debate. The creation of ring-fenced islands of activity seems to me contrary both to the trend in markets and second-best in terms of regulatory efficiency. The Bank of England has always believed that effective supervision of financial groups must involve consolidated supervision. As Alan Greenspan said last week in his testimony to the Congressional SubCommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, “Risks managed on a consolidated basis cannot be reviewed on an individual legal entity basis by different supervisors”.

Mr. Davies reviews current debates on regulatory structures governing the financial system Speech by the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, Mr. Howard Davies, held on 22/2/97 at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s Financial Markets Conference entitled ‘Market and Regulatory Structures in a Global Environment’. It is conventional, and polite to say, at the beginning of a speech of this kind, that one is thrilled to have been asked to speak on the subject of the structure of financial regulation and that the topic is, of all the many preoccupations of human kind through the centuries, the one which generates the most enthusiasm and excitement in one’s breast. But I cannot bring myself to do it. You may think me ill-brought up to say this if so blame my parents - but I find the question of the structure of regulation to be quite resistible. I know that there are those who like nothing better than to draw new organigrams and to explore the manifold interfaces between regulatory agencies. (There are also people who find self-fulfilment collecting airline sick bags, or watching synchronised swimming. That is a matter for them.) But my lack of enthusiasm for the topic of regulatory structure is, I hope, not an emotional response. It is rationally based on two prior beliefs. First, that the relationship between structure and effectiveness is loose. I know of little evidence that structural reforms are quickly followed by an enhancement of the effectiveness of the activity in which those agencies are engaged.
A series of factors – first and foremost, in the case of the euro area, the Russian invasion of Ukraine - are responsible for these adverse economic dynamics and for the surge in inflation to levels that we had not seen for decades. Accordingly, central banks, including the ECB, have responded swiftly to the inflationary pressures, tightening financing conditions for both private economic agents and the government. Moreover, these shocks have thrown into stark relief European vulnerabilities in key areas, such as the energy sector, as well as the considerable disparities among countries in their relative exposure to them. And this is happening against the background of an increase in euro area public debt by almost 10 percentage points (pp) of GDP since the pandemic, leading to high debt-to-GDP ratios and high structural deficits in some countries that have shrunk the available fiscal space and represent an important vulnerability. All these elements underline the importance of achieving the correct monetary and fiscal policy mix in order to face this complex context. The current circumstances differ substantially from those prevailing at the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic confronted us with a severe, albeit temporary, exogenous shock, which was probably the biggest supply and demand shock we had faced in decades. In that context, a coordinated fiscal and monetary policy response was absolutely necessary to support the incomes of both households and firms, and to minimise the potential structural damage to employment, productive capacity and economic growth caused by the crisis.

The fiscal response had to rely on both national and supra-national policy actions of significant magnitude. In the current high inflation setting, however, the appropriate policy mix requires a tightening of the monetary policy stance and a fiscal stance that, at the aggregate, euro area level, is not at odds with this anti-inflationary stance. This means that government support measures should be temporary, targeted and tailored to preserving incentives to consume less energy. 1  In particular, measures should be gradually rolled back as energy prices fall. Otherwise, we are at risk of driving up medium-term inflationary pressures, which would call for a stronger monetary policy response. In this regard, let me stress that achieving a fiscal stance that is consistent with the smooth operation of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) while delivering sustainable public finances is precisely the role of the EU’s fiscal rules framework, or at least its key aspiration. Why do we need fiscal rules? Let me be straightforward in stating upfront that a disciplined fiscal framework that fosters the sustainability of public finances is essential to guaranteeing macroeconomic stability and the proper functioning of the EMU. Under the Maastricht Treaty, the design of the EMU rested on two pillars: a single monetary policy authority and a set of coordinated national fiscal policies, which constituted the EMU’s policy mix. The independent central bank (ECB) targeting price stability was entrusted with monetary policy.
Inflation is still negative and even below earlier projections. Unlike developed countries, Chile is entering this recovery phase with a strong financial system. Our banking system has, on average, similar or better solvency levels than it had in the years leading to the external financial crisis. This should allow the financing of investment and consumption during the economic recovery phase. Meanwhile, the market for bonds and commercial paper has become ever more important as a source of funding for larger firms. Risks remain, however, and the return to sustained growth in Chile and the world is not a done deal. In particular, macroeconomic packages need to be continued until the recovery is well established. Emerging economies and commodity exporters deal with their own tensions. Most recently, these have centered on the appreciation of their currencies, largely dependent on the US dollar. In Chile, with a floating exchange rate system, the peso is not spared the effects of the world events. Certainly, we will have to continue monitoring the exchange rate very closely. In particular, we will have to figure out its policy implications in order to ensure a persistent closing of the output gap and the return of inflation to the target. We foresee, as stated in the Monetary Policy Report, that the MPR will be kept low for an extended period, to reduce pressures on the strength of the peso and open the way for a sustained recovery of private demand.

Indeed, central bank money is the cornerstone of settlements between financial intermediaries and has every reason to remain so in the future: experience shows that financial players need a risk-free settlement asset. However, with the development of the tokenisation of financial assets, would it be advisable to tokenise their counterpart, the settlement currency? Doing this may lead to changes not in what constitutes the very foundation of central bank money – confidence – but in the way it is issued. It is in this context that the opportunity for a “wholesale” central bank  digital currency could arise. This requires central banks to invest in the technical innovations underpinning the digitisation of financial assets and their transfer methods, to conduct experiments and take advantage of them in order to improve the performance of the services they provide to the economy. And that is what the Banque de France is doing. With the support of its Lab, it has been investing in blockchain technology for several years now, and is implementing it on an operational level with its MADRE project for 3/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  managing the databases for SEPA creditor identifiers and bank branches. Another recent example is the ECB’s launch of the TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS), with the aim of ensuring the coordinated development of instant payments.