samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Conceivably, these differences might be heavily influenced by the relatively recent nature of our educational development; but looking at the percentages for young people in the 25-34 age group, it can be seen that, despite the progress recorded, a gap exists which, though moderate (64% in Spain compared with figures of over 80% in most of the major countries), remains illustrative of our continuing laggardness. In the current decentralised State, the central government retains few responsibilities in respect of education, which means that educational progress in Spain is fundamentally in the hands of the regional governments. These may thus be said to have a major responsibility in determining our longterm growth prospects and the future functioning of the Spanish economy. And this conclusion is further reinforced when considering the changes that have come about in budgetary policies. Hence,  4  BIS Review 32/2007  insofar as the decentralised structure of the State has played a very positive role in growth in the recent past, as I said at the start of my address, when speaking of the future it emerges once again as a determinant of the first order. As is known, public spending by territorial governments is more than two and a half times that of central government. It is clear from this that what regional and local governments do is, for the purposes of maintaining the public spending/GDP ratio, much more important than what central government does.

Miguel Fernández Ordóñez: The biggest risk - complacency Address by Mr Miguel Fernández Ordóñez, Governor of the Bank of Spain, delivered to the Círculo de Economía, Barcelona, 31 January 2007. * * * I very much appreciate the opportunity provided to me by the Círculo de Economía to deliver this address at this time, just as the figures for last year have been released. In terms of the Spanish economy's performance, the figures speak for themselves and confirm a favourable short-term outlook. Against this background, I think it is very important to reflect on the underpinnings of the economy’s trajectory, in order to identify those factors that are genuinely relevant for projecting ahead the progress that has been achieved in recent decades. I have therefore thought it best to adopt a long-term approach for this speech, going beyond conjunctural analysis. And with the title I have chosen, I have sought precisely to stress that when things are going well and the outlook is favourable, the biggest risk is complacency. The year 2006 ended in Spain with growth at around 3.8%, outperforming the seven biggest industrialised countries. This is the first time in many years that this has happened. Not only has growth in Spain been higher than in the euro area countries, but it has also been higher than in the United Kingdom, Japan and the United States, which in recent years had been growing at a rate above Spain.
It is particularly appropriate to overshoot the target when unemployment is higher than its long-run sustainable rate, as it can then reach its long-run sustainable rate sooner. The usual way of applying the current inflation target entails that even if the target is undershot over a period of time the central bank still endeavours to maintain inflation in line with the target. Thus the central bank does not attempt to compensate for the previously low inflation with a period when inflation is above the target. To ensure that average inflation is on target over a longer period of time, the central bank could instead have a so-called price level target that means the price level should be stabilised around a price level path that rises by 2 per cent a year. Such a price level target would mean that average inflation is at 2 per cent over a longer period of time. The advantages and disadvantages of a price level target have been discussed at length in academic literature (see for instance Bank of Canada 2011). Since a downward-sloping long-run Phillips curve makes it important to keep average inflation over a longer period of time on target, this strengthens the arguments in favour of a price level target. A less dramatic change would be a target in the form of a moving average of inflation over a longer period of time, for instance five or ten years (Nessén and Vestin 2005).

Australia has had an inflation target of between 2 and 3 per cent for CPI inflation over the cycle since 1993, and its average inflation rate in the period 1996–2011 was 2.7 per cent. 13  11  An older method of calculating the rate of inflation with an unchanged consumer basket was used in real-time data prior to 2005. Using the current method of calculating the inflation rate as the percentage change in the CPI, average inflation was 1.3 per cent during the period 1997–2011, but real-time data are more relevant when evaluating monetary policy. See Sveriges Riksbank (2004). 12  In the period 1992-1996 the target was expressed as 2.5 per cent or lower in terms of the RPIX. RPIX = Retail Price Index. In the United Kingdom the CPI corresponds to the HICP price index. Since 1993 the average HICP inflation rate has been 0.75 percentage points lower than average RPIX inflation. 13  New Zealand has had an inflation target since 1990, but its target has been adjusted upwards twice and thus one cannot say that it has had a fixed inflation target. 10  BIS central bankers’ speeches  How have things turned out for the large economies, the euro area and the United States? The euro area has had a target for inflation, although during a shorter period than the countries mentioned earlier. The target is that inflation should be below but close to 2 per cent.
Timothy F Geithner: The changing face of risk management Remarks by Mr Timothy F Geithner, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, before the Institute of International Bankers, New York, 9 June 2004 *  *  *  It is a pleasure to join you today for this meeting of the Institute of International Bankers. The financial institutions you represent play a major role in our financial system. The IIB has played an important part in shaping financial policy in the United States, by reminding us with force and persistence of the impact of our actions on the standards of fairness and equality of opportunity that we strive to maintain. The U.S. financial system has a number of features that help to make it attractive to participants from all around the world. The structure of our financial system is characterized by a diversity of channels for financial intermediation, with a relatively larger role for the capital markets and a smaller role for banks, than is true in most other major economies. And we have preserved, despite substantial consolidation, a system that comfortably accommodates the largest globally-active financial institutions side by side with a competitive and diverse array of regional and community banking organizations. We are very open to the presence of foreign financial institutions, and perhaps as important, have traditionally been very open to attracting non-U.S. financial talent to work in our markets.

We recognize this, even as we encourage firms to put in place stronger and more sophisticated systems more commensurate with the complexity of the risks they are taking. 2  BIS Review 36/2004  •  Comprehensive aggregation of credit exposure: The most sophisticated among large diversified financial institutions have well-developed systems for aggregating credit exposure, with a common methodology and results available relatively quickly, across the full range of transactions and business lines they engage in with a single entity or groups of entities with correlated risks. •  Stress testing and scenario analysis: Firms at the leading edge have moved well beyond reliance on “value-at-risk” complemented by stress tests of discrete shocks. They employ stress tests built around more exacting, forward-looking scenarios integrating large moves in a number of variables, more tailored to the risk profile of the firm and current market conditions, and the reactions of other market participants and counterparties. •  Counterparty credit risk management: The most sophisticated firms use much more careful and sophisticated approaches for measuring potential future exposure, and they analyze how exposures may respond in conditions of significant market stress. With respect to hedge fund exposure in particular, the leading firms employ comprehensive evaluation of the risk profile of the hedge fund to set credit thresholds and terms and a more disciplined approach to setting sufficiently high levels of initial margin. •  Measuring and managing interest rate risk: Leading institutions assess their exposure to interest rate risk in a comprehensive manner across the firm’s business lines.
There were also some problems with the earlier signalling which we wanted to avoid. In certain situations it was probably difficult to determine whether the signal in a speech should be interpreted as an individual member’s opinion or whether it reflected the views of a majority on the Executive Board. If the individual Board members sent out different signals it could probably also be difficult to distinguish a clear message. In addition, it was unclear when and if the signals should be sent out. Finally, and at least as important in my opinion, there was also a democratic aspect to this question. This has to do with the fact that we are an independent authority and that the general public should have good insight into the decision-making process. There must be no doubt that the interest rate decisions are actually made at the monetary policy meetings and not at some other, more diffuse, point in time – in some informal way that prevents insight. If the signalling prior to the meetings leads people to believe that the interest rate decisions have been made in advance of the meetings, then doubts may arise. Why has this led to a debate? The fact that the debate on our communication has been fairly lively probably has several explanations. To begin with, the pace of our development towards openness and clarity has been fairly high over the past two years. And if one makes a lot of changes in a short time it is not so surprising that discussions arise.

And in 2006 both the number of hours worked and the number of persons employed rose quite substantially. This was partly because the number of people in employment measures increased considerably during the fourth quarter of last year. But despite the fact that fewer people are in labour market programmes this year, the number of employed has continued to increase. This indicates considerable strength in the labour market. We also assess that employment will continue to increase during the forecast period, but at a slower rate. The fact that the pace slows down is due to the economic upturn slackening. It is also due to higher wage increases contributing to a lower demand for labour. The supply of labour has also increased, but not as much as employment. Open unemployment has thus fallen (slide 7). According to our forecast, the labour supply will continue to increase, albeit at a slower rate, during the forecast period. This development is mainly due to the economic cycle, but also to some of the Government’s measures. The fact that the rate of increase is slowing down is due to the economic upturn slackening, and also to factors such as the number of persons in the age groups with high participation in the labour force declining. All in all, this will lead to the number of open unemployed persons continuing to fall, but at an ever slower rate. Compared with what we were expecting in June, the conditions in the labour market have become tighter.
Our future actions will take into account these past decisions and their transmission lag to activity and inflation. And, of course, future decisions will be conditioned by the inflation outlook, including the economic prospects and, therefore, the higher probability of a recession that we are currently observing. Why did the ECB engage in asset purchases and TLTROs? To understand the next steps in our normalisation of monetary policy to combat inflation, it is helpful to step back for a moment and consider briefly how we arrived at the current monetary policy situation, characterised by a historically large Eurosystem balance sheet. Over the past 15 years, the euro area has been hit by a series of major recessionary shocks. First, in 2008-2009, we endured the great financial crisis. Second, as that crisis drove up public debt levels, several euro area countries were hit by a sovereign debt crisis. Recovery from those two major recessions was a slow process, and the euro area economy was only just beginning to return to normality in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic caused a worldwide economic shutdown. The main conventional tool in central banks’ policy toolkit are short-term policy interest rates. But following the sequence of huge negative shocks that have buffeted Europe and the rest of the world in recent years, interest rate cuts alone were insufficient for economic stabilisation, as the central bank cannot push its policy rates much below zero. 5 This was the conundrum facing the ECB around 2015.

Since the financial crisis, we have been de facto operating a “floor” system, characterised by ample excess reserves and interbank rates pegged to the DFR. This floor system, similar to that adopted by the Federal Reserve, is different from the “corridor” system that we operated before the crisis, which was characterised by a leaner balance sheet and scarcity of reserves. 10 The decision we take in this respect, as well as regarding the desired long-run composition of assets and liabilities, will anchor the desired size of our balance sheet. 10  Fo r an in-depth discussion see Chapter 3, Banco de España Annual R eport 2018, and Arce, Nuño , Thaler and Tho mas (2020), “A large central bank balance sheet? Flo o r vs co rrido r systems in a New Keynesian enviro nment”, Journal of Monetary Economics , Vo l. 114, pp. 350-367. 6  The potential impact of reducing the size of the balance sheet Once we reach the point of reducing asset holdings acquired through the APP, the crucial question is how strong an effect this form of quantitative tightening will have on long-term interest rates. It is tempting to see quantitative tightening as simply the opposite of quantitative easing. In this light, our experiences with QE over the past decade and more may give us some idea as to how large the effects of QT may be.
Kristina Persson: Sweden, EMU and the krona Speech by Ms Kristina Persson, Deputy Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, at a seminar at Svensk Handel, Stockholm, 16 November 2001. *  *  *  Thank you for the invitation to come here. The theme is an important one, even if we do not yet know when a referendum will be held and whether a decision on EMU membership will be taken in Sweden. There is now just over one month left until 1 January 2002, when 307 million inhabitants of 12 European countries will have the same new banknotes and coins. 15 billion banknotes and 50 billion coins will come into circulation. In the course of a couple of months the national banknotes and coins in the eurozone will cease to be legal tender. The distribution and exchange will involve enormous challenges in terms of practical implementation, logistics and security. Yet I should imagine that many people will soon see it as a positive experience to be able to use the same means of payment throughout almost the whole of western Europe. Seeing the banknotes and shopping in euro prices across the continent brings home the existence of the monetary union in a more tangible way for the citizens of Europe. For us Swedes the euro will enforce our sense of being outside the euro. In addition, we have behind us a period during which the krona has weakened without this being apparent entirely motivated by fundamental factors.

that the krona has been affected by a net outflow of capital from Sweden. The development of the krona and the stock market has shown a strong correlation since the beginning of 2000. This is probably connected with foreign investors selling Swedish shares in line with falls on the stock market, which has affected Sweden more than other countries, as a large part of the stock market value is owned by foreign investors. Moreover, Swedish investors have bought a large amount of foreign shares, which is probably connected with the new pension system and the freer investment regulations for the AP pension funds. It has been possible for the AP pension funds to increase their foreign exchange exposure, i.e. the percentage of foreign assets, from 10 to 15 per cent with effect from this year. The funds can increase their exposure by five percentage points a year to a maximum of 40 per cent in 2006. On top of this comes a factor that is difficult to explain on the basis of classical exchange rate theories. The krona is affected to a large extent by general unease on the global financial markets. During times of financial unrest the krona weakens when investors leave the Swedish market for ones considered a safer investment. This was particularly noticeable during the Mexico crisis of 1995 and the Asia crisis of 1997-98. The recent unrest on the financial markets in connection with uncertainty over the global business climate has once again had a negative effect on the krona.
It is hard to conceive a general rule governing the use of capital controls to deal with massive capital inflows, but it is certainly more difficult to apply such controls in economies highly integrated to the world markets. Something that the evidence seems to suggest is that capital controls affect mainly the composition of the flows, not necessarily their magnitude. In that case, in order to affect the composition of international liabilities, in particular those intermediated by the banking sector, it would be more efficient to direct the eye toward financial regulation rather than to capital controls. In addition, macro-prudential regulations should be used to mitigate the procyclicality of capital flows. These measures could include BIS Review 72/2010  5  liquidity management policies, for instance imposing differentiated liquidity requirements for short-term and long-term financing flowing to banks or to other financial agents. Final remarks To conclude, we must first emphasize that global financial integration entails extensive benefits, as it allows to smooth expenditure fluctuations and to obtain resources to finance investments in countries with capital shortage. However, we have also learned that capital flows can be destabilizing, particularly when financial systems are fragile and macroeconomic policies inconsistent. Long-lasting boom periods have always presented challenges to macroeconomic policy making. Sadly, the passing from economic boom to a costly recession is a too recurrent experience for emerging economies, especially in Latin America.

Finally, one principle – that has gained much attention during the current crisis – is to keep the determination of the monetary policy stance distinguished from the management of liquidity in money markets. All these principles are captured in the ECB’s monetary policy strategy. And globalisation does not fundamentally alter these principles – which give guidance, in particular, in critical times. To weaken or even abandon these principles would undermine our commitment and credibility. And, in the end, we would risk losing orientation. Our strategy has provided a consistent and coherent framework not only for internal analysis and policy decision-making but also for external communication. Using the same framework for internal and external purposes has helped the ECB to ensure that its monetary policy remains consistent, credible and effective. One key element here is that the ECB, from the outset, has been transparent about its mandate, strategy, and decisions, as well as about what monetary policy can do and, even more importantly, what it cannot do. In this sense, expectations about transparency requirements should be in line with the actual strategy followed by the central bank. Without compromising on its mandate, the ECB has demonstrated a willingness and capacity to react rapidly to exceptional circumstances. It has taken a large number of extraordinary measures to support the functioning of the money market and interbank intermediation.
Businesses incur an estimated RM2.7 billion 6 annually for cash handling, in addition to bearing the risk of pilferage and theft. Businesses also incur an estimated RM113 million 7 annually for cheque handling. Migrating to electronic  3  Internet banking, mobile banking and ATM. 4  BNM’s Financial Stability and Payment Systems Report 2014. 5  Calculated based on the average monthly transactions of B-PAY (Australia) and the population in Australia. 6  Based on the European Central Bank’s (ECB) study “The social and private costs of retail payment instruments” on 13 European countries, the social cost incurred by retailers for cash handling amounts to 0.269% of GDP. 7  Based on the ECB study, the social cost incurred by businesses for cheque handling amounts to 0.012% of GDP. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  bill payments would lower the cost of transactions and provide businesses with a faster, more secure and more efficient means of collecting payments. Businesses should leverage on JomPAY not only for bill payments, but also for invoice payments to facilitate a more efficient management of their receivables. Consumers, on the other hand, should also take advantage of the increased convenience of making bill payments via this new channel. JomPAY provides a one-stop centre for consumers to make bill payments electronically anytime, anywhere and without any transaction fee. By migrating to electronic bill payments, a lot of time and effort previously incurred by travelling and queuing to make over-the-counter payments can be saved and redirected to more productive use.

Such collaborative industry effort in infrastructure sharing would allow the industry to compete directly on product offerings and the quality of services provided, thus providing better value to both consumers and merchants. In this regard, the recent industry-wide initiatives to enhance the payment card infrastructure and to modernise the online bill payments market via JomPAY are commendable and should be sustained. In this respect, I would also like to call upon MyClear and MEPS to jointly embark on payment infrastructure projects and initiatives that would benefit both the industry and the country. Role of MyClear and the industry moving forward Achieving the critical mass in terms of usage and acceptance remains a key priority. In this regard, banks in collaboration with MyClear should take concerted efforts to expand the number of businesses accepting JomPAY, especially among the underpenetrated sectors of SMEs and the federal and state government agencies. This can be done through coordinated media campaigns, workshops, roadshows and other outreach programs. MyClear and the participating banks should target to register 5,000 merchants onto JomPAY by 2020. To educate the public, especially those who are not IT savvy to use JomPAY, MyClear and the banks should also come up with instructional videos and pamphlets to provide the  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  necessary guidance and assistance.