samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
For further details on this survey, please see the 2014 Q2 Quarterly Bulletin Article, “Public Attitudes to Monetary Policy”, http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/ Documents/quarterlybulletin/2014/qb14q205.pdf. BIS central bankers’ speeches  17  Chart 3: Satisfaction with the Bank and inflation perceptions Net satisfaction with the Bank (a) Median perceptions of current inflation - inverted (b) Differences from averages since 2000 (number of standard deviations) 2.5 2.0 1.5 1.0 0.5 0.0 -0.5 -1.0 -1.5 -2.0 2000  2002  2004  2006  2008  2010  2012  2014  -2.5  Source: Bank of England GfK/NOP survey. Notes: a) The percentage of respondents who were fairly or very satisfied with the way in which the Bank of England is doing its job to set interest rates in order to control inflation, less the percentage who were fairly or very dissatisfied. b) Respondents were asked how they thought prices had changed over the past twelve months. Data are to 2014Q3. For further details on this survey, please see the 2014 Q2 Quarterly Bulletin Article, “Public Attitudes to Monetary Policy”, http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/quarterlybulletin/2014/q b14q205.pdf.

Chief among these are supply bottlenecks such as a shortage of labour and public infrastructure, eroding competitiveness and productivity, and corruption. If not properly addressed, these could restrain the country’s growth potential in the medium term. The good news is that ongoing developments in Thailand are constructive. The current reform agenda holds promises for moving the country forward. The National Reform Committee, along with other task forces, has been founded to push forward muchneeded measures. (Slide 4) The Bank of Thailand is currently involved in the reform of stateowned enterprises, as this sector includes 8 State-Owned Financial Institutions (SFIs), whose asset size accounts for approximately a quarter of total assets in the Thai banking system. Starting from this year, we at the Bank of Thailand are appointed to be a “regulator” for such financial institutions, whilst the Ministry of Finance remains a “policy-maker” and an “owner”. This is one of the reform attempts to clearly separate the roles among those involved, in order to avoid potential conflict of interests and to ensure that SFIs are subject to a proper supervision akin to that of commercial banks. (Slide 5) While the reform efforts are welcome developments, to what extent reform plans will be put into action remains to be seen. One of the main challenges will be keeping the reform momentum going, as certain reforms may take years to complete. I think of sustainable reforms as running a marathon. You have to keep going steadily, slowly but surely.
The surprise is that after 50 years, we still feel that there are missing elements in our economic and institutional constructions, which should be knowledge-based. Instead of having more and more educated and informed people in society, we see a widening knowledge and information gap. Partially this comes from economic inequalities, another increasing challenge, but partially from ignorance. The Nobel Prize this year was recently awarded to professors William Nordhaus and Paul Romer for achievements in the economics of climate change, but also for the role of technology in economic progress. For both distinctions, the Nobel Committee mentioned that research informed government policies and international cooperation are decisive for sustainable economic growth. What we see in this year’s Nobel Prize award, is the supreme recognition of the fact that knowledge and research are essential inputs for policies. On the other hand, we notice that in many cases, in everyday practice, policies ignore the findings of research and academia, not to mention that sometimes they even ignore the basic laws of economics. At the other end of the transmission mechanism, the citizens grow increasingly dissatisfied with policy-making and become detached from their leaders’ actions. The gap is then filled by extremism and populism, two evolving diseases of societies today. Moreover, despite an immense stock of knowledge that is accessible to an unprecedented number of people, we notice a lack of appetite for this knowledge, most surprisingly among younger generations.

Florin Georgescu: Challenging the status quo in management and economics Opening remarks by Mr Florin Georgescu, First Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Romania, at the Strategica International Academic Conference "Challenging the Status Quo in Management and Economics", Bucharest, 11 October 2018. * * * Distinguished guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am glad to welcome you at the National Bank of Romania, as we host today the 6th edition of this prestigious international conference, together with the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, and the Romanian Academic Society of Management. The debates today will be held under a generous and timely topic: “Challenging the Status Quo in Management and Economics”. We couldn’t have a better moment to discuss challenges to the status quo than today, as we witness a whole range of economic, social and political forces pushing for change all over the world. If this change is in the sense of progress or not, that remains to be seen. I trust that your presentations and insights will shed more light on these trends. I confess that I had a look at the titles of the presentations in both days of the conference, and the word that appears most frequently in these titles is knowledge. And I realize that not less than 50 years ago, Peter Drucker, the philosopher and management guru, launched the concept of knowledge economy. Since then, economists and management specialists of all doctrines, put knowledge at the forefront of their views of the world.
Conclusion History has taught us that financial crises can be extremely violent. The current turmoil in Europe is no exception. In the most intense phases, it is difficult to imagine that there is light at the end of the tunnel. But history has also taught us that crises provide opportunities for reform and progress. We live in democracies and have to accept that political decisions follow their own process and  4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  obey their own constraints. But I am confident that the euro area will emerge from this period stronger and more cohesive. There are, indeed, some reasons for optimism. On the supply side, our economies are robust and dynamic. Corporate balance sheets are very strong. Our banking system is robust and well supervised. Emerging economies are well placed to enjoy strong and sustainable growth in the years to come therefore contributing to sustained global demand. Above all, the community of nations seems ready to face the extraordinary challenges we are confronted with. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5

Moreover, the allowed holding period of foreign currency deposits was extended from 3 to 6 months. The important lesson here is that we cannot push away globalization. Instead, we must learn to cope with and understand it well enough to reap maximum benefit from such an open environment. At the same time, we must reinforce our own immunity system, for example, by strengthening and broadening the domestic sector and by having good early warning indicators so that large capital fluctuations, should they occur, will not put a strain on the economy and impede our growth process. Appropriate policy mix regarding interest rate, exchange rate, and capital account liberalization thus remains an important challenge for the central bank. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope I have done my part today in sharing with you my assessment of the economy. My key point is that the economy is now doing better in terms of both the growth prospects and macroeconomic stability, and has the potential to continue to do well in the next year as the global economic environment improves. This important turnaround has come about through a combination of hard work, luck, and appropriate supportive policies, not to mention the progress that has been made on economic restructuring and reforms since the crisis. But most important perhaps has been the commitment, the spirit, and the confidence of our private sector that have helped steer the Thai economy through one of her most difficult periods.
We understand that to build one European wholesale financial market will require a staple diet of solid Bundesbank fare, seasoned with a soupçon of Banque de France, a ración of Banco de España, and so on, as well as a couple of pints of Bank of England pragmatism. There is one important area, I think, in which it has not so far been possible to reach an agreed solution, and one on which I might just conclude with one or two observations. That is the question of TARGET, the inter-linking of real time gross settlement systems across Europe. There are two issues of interest, here. First, pricing policy. We have argued that the pricing of the national element of cross-border payments should relate to national costs, rather than being set uniformly. So far we have not prevailed on that point and, as long as the competition authorities approve, it is likely that there will be a common price within the TARGET system for cross-border transactions. Unfortunately, some of our colleagues do not believe this is an area in which competition should intrude. The second important question relates to the terms on which ‘out’ central banks might link to TARGET in the future. We can see no reason why out central banks should not be able to link to TARGET on the same terms as those which apply to the ins. We accept, of course, the need in both in and out countries for rigorous policing to prevent unintended spillover of intra-day credit into the overnight market.

That explains why we are always ready to welcome overseas financial institutions to London, why we rigorously avoid discrimination on grounds of nationality in our financial market dealings, and why we have greatly welcomed the decisions by German, French and Swiss banks in particular to concentrate many of their wholesale market activities in London in recent years. Europe needs a broad and deep market like London to rival those in Tokyo and New York. I would not wish, today, to talk at length about the preparations being made in the City for EMU. Partly because this afternoon, in London, we shall be releasing our latest quarterly report on Practical Issues Arising from the Introduction of the Euro, which sets out in some detail the progress that has been made over the last three months, and how we propose to take things forward. In short, we are confident that London will be as well prepared for EMU as BIS Review 1/1997  -5-  any market, when the time comes. As we say in that paper, we are fully involved in preparing the wholesale financial sector of the economy for the euro and, of course, in the extensive work being undertaken at the European Monetary Institute. For the most part that work is proceeding successfully and we are happy with the decisions made. Some are, inevitably, compromises. But that is what building Europe is all about, and we are always ready to seek compromise solutions.
At the same time, we also need to remove the remaining obstacles to further integration within our banking union. Such obstacles are often due to regulatory fragmentation and ring-fencing of national markets. For example, a number of national options and discretions, such as diverging large exposure rules, are hindering the free flow of liquidity and capital in the banking union and should be harmonised further. Turning to other parts of the financial system, we can expect that the CMU will provide further impetus to the growth of market-based finance and may present new challenges to financial stability. Additional steps should be taken to strengthen the ability of European regulators and supervisors to address systemic risks stemming from the non-banking part of the financial sector. This could be achieved by expanding the mandate of relevant authorities and, in the medium run, by creating a single supervisor for the capital markets. Adequate macroprudential instruments need to be envisaged as well, including instruments targeted at market-based finance. Macroprudential tools for this area either still need to be provided to authorities or need to be further clarified in respect of their application. For Securities Financing Transactions (SFT) and derivative markets, macroprudential margins and haircuts have been identified as potentially powerful tools for reducing the excessive build-up of leverage and procyclicality in these markets.10 For alternative investment funds, the existing macroprudential leverage limit needs to be operationalised.

Financial integration in Europe and in the euro area had been growing steadily before the financial and sovereign debt crisis. However, the system was not structurally integrated and when the crisis financial erupted integration quickly reversed, exactly when it was most needed. In response to global and local shocks almost all financial markets became highly fragmented and retrenched inside domestic borders. These developments represented an existential threat to the Monetary Union and the single currency. That fragmentation has reversed along several dimensions in the last few years. But significant room for further improvements in financial integration remains, for example in the integration of retail banking services and in the financing of the corporate sector. Financial integration provides risk sharing mechanisms which can reduce the impact of countryspecific shocks and contributes to macroeconomic stability. Internationally diversified portfolios – cross-regional and cross-border asset holdings, including firm ownership claims – are more resilient to global and local shocks and can mitigate the impact of such adverse scenarios. This is particularly true when integration occurs also in the equity markets as opposed to the current bias towards debt finance intermediated by banks.2 For countries in a monetary union, this risk sharing mechanism is particularly important because the single monetary policy is unable to address asymmetric shocks, since other important adjustment mechanisms, for example related to fiscal policy and exchange rates, are limited.
CPIF inflation became the Riksbank’s formal target variable in Sep-  tember 2017 instead of CPI inflation, but, in practice, also acted as target variable before then. See, for example, Ingves (2012). 9 See Jansson (2014), where I also note that it cannot be specified exactly how much this affected the repo rate. This is partly because the Riksbank’s monetary policy decisions are taken by a committee with six members, and partly because it can also be difficult for an individual member to specify how much of a rate rise is aimed at dampening the accumulation of debt, as opposed to dampening economic activity. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that ‘leaning against the wind’ was not extensive, but neither was it negligible. 8  4 [20]  leaning against the wind, even if there were, of course, different opinions on exactly how high the policy rate should be. 10 This was an educational period in many ways. Looking back on it with a few years’ perspective, there are two main conclusions, or lessons, that I would like to emphasise: (i) (ii)  It is important not to lose sight of inflation and inflation expectations. Fairly significant interest rate rises may be needed to brake the buildup of financial imbalances. I shall discuss these conclusions separately and explain what I mean in a little more detail.

Mugur Isărescu: Transition – how to secure a stronger economic future for the constituency? Speech by Mr Mugur Isărescu, Governor of the National Bank of Romania, in the panel on “Transition: How to Secure a Stronger Economic Future for the Constituency?”, during the annual meeting of the IMF and World Bank Constituency, Kyiv, Ukraine, 4 June 2016. *  *  *  Ladies and Gentlemen, In my address I would like to focus on the challenges in conducting monetary policy in a way that will contribute to securing a stronger economic future for countries in our constituency. Obviously, my account is shaped by Romania’s experience, but I hope it will still keep you interested, as it may be relevant for other small to medium-sized emerging economies. 1. Brief account of monetary policy regimes in Romania  At the time when the National Bank of Romania had to choose a strategy for conducting its monetary policy, i.e. in the early nineties, monetary targeting was actually the only feasible option. Not only did the low forex reserves preclude a fixed exchange rate arrangement, but, even if possible, the alternative was not suitable given the widening external imbalance. However, by the end of the decade, monetary targeting had reached its operational limits given the break in the relation between monetary aggregates and inflation, a phenomenon which matched developments elsewhere in the world. At that point, we took into account pegging the exchange rate, but neither the hard nor the soft version was deemed appropriate.
Chart 4: Rates of return on capital and cost of capital compared to survey measures Net rate of return for PNFCs (ONS) (a) Net rate of return for PNFCs - 2000-2016 Average cost of loans for private non-financial corporations (b) Weighted average cost of capital (c) Bank Rate Average rate of return (survey) (d) Average hurdle rate (survey) (e) Average cost of bank loans (survey) (f)  Per cent 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0  2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 Source: Bank of England, ONS Profitability of UK companies and Bank of England Finance and Investment Decisions Survey. (a) UK non-financial corporations' net operating surplus/net capital stock (per annum). (b) Weighted average interest rate of sterling loans made to private non-financial corporations by UK resident monetary financial institutions (excl. the central bank). 11  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  11  (c) (d) (e)  This is partly based on estimates of the equity risk premium as described in Inkinen, Stringa, and Voutsinou (2010). There is considerable uncertainty surrounding these estimates. Question 12: 'If you set an investment hurdle rate, what is it?'. Question 5: 'On average, what is the total rate of return realised on investment projects completed in the past 5 years?' . One might still, however, have expected firms' hurdle rates to come down to reflect lower financing costs and lower yields on other investments such as financial assets.

Average annual growth in business investment in the decade before the crisis was 2.4% and in the 15 years before the crisis it was 3.6%. 2  3  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  3  One reason for this weak investment since the crisis has been weak demand. Over a run of years, the rate of investment should adjust to maintain the capital stock at a particular level relative to GDP. If GDP grows more slowly, less investment is required to maintain the capital stock at a desired level relative to GDP. This can lead to a vicious circle in which weak demand leads to lower investment that in turn impairs the productive capacity of the economy. This in turn impairs demand as households and businesses revise down their expectations for future income and profits and so on. So what starts as a demand shock can end up as a supply shock. According to the IMF, this effect probably accounts for some of the weakness in investment in advanced economies. 3  But this is unlikely to be the whole story behind the weakness of investment post crisis. One common and repeated candidate explanation is the lack of finance for productive investment. This is not a new issue; it has very deep roots in the UK. The role of banks in providing finance to businesses for investment has been examined many times since Charles Geach’s day.
In a number of regions, housing prices surged by more than 20%, even though households’ real incomes declined. As an anti-crisis measure, we also expanded opportunities for the so-called good mortgage loans with a small down payment. However, in the primary market, the portion of mortgage loans with a small down payment, which involve higher risks, increased from 24% in 2020 Q2 to 45% in 2021 Q1. This also reflects the observed trends and shows that the anti-crisis measures achieved their objectives and should be phased out. Otherwise, we might face the risks of ‘bubbles’ in this market. In turn, the Bank of Russia has already taken measures to prevent the materialisation of these risks — we have raised the so-called macroprudential buffers for mortgage loans with a down payment of 15% to 20%. However, if lending standards continue to lower (this is a trend we are observing) or housing price growth remains fast, we might not rule out the need to increase these buffers. Furthermore, unsecured consumer lending is also expanding, while households’ incomes are recovering much more slowly. This means that households’ debt burden is growing. It is crucial to prevent a situation where its level becomes hazardous. In this regard, we decided to raise the macroprudential buffers for consumer loans to the pre-pandemic level as well beginning on 1 July.

Signing a bank deposit agreement or a loan agreement or buying an insurance product, individuals should have comprehensive information on the conditions, expected returns, the full cost of all services, their rights and obligations. The issue of hard selling of services has also been discussed at the State Duma for many years. We are developing an instrument whereby key information documents on financial products disclose compact and clear data to consumers regarding all the conditions. We are also addressing the topic of hard selling of extra services and various fees when individuals sign 5/6  BIS central bankers' speeches  a consumer loan agreement. At the end of last year, we issued an information letter obliging banks to include such additional ‘services’ (only so-called services because they generally provide no benefits to people) into the calculation of the total cost of credit. I have said ‘an information letter obliging’, but there is a contradiction here since these are only recommendations and, accordingly, they cannot oblige anybody. We propose that organisations should specify the total cost of credit from the very start so that people understand the actual costs for loan servicing. This will enable people to select more advantageous offers. However, we certainly need legislative changes. Such amendments have been drafted with the engagement of the Central Bank. They propose the introduction of a so-called open-ended cooling-off period, which will enable consumers to fully abandon any services foisted on them together with a loan (with the refund of all related payments).