samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Furthermore, Russia is one of the first states which started to tighten its monetary policy. Our economy is now close to its potential. If we had continued accommodative monetary policy, it would not have promoted growth any longer, but would have only provoked bubbles in the market. As inflation has risen both globally, and inside the country due to internal and sufficiently steady factors, we need to take committed efforts to bring inflation back to the target. Secondly, monetary policy significantly promoted the fast rebound of the Russian economy. I mean not only and not so much the reduction in the key rate in spring 2020. The main thing is the result of inflation targeting over recent years. We were able to shift towards countercyclical monetary policy and aid the economy during the crisis, rather than combat the soaring risks of inflation, as we used to before, exactly because we had been maintaining inflation close to the target for a rather long period of time. This reassures us that we have made the right choice and that our monetary policy instruments enable us to achieve our goals in very diverse circumstances. Thirdly, shifts in the economy and peoples’ and businesses’ expectations and behaviour might require central banks to adjust all their policies, including monetary policies. To this end, most central banks, first of all those pursuing inflation targeting policies, carry out regular in-depth analysis of their goals and instruments, that is, a review of their monetary policies.

At the second stage, we will arrange consultations with the professional community, including financial market representatives, companies, independent analysts, and researchers. Now, I would like to focus on challenges to the economy in a broader context. By the moment, the economy has almost recovered to its pre-crisis level. Today, the key question is about the pace of post-pandemic growth and the drivers that would promote a faster than 1.5–2% annual growth rate (this was our pre-pandemic estimate of potential growth). We believe that, by bringing inflation back to the target, our monetary policy will serve our longterm development goals. Indeed, monetary policy does not influence economic potential. However, it creates prerequisites 2/7  BIS central bankers' speeches  for investment that would improve labour productivity and relocate resources to the industries of tomorrow. The chief result of the inflation targeting regime is that we have managed to decrease the socalled inflation premium and, accordingly, the level of long-term interest rates, thus improving the affordability of long-term financing. These are moderate long-term interest rates, rather than our key rate as such, that are vital for businesses’ investment plans. It is now crucial not to miss the momentum of changes — we need to support digitalisation and, simultaneously, raise labour productivity and reduce companies’ costs. The Government has launched large-scale infrastructure projects that should open new opportunities for businesses to implement really efficient projects. This is also essential given the energy transition that is set to take place.
It has been channelled directly through the banks as well as indirectly, for instance via hedge funds. A good many such funds have obtained large loans from banks in the industrialised countries and, in pursuit of favourable yields, invested the money in emerging markets. This indirect lending can be likened to the Swedish banks’ earlier lending to finance companies. This brings us to the nature of banking in a more profound sense. Traditional banking involves accepting deposits from the non-bank public and lending these funds to various borrowers. Moreover, the equity capital on which banking is based is small, which implies high leverage and low solvency. If all the banks’ capital had consisted instead of equity, incurred losses could have been handled more or less painlessly. With a large proportion of borrowed capital, however, there are liable to be chain reactions that successively spread through the banking system. It is precisely this that necessitates comprehensive, efficient supervision and a functional set of regulations in order to avoid unnecessary losses. That is also why central banks around the world have been assigned the function of safeguarding the financial system’s general stability. BIS Review 83/1998  -5-  What can be done? The current problems in the global financial system need solutions for both the short and the longer run. In the short run it is a question of resolving the acute crises. Work for the longer run must focus on the creation of an international rule system that prevents crises of this type from occurring.

Certainly there are a number of questions and challenges regarding future developments in the banking system and the regulatory framework for it, as has emerged in the recent White Paper on a Future Vision for the Financial System, but further discussion of that topic must await another opportunity. Early this month, Parliament passed legislation lifting restrictions on the remaining stock of offshore krónur, which amounted by that time to 84 b.kr., or just under 3% of GDP. This represented the final step in lifting capital controls on non-residents’ króna-denominated assets. The assets fell into two categories: so-called offshore krónur, on the one hand, and króna-denominated assets held by the failed banks’ estates, on the other. These assets combined amounted to 65% of GDP at the peak. We reduced that percentage to the current level through various measures taken in 2010-2017 — without disturbing the balance of payments or financial stability, without tapping the Bank’s reserves to an inordinate degree, and without significant legal repercussions. This success has been noticed, including internationally. Alongside the final liberalisation of offshore krónur, the special reserve requirement on capital inflows into the bond market and high-yielding deposits was lowered to 0%. This synchronised effort has delivered positive results. The 5  exchange rate of the króna has not been under pressure due to offshore króna outflows, and the Central Bank has not yet needed to use significant reserve assets in order to fulfil its pledge not to allow those outflows to weaken the currency.
Figure 2 CPI monthly inflation (percentage) 2.0 1.5 1.0 0.5 0.0 -0.5 -1.0 -1.5  Jan.  Feb.  Mar. Apr. 2001-2006 Average  May  Jun. 2007  Jul. Aug. 2008  Sep.  Oct.  Nov.  Dec.  2009  Source: National Statistics Bureau (INE). 6  BIS Review 145/2009  Figure 3  Accumulated CPI variation by country  (percentage)  Japan  0  South Africa Turkey Chile Indonesia  Colombia Hungary Peru Brazil Czech Rep. Malaysia Israel Mexico South Korea Norway USA Thailand Poland UK Sweden Eurozone Switzerland Canada Hong Kong  5  10  USA Eurozone Hong Kong Switzerland Malaysia Chile Japan  15  20  (a) Between January 2007 and October 2008. -4  -2  South Africa Hungary Mexico Brazil Poland Colombia Israel Turkey Indonesia South Korea Sweden UK Norway Peru Thailand Canada Czech Rep.  0  2  4  6  (b) Between October 2008 and September 2009 (*)  (*) For Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia and South Africa, data at August 2009. Sources: Statistics bureaus of each country and Bloomberg. Figure 4 World growth forecasts (annual change, percentage) 4  3.0  3  2.5  2  2.0  1  1.5  0  1.0  -1  0.5  -2 -3  0.0 08  May  Sep.  09  May  (a) Forecasts for 2009  Sep.  09  Mar. May  Jul. Sep.  (b) Forecasts for 2010  Source: Consensus Forecasts.

Today, many of the ASEAN-5 countries have fairly deep and liquid local bond markets. Central banks, whose operation is contingent on a deep and liquid bond and foreign exchange markets, have been part of the development process for the government bond market. Over the years, our financial markets have become more efficient, more sophisticated and more balanced. ASEAN-5 have moved from a predominantly bank-based or credit market to a growing capital market, both equity and bond. We have also strived to better manage the impact from volatile capital flows as we seek to balance between foreign inflows and capital outflow. Here bond markets have been instrumental to help absorb the impact from the volatilities and sudden reversal of these flows. These developments have facilitated central banks in their conduct of monetary policy, manage market expectations, and guide the path of monetary policy. Today, the ABMI is taking this development further from a domestic orientation to a regional level. This is timely in view of the increasing need for Asians to find new sources for growth and new markets for their exports, and in recognition of the need for “Asian savings to finance Asian investment”. Initiatives such as the Credit Guarantee and Investment Facility (CGIF) is a case in point that aims to foster cross border fund mobilization using the tools of a regional credit guarantee vehicle.
These include sticky information models, in which new information is slow to diffuse through the population (Mankiw and Reis, 2002), perhaps because agents only probabilistically pay attention to experts or to news (Carroll, 2003). They also include noisy information models, in which agents form expectations based on noisy private signals (Woodford, 2001). Other explanations are based on the use of some form of adaptive learning (Evans and Honkapohja, 2001), switching between different prediction rules (Branch, 2004); or learning from lifetime inflation experiences (Malmendier and Nagel, 2013; Madeira and Zafar, 2012). In our information-based experiment that I discussed earlier, we found that cross-sectional disagreement (variance) in expectations falls after our information treatments, which is consistent with a sticky-information model and points to the importance of private information and information constraints. We also found evidence of gender differences in updating behavior, which in turn may reflect differences in gathering and evaluating new information. Numeracy, financial literacy, and education also appear to play a role in explaining dispersion across respondents, as seen in Chart 8. In our research, we have found extreme inflation expectations, especially high values, to be associated with lower financial literacy and numeracy skills, and with being relatively under-informed about past inflation or inflationrelated facts. Finally, there exists suggestive evidence of respondents forecasting under asymmetric loss, with respondents appearing to be averse to under-estimating inflation.

Having a panel reduces the variability induced by changes in composition month to month and increases the precision of any measured changes in expectations. Before we implemented the survey, our proposal was reviewed and approved by the Bank’s senior management. Next, we issued a request for proposals and received three bids from independent survey organizations to field our survey design. In the end, we chose to work with the Demand Institute, a partnership of the Conference Board and Nielsen. The resulting Survey of Consumer Expectations is a nationally representative monthly internet-based survey. Its rotating panel consists of about 1,200 household heads. We find that the internet approach allows us a great deal of flexibility to ask new questions, and it BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  makes it considerably easier to pose probabilistic questions and to run experiments. It is also – and this is an important consideration – the most cost-effective mode of collection; at the same time, there is also some evidence of higher response accuracy to personally sensitive questions. Our sample is based on the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Survey sample, which is drawn from U.S. postal addresses. Respondents are compensated with a payment of $ per survey, and surveys vary in length from fifteen to thirty minutes. Our firsttime response rate is about 60 percent, and we find that respondents have somewhat greater-than-average education and income. The average response rate among repeat respondents is more than 80 percent.
We called upon Marvin Goodfriend of Carnegie Mellon University to give his views on the optimum inflation rate, Frederic Mishkin of Columbia University to write about the policy of inflation targeting and to tell us to what extent it is truly a new phenomenon, and William White of  BIS Review 71/2007  1  the Bank for International Settlements in Basel to address the difficult question of whether price stability is really enough. Manfred Neumann from the University of Bonn was asked to provide an assessment of fixed and flexible exchange rate systems, Peter Kenen of Princeton University to give us his opinion on the need for foreign exchange reserves in flexible exchange rate systems, Martin Hellwig from the Max Planck Institute in Bonn to reveal his thinking on the co-existence of the Swiss franc and the euro, and Alexander Swoboda of the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva to share his ideas with us on the reform of the international monetary system. This third section, which is aimed rather more than the first two sections at a specialised audience, is available in English only. The two other sections, meanwhile, are available in French, German, Italian and English. It only remains for me to that I hope you will find the book both engaging and interesting.

Over 26 million people are unemployed in the EU today, almost 10 million more than in 2007. Low growth, high unemployment and high debt levels are not a good combination. Even though there are signs of a moderate revival of activity abroad, growth may remain low for a protracted period. Real wage growth in Norway has diverged substantially from that observed in Germany and the US. This is attributable to the sharp price rise for Norwegian goods in recent years. Norway’s terms of trade have improved and the gains shared between owners and workers. The wage share has remained fairly stable. Chart 5: Real wages and productivity for mainland Norway Strong growth in activity in the petroleum sector has for many years been an engine of growth also for the mainland economy, generating high growth in output and employment. Since a share of the terms of trade gains has benefitted wage-earners in the form of wage increases, real wage growth in Norway has been considerably higher than productivity growth. But the economic picture for Norway may be changing. We cannot assume that Norway’s terms of trade will continue to improve. Investment in the petroleum sector is levelling off. Output growth in the mainland economy has slackened. When activity in the petroleum sector eventually declines, there will also be a need for economic restructuring in Norway. The business sector will have to seek new markets where competition may be intense. Restructuring may prove particularly demanding given Norway’s high cost level.
We began publishing this rate on April 3 of this year, along with two other repo rates: the Tri-Party General Collateral Rate and the Broad General Collateral Rate. 18 This work complements steps by the Federal Reserve to promote greater transparency in rates in unsecured markets through enhancements to the calculation of the effective federal funds rate (EFFR) and the launching of an entirely new rate, the overnight bank funding rate (OBFR).19 I have long been a proponent of the idea that central banks are well suited to take on this responsibility. Reference rates have strong public good properties, and the private sector faces notable coordination challenges in this area. Central banks have a long history in producing such measures—recognizing that traditionally this has been for purposes related to monetary policy— 3/6  BIS central bankers' speeches  and are trusted independent parties. In my view, central banks also ultimately “own” the financial stability risks that are present when key reference rates are flawed. Better to recognize this responsibility and move proactively to mitigate such risks than to step aside and hope that someone else will take up the mantle of reform. The Federal Reserve has designed these benchmarks to be compliant with IOSCO principles, with regular review by oversight bodies and comprehensive ethics and conflict-of-interest policies for staff.20 Best practice also dictates that administrators periodically review the rates they produce to assess whether changes in the underlying markets require changes in how those rates are administered.

The background data for the May Business Perceptions Report also points to less dynamic employment in the months ahead, in line with business expectations as reported in the IMCE. This is consistent with declining real wages amid rising inflation. In any case, the unemployment rate remains below its historical averages, standing at 7.7% in the February-April quarter (figure 5). On the external front, global inflation has risen significantly in recent months, with core inflation accelerating in several economies. In the United States, in addition to high goods inflation, there has been higher records in services and volatile components of the basket, amid a still tight labor market and high house prices. In the Eurozone, while energy remains the main factor behind price increases, food inflation and core measures have accelerated lately. In the United Kingdom, in addition to higher goods and energy inflation, services have become more prevalent, amid upward wage pressures. In Latin America, energy and food prices have continued to drive inflation, which has also passed through to higher prices for some services (figure 6). The rise in inflation has occurred in a scenario of high cost pressures around the world. The continuing impact of the pandemic on global supply chains and commodity prices has been compounded by the effects of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and recent confinements in China. Producer price indexes have risen to unprecedented levels and across countries in the last year, reflecting the higher costs of commodities and intermediate inputs.
Like other central banks, we are constantly refining our forecasting tools to enable us to become better at predicting the future. Hopefully we will gradually increase the precision of our forecasts. However, at  2  BIS Review 101/2006  the end of the day it is not realistic to believe that we should be able to predict this type of event in its entirety. With regard to developments in recent years, it is also an important insight that inflation has been held down by forces that are essentially favourable for the economy. To put it another way, developments have been dominated by positive changes in what is known as the supply side of the economy. The fact that prices are pressed down by increased competition and increased foreign trade is something we all can benefit from – as consumers. And the fact that productivity growth in the economy is high should benefit everyone in the long term, in the form of increased welfare. Our monetary policy strategy Before we look ahead, it may be useful if I explain how we reason in general when making our interest rate decisions. The objective of monetary policy is price stability – in other words, low inflation. We have specified this as consumer prices, measured according to the consumer price index, increasing by two per cent a year. As it takes time before interest rate changes have an effect, monetary policy must be based on forecasts of the inflation rate a couple of years ahead.

Fadilj Bajrami: ECB regional cooperation programme with central banks in the Western Balkans Address by Mr Fadilj Bajrami, Vice Governor of the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia, on the occasion of the third Programme Steering Committee Meeting of the ECB Regional Cooperation Programme with central banks in the Western Balkans, Pristina, 27 March 2015. *  *  *  Dear Governor Hamza, Dear Deputy Governor Gjoni, Dear Mr. Fehlker, Dear Mr. Chlad, Representatives from central banks, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am glad to be here, in Pristina, with you today, on the occasion of the third and final meeting of the Steering Committee, to officially mark the successful completion of the joint cooperation programme between the ECB and the national central banks of the Eurosystem, on the one hand, and the central banks of the Western Balkans, on the other. The inclusion of the three central banks in this programme, which aims to strengthen their institutional capacity and align their operations with the central banking standards of the EU, is of enormous importance for the region, given the role of central banks in the EU accession process. Namely, this regional approach of the ECB allows raising the level of compliance with the EU standards and policies, but also creates an opportunity to advance the cooperation between the central banks in the region and the central banks of the EU.
It is much more prudent and prosaic than hovering over the relocate button or rushing to the exit door. But re-structuring by firms will in general increase their complexity. I struggle to see an outcome in which banks and insurers do not get harder to supervise and harder to resolve for all involved. While the outbounds are a little further advanced in their planning than the ‘inbounds’ based in the EEA, I expect that – depending on any developments in the Brexit negotiations – we will see a large number of the latter apply to us for authorisation on the assumption that access akin to their current passporting rights to operate in the UK will fall away. Time and negotiations will tell whether that assumption will prove correct. If it is, authorisations are going to be a significant operational challenge for the PRA. Brexit poses some material risks to our objectives but we are well on the case in dealing with them. In April I wrote to the CEO of every affected firm about their Brexit contingency plans and received over 400 responses. Supervisors have carefully scrutinised each one and provided feedback where plans needed more work. We particularly want assurance that firms have considered ‘cliff-edge’ scenarios where there is no negotiated agreement for financial services in place when we exit, and the two sides do not reach agreement on issues such as transition, mutual recognition of standards, and co-operation in financial regulation or supervision.

News conference  Berne, 15 June 2017 Thomas Jordan  Introductory remarks by Thomas Jordan  Ladies and gentlemen It is a pleasure for me to welcome you to the Swiss National Bank’s news conference. I will begin by explaining our monetary policy decision and our assessment of the economic situation. I will then hand over to Fritz Zurbrügg, who will present this year’s Financial Stability Report. After that, Andréa Maechler will review developments on the financial markets. Finally, we will – as ever – be pleased to take your questions. Monetary policy decision  Let me begin with our monetary policy decision and the inflation forecast. We are maintaining our expansionary monetary policy, with the aim of stabilising price developments and supporting economic activity. Interest on sight deposits at the SNB is to remain at –0.75% and the target range for the three-month Libor is unchanged at between –1.25% and –0.25%. We will remain active in the foreign exchange market as necessary, while taking the overall currency situation into consideration. The negative interest rate and our willingness to intervene in the foreign exchange market are intended to make Swiss franc investments less attractive, thereby easing pressure on the currency. The Swiss franc is still significantly overvalued. The new conditional inflation forecast differs little from that of March. We continue to anticipate an inflation rate of 0.3% for the current year. For 2018, the forecast has fallen slightly to 0.3%, from 0.4% in the previous quarter.