samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Central banks have been able to conduct monetary policy to attain their objectives – price stability and a smoothly functioning payment system – by varying the volume of the means of payment or adjusting terms and conditions in their payment systems. The central banks provide liquidity that enables us to make payments smoothly. Gold standard and redeemable money create credibility During the second half of the 19th century, the gold standard was introduced. The meant that the value of a banknote, the means of payment at the time, was directly linked to something real in that the banknotes could be redeemed for gold in the central bank. 1 However, fiscal policy tensions as a result of world wars and the economic depression in the United States in the 1930s led to the abolition of the gold standard. In addition, payments markets were developed so that other means of payment than cash gained importance. When the link to gold no longer existed, a new ‘nominal anchor’ was needed. The answer became the central bank’s credibility: a responsible monetary policy aimed at price stability. Over a long period, the gold standard was replaced by a regime with fixed exchange 1 Naturally, this was nothing new: coins with direct precious metal content have been used for thousands of  years. But this restored a systematic standard for a direct link between banknotes and gold in large parts of the world, and thus started a period of very stable exchange rates.

There are also open economy aspects to this issue, as it is hardly a coincidence that almost all countries applying some form of inflation targeting policy have chosen an inflation target of almost two per cent. It seems likely that any movement towards a higher inflation target should be the result of an international discussion in which Sweden will hardly be the country to go first. Make up strategies for better automatic stabilisation of shocks Another idea discussed is that of changing the central bank's targets so that a certain measure of history-dependency is built into the monetary policy strategy. For example, the US central bank has initiated a review of its monetary policy framework where one alternative being discussed intensively is a target for average inflation. 10 The idea is that the participants in the economy understand that, if a shock to the economy pushes inflation down, the central bank will, in the future, compensate (make up) for this by allowing slightly higher inflation later on. If prices are sluggish, there will not be such great incentive to cut prices as a response to the shock and inflation will therefore become higher. Such a monetary policy strategy could, therefore, theoretically give better automatic stabilisation of shocks and lead to less of a need to adjust the interest rate, something that is particularly interesting when the policy rate is close to its lower bound.
There will then be a maximum six-month period before the national currencies cease to be legal tender, at which point the transition to the euro will have been completed. Again, during this period in relation to the transition of retail transactions the guiding principle will be no compulsion and no prohibition, although collective efforts will no doubt be made by retailers and banks to shorten the period of dual denomination as far as they can. As far as the UK is concerned, the new Government -- while not definitively ruling it out -- has pointed to formidable difficulties in the way of participating in the euro from the beginning, and promised a referendum before the UK could join. A key consideration for us is likely to be whether -- on the basis of our assessment of the extent to which convergence has indeed been achieved -- the euro-area is a safe club to join in its early stages. If the Government were to decide not to join, at least at that point, it will be crucially important -- in our own national economic interest, and in order to avoid creating unnecessary problems for the euro-member countries -- that we continue to pursue, in parallel with those countries, the consensus policies of monetary and fiscal discipline. If EMU goes ahead, whether or not the UK is a part of it, it is clearly in our interest that it should succeed.

29 November 2018  Deputy Governor Rannveig Sigurðardóttir. Introductory remarks at the 2nd Annual Nordic Cyber in Finance Conference, Helsinki, 29 November 2018  Let me begin by saying that this conference is both timely and interesting for me, as I have only been in office for five months. Given that I come from the monetary policy department at the Central Bank of Iceland, cybersecurity has not been much on my agenda until now. It is, nonetheless, a very important topic. The Central Bank of Iceland, and other central banks are facing several new challenges in this area, both in the financial sector generally and central banking more specifically. Last week I attended an interesting macroprudential policy conference at Danmarks Nationalbank. The discussion paper prepared for that conference was called While the sun is shining, prepare for a rainy day. Sitting there, I pondered what the discussion paper for this conference today might be called. Perhaps something like The snowstorm is here – what do we wear? Cybercrime is now the world’s fastest-growing type of crime. It has shot up to second place on the list of the top ten business risks worldwide, after not even making the list five years ago. The financial sector is particularly important because it greases the wheels of our economies, and cyber risks pose mounting threats to the financial system. Developments since the emergence of the internet show that new technologies have brought with them new challenges.
Moreover, the opportunities for households and companies to borrow money have been restricted because access to credit has declined. The difficulties for banks and other lending institutions to find funding became acute when the financial crisis also hit Sweden with full force. They were forced to accept funding at shorter and shorter terms as these were the  BIS Review 2/2008  5  only markets that continued to function. In this situation the Riksbank intervened by, for instance, offering the banks loans at 3 to 6 months, that is, at much longer maturities than the daily and overnight loans normally offered. We took these measures to improve the functioning of the markets and to make it easier for the banks to continue to provide loans to households and companies. We will continue to offer this form of liquidity support as long as is necessary. The extraordinary measures taken by the Riksbank thus aim to ease the supply of credit and improve the functioning of the market. Although the measures primarily concern safeguarding financial stability, they will also improve the ability of monetary policy to stabilise inflation and the real economy. Substantial interest rate cut in December On 3 December we made the individually largest change in the repo rate since the inflation target officially began to apply in 1995.

With the supervisory pillar in place, completing the Banking Union still calls – as the euro area Heads of State and of Government recently concluded – for a common backstop for the Single Resolution Fund. And, above all, the creation of a European Deposit Guarantee Scheme. 4/5  In the fiscal policy arena, fiscal stabilisation capacity in the euro area needs to be completed through two channels: improving the member countries’ fiscal headroom and developing supranational cyclical insurance instruments. To conclude, I turn once more to the Spanish Royal Academy, which defines “challenge” as an aim it is difficult to achieve and which is thereby an incentive and a test for whosoever faces it. Economic policy-making requires constantly facing the challenges our society throws up. To quote Jean Monnet, “Nothing would be more dangerous than to regard difficulties as failures”.1 Thank you. 1  Jean Monnet, Memoirs, William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., Great Britain, 1978. 5/5
What have companies been using those cash piles for? Well, either they have been returning that cash in bucket-fulls to shareholders or using it to support their share prices through share buy-backs. It was reported in yesterday’s Financial Times that during the first three months of this year alone, the S&P 500 companies in the US spent a record $ billion to repurchase shares and pay cash dividends. While this may help to keep share prices high, they do not create new sources of growth. Meanwhile, capital spending by the S&P 500 companies has grown by an average of just 3.6 percent per year over the last five years. Ultimately, the quantity and quality of investment will determine the quality of growth now and well into the future. The second issue facing these economies is that despite the drop in unemployment, productivity growth has remained weak. The way we understand the recovery process, when demand picks up, companies will first try to meet it using its existing workers. Productivity increases. However, as demand continues to grow, the increase in productivity of existing workers will be insufficient and companies have to hire new workers to increase production. So employment increases. Therefore, an increase in productivity is accompanied by an increase in employment. We have not witnessed that phenomenon this time.

Sukhdave Singh: Global economic outlook and financial landscape – what has changed since the global financial crisis? Special address by Dr Sukhdave Singh, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia (Bank Negara Malaysia), at the 18th Malaysian Banking Summit “Global Economic Outlook and Financial Landscape: What Has Changed Since the Global Financial Crisis?”, Kuala Lumpur, 20 June 2014. *  *  *  I would like to thank ASLI for the invitation to address you today. Given that I am speaking right before your lunch, I do realise that I have been cast into the role of an appetiser and therefore, that I should be brief so that you can quickly get on to the main course. I plan to briefly go over the state of the global economy and its implications for the Malaysian economy. The news here is largely good. However, there are a number of concerns that could impact the quality and sustainability of growth going forward, and I will also discuss these. Global economic outlook and the changing financial landscape The good news is that after five years of rather turbulent conditions and what has been a rather bumpy economic ride, the global economy seems to be finally on the verge of sustained growth. The key to this development is the improved growth conditions that have emerged in many of the advanced economies (AEs), economies that were at the heart of the crisis.
Second, the same is true, by and large, if we move from regions to sectors. There are some reasonably marked differences in average levels of productivity across sector. For example, manufacturing is on average around 35% more productive than construction. Nonetheless, these differences are dwarfed by variations within each sector (Chart 22b). Each has a long, thin upper tail and a short, fat lower tail. Whatever is driving slower rates of technological diffusion, sector-specific technologies are not it. Third, if we look at the external-facing profile of firms, we begin to uncover some important differences (Chart 22c and d). Firms which export have systematically higher levels of productivity than domestically-oriented firms, on average by around a third. The same is true, even more dramatically, for foreign-owned firms. Their average productivity is twice that of domestically-oriented firms. This is not altogether surprising. Firms that export are likely to be exposed to global competition and many are integrated into global supply chains. This increases incentives to boost efficiencies and to match international best practices. 53  The self-same forces are likely to be at play among foreign-owned firms. The  productivity benefits these external-facing firms bring underscore the importance of openness to trade and foreign direct investment in generating rising productivity and living standards over time. We can quantify these benefits by looking in more detail at the relationship between firms’ productivity and their export share (Chart 23). There is a positive and statistically-significant relationship.

19  For instance, Arrowsmith et al (2013) examine the prevalence of bank forbearance  across the small to medium-sized enterprises (SME) sector, finding the effect to be small. The same study finds a potentially larger impact of monetary policy on company failure and productivity. 20  That said, it is  important to note that employment was also higher as a result of looser monetary policy, with potentially smaller crisis-related scarring effects on labour markets. 13  Chodorow-Reich (2014), Greenstone and Mas (2012) and Edgerton (2012) for the US, Amiti and Weinstein (2013) for Japan, Paravisini et al (2015) for Peru, Bentotila et al (2013) for Spain and Franklin et al (2015) for the UK. 14 Bahaj et al (2016). 15 Riley et al (2015), Barnett et al (2014). 16 For example, Newman et al (2015), Hoekman et al (2004). 17 Barnett et al (2014), Broadbent (2012), Hseih and Klenow (2008), Calligaris et al (2016). 18 For example, McGowan et al (2017) and Pessoa and Van Reenen (2014). 19 Cette et al (2016), Reis (2013), Gopinath et al (2015) and Gorton-Ordones (2015). 20 See also, Broadbent (2012). 5  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  5  (d) Slowing Innovation  Some economists believe that the type of technological progress behind productivity growth over the past two centuries may not continue at the same pace in the future.
If losses have to be shared on a large scale this can put the core of the financial system in peril. Corporate bonds and securitised assets can have similar risks, especially if they are effectively held in the banking system. Debt instruments generally can be destabilising if they cannot easily be restructured when losses occur. Equity provides the most efficient form of risk sharing, suggesting perhaps that this area should be a priority for CMU. The nature of investors also matters in ensuring that an increase in cross border market-based financing in the EU does not increase financial stability risks. In general, sources of market-based financing are more likely to be resilient if the investor base is diverse, not excessively reliant on leverage and “sticky”. It is abundantly clear from all of the above that achieving the necessary step change in market-based financing in the EU means a marathon not a sprint. Although it shares its nomenclature with Banking Union, Capital Markets Union is a very different animal. The former is essentially designed to improve stability of and between the euro members through institutional change and moving major financial stability responsibilities to sit at the euro level alongside monetary stability. It was possible to make these institutional changes relatively quickly, though their implementation will take longer. Capital Markets Union, in contrast, aims to deepen and widen the single market, though it needs to have regard to financial stability. It does not require institutional change.

We shall continue to take all of the necessary action to fulfil our mandate and contribute, within this framework, to the success of this tricky but necessary period of transition towards a more coherent, stable and dynamic economic and monetary union. Thank you for your attention. I shall be pleased to answer your questions. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches
At the same time, the level at which card payments become more efficient for society has probably fallen below SEK 70. But which of these figures has fallen furthest? This is something that we do not know. It is thus difficult to say whether consumers are still using more cash than is economically efficient. The Riksbank will follow up the previous studies to get a more exact picture of the use of cards and cash and of the economic costs of producing the different payments. Highlight the charges! It would not be so strange if consumers were to choose to make more cash payments than is economically efficient. In general, consumers have no idea of how much it costs to produce payments. Our survey shows that knowledge concerning what the different means of payment actually cost is limited. Some 20 per cent of the interviewees were unable to say whether it costs them more to use cards or cash. Some 45 per cent of interviewees believe that cash is most expensive for the retail sector and the banks. We already know that it is difficult to assess the costs of various types of payment. 5 They are never clearly disclosed. But the costs are there even if they are not apparent. The retail trade pays charges to the banks for cash and for card payment services, but does not usually price these services directly to its own customers.

Despite the fact that the card industry has developed new, secure ways of making card payments over the web, the survey we have conducted shows that the majority of people still reveal sensitive card information in connection with purchases. According to the survey, only 18 per cent of web purchases were made using the safe solutions for card payments that are available. In as many as 71 per cent of the transactions over the Internet, the customers revealed their card numbers without using any additional safety measures. This is a major source of the card fraud that occurs over the Internet. The Ministry of Justice is currently considering a new proposal on the regulation of unauthorised transactions. This aims to clarify how responsibility for a loss should be divided between the customer and the bank in the event of fraud. New limits for the customers’ deductibles and right to compensation are also proposed. In order to determine how large a part of the loss the customer should be responsible for, it will be necessary to assess how negligent the customer has been. The customers must therefore be informed of the definitions of the different degrees of negligence. If the customers are unclear about the  6  4  Speech by Lars Nyberg (2008): “Paying is expensive – are we using too much cash?”. BIS Review 7/2010  rights and obligations they have, this will probably lead to fewer of them wanting to use cards in the future. The new regulation will increase the cardholders’ responsibility.
With the new amendments of the regulation, the requirement for holding portion of the foreign exchange deposits collected by the banks on their accounts abroad was reduced. This measure is expected to have positive effect on the banks' credit supply in the economy. Monetary Policy in 2001 Monetary policy projection for 2001 has been defined in the macroeconomic policy package incorporated in the arrangement with the International Monetary Fund. Primarily, the 2001 monetary policy will be directed towards preservation of stable macroeconomic environment, as a precondition for achieving long-term sustainable economic growth. The projected economic growth will be supported through the adequate money and credits supply, simultaneously designing the monetary policy in a manner that will not endanger the price stability. Monetary Strategy In 2001, the NBRM will continue implementing the monetary strategy of targeting the exchange rate, thus remaining a nominal anchor in the Macedonian economy. Thus, in 2001, the nominal exchange rate of the Denar against the Deutsche Mark will also be preserved at the targeted level of Denar 31 per one Deutsche Mark. The preservation of the stable Denar exchange rate, as an intermediate goal, will be directed towards achieving the ultimate objective of the monetary policy – the price stability. In addition, the annual inflation rate measured through the costs of living index, is projected to equal 1.2% (December 2001 / December 2000).

The total non-government sector deposits (including the demand deposits) are planned to increase by Denar 5,139 million or by 13.6% in 2001. The deposits growth should result from the increased confidence of the economic agents in the banking system, as a result of: •  Stable macroeconomic environment  •  Increased income of the economic agents resulting from the projected acceleration of the economic activity  •  Initiation of bond repayment process of so-called “old foreign exchange savings”  •  Modification in the legal framework regarding the operations of the Insurance Deposit Fund, which has been transformed into a state fund. Moreover, the amount of the insured deposit, and the indemnfication percentage in case of risky event have been increased, as well  •  Increased presence of foreign investors in the banking system of the Republic of Macedonia. Analyzed by currency denomination, in 2001, Denar and foreign currency deposits are projected to increase by Denar 3,139 million, or by 12.0%, and by Denar 2,000 million, or 17.5%, respectively. Namely, following its introduction in the first half of 2002, the Euro will replace the currencies of the EMU member countries. This will result in enhanced Euro conversion of the households' foreign currency deposits currently denominated in these currencies and not deposited in the banking system. Hence, part of the converted savings are expected to remain within the banking system, increasing the foreign currency deposits.