samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The financial collapse in Russia, deepening recession in Japan, the long battle – then sudden defeat last week – in Brazil’s attempt to hold its exchange rate, and fluctuating fears of possible knock-on effects on the major countries’ financial markets all contributed to an increased sense of financial fragility, which has not been easy to contain. We can, I believe, still avert a more general international financial upheaval (and the financial markets’ response to the latest developments in Brazil, as well as the beginnings of a recovery in capital flows to some countries in Asia, are reasonably encouraging in this respect). But, we are nevertheless bound to see a pronounced slowdown of world economic activity. The IMF has cut its latest (December) forecast for world growth to less than 2¼% in 1998/1999. And the risks almost certainly remain on the downside. That’s still not global slump or recession. But large parts of the world economy are in fact in recession and the prospect for the world as a whole turns very much on what happens in the major industrial countries. In essence, what we are seeing is a sharp cutback in capital flows to much of the emerging world and to some of the transition economies, enforcing on those countries a corresponding cutback in domestic demand and creating the need for an urgent improvement in their current accounts.

The Bank of Albania is an active supporter of financial and economic integration, considering it as one of the most important pillars to release the potential of the economy and boost its resilience to shocks. 3. On the Memorandum All the above, underlines the great importance of our economic and financial cooperation with Turkey. This cooperation imposes even us – the policy makers – to intensify the exchange of information and opinions, and seek to promote the finding of common solutions to common challenges. In this spirit, the Bank of Albania and the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey are signing today this Memorandum of Cooperation, which may be well considered as the coronation of the insofar cooperation, as well as of our efforts to continue with drafting the relevant institutional framework for clarifying the operational cooperation protocols, in a series of central bank fields. This memorandum elevates the relations between our two countries to a new dimension. It confirms the will to elevate the level of cooperation and consolidate the ties between the two countries, providing for both institutions the necessary space for the intensification of mutual exchange of information and expertise in various fields of central banking, such as: supervision, financial stability, research, and financial education, and the regular dialogue at technical and political level. It is an important step for obtaining maximum benefits from the positive effects of integration and minimising the negative ones.
Calculated through a combination of ‘SOC2KM’, ‘SC102KM’, SC2KMMJ’, ‘SOC10M’ and ‘SOCMAIN’ to create 10 classes of occupations as these change across time  Pay  Log of average gross hourly pay in main job (‘HOURPAY’)  Public sector or private  ‘PUBLICR’ Whether working in the public or  sector  private sector  Region  Region of usual residence ‘URESMC’  Sector  A combination of Sector (SIC2007) ‘IND07’ and industry section (main job) ‘IND07M’ as these change across time  Tenure  Length of time continuously employed ‘EMPLEN’ 36  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  36  UK-born  A combination of varying country of origin and country of birth variables: ‘CRYOX’, ‘CRYOX7’, ‘CRYO’, ‘CRYO7’ and ‘CRY01’  Usual hours worked  Log of total usual hours in main job (including overtime) ‘TTUSHR’  Wave  ‘THISWV’ Wave to which the data refers to  37  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  37  References Alkadry, M G and Tower, L E (2006), 'Unequal Pay: The Role of Gender', Public Administration Review, Vol. 66, No. 6, pp. 888-898. BEIS (2017), 'Race in the workplace: The McGregor-Smith Review', Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Bjerk, D (2007), 'The Differing Nature of Black-White Wage Inequality across Occupational Sectors', The Journal of Human Resources, Vol. 42, No. 2, pp. 398-434. Black, D, Haviland, A, Sanders, S and Taylor, L (2006), 'Why do Minority Men Earn Less?

Today, financial firms with around $ trillion assets under management have committed to harmonised reporting using the Task-Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) template.16 This has encouraged wider scrutiny of, and actions to mitigate, the risks to companies’ profits and balance sheets posed by climate change. Pay gap disclosure could have a similarly profound behavioural effect on companies. Fourth, there is also a strong case for improving the sets of data available publicly to monitor progress towards equality of pay and opportunity in the workplace. One example of useful additional data would be longitudinal data tracking individuals from school into employment, perhaps using administrative data or new surveys. This would help to understand the key determinants, and obstacles, to career and pay progression. Fifth and finally, published pay gap data are imperfect and can sometimes give a misleading impression of diversity patterns. We have demonstrated how raw pay gap data can sometimes give rise to puzzles. We 15  https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/business-population-estimates-2019/business-population-estimates-for-the-uk-andregions-2019-statistical-release-html 16 TCFD (2019). 34  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  34  have also demonstrated, however, that a careful consideration of various compositional factors can resolve these puzzles and provide a clearer picture of underlying patterns. There is no reason why companies could not use these techniques when interpreting their own results.
.” and affording “the means of discounting commercial paper.” Decision-making authority was vested in an institution structured to bring a diversity of largely independent perspectives to the table, for many of the same reasons that most governments vest monetary policy authority today with committees rather than individuals. The Federal Reserve was set up with a balance of public and private perspectives, drawn from across the country – a structure designed to avoid concentrating too much power in Washington, and also to provide a counterweight to New York. This body was comprised of a group of seven governors appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate – five governors and the Secretary of the Treasury, the Comptroller of the Currency – and the heads (then called Governors) of 12 reserve banks. The terms of the Washington-based “Board of Governors” were long and staggered, giving them an extended horizon for policy making more  consistent with the time frame in which monetary policy works and with the long-term interests of the nation than might be shaped by the electoral calendar. Reserve Bank presidents were appointed by their boards of directors. The Reserve Banks, spread across the country, were established as individual corporate entities, owned by banks, with individual boards of directors, a majority of which were elected by the bank shareholders.

Greater transparency in this form cannot eliminate policy uncertainty, but it can reduce it to a level closer to what the members of the FOMC individually confront. Alongside these changes in the conduct of monetary policy, the Fed today operates with a significantly greater degree of deference from the Executive branch than was true for most of its history. Executive branch officials do not comment publicly on the desirable course of monetary policy, and it would be unusual today for a White House or Treasury official to admit to seeking to influence in private the actions of the Chairman or the FOMC. These improvements in the de facto degree of independence with which the Fed operates are the result of changes in behavior and practice of the Executive branch. They are not written into law. They probably were aided by improvements in monetary policy transparency and by the favorable results the Fed has delivered under the past two chairmen. And they are in part the result of a broader recognition that monetary policy credibility depends significantly on both the de jure and de facto independence of the central bank. Changes in practice based on knowledge and learning may be as important as what is established by law in contributing to the independence of the central bank. The formal institutional arrangements of the central banks around the world have changed more over the last few decades than those governing the Fed. Central bank independence is much more firmly established and more widespread.
Ravi Menon: Skills for the future Welcome remarks by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Institute of Banking and Finance Distinction Evening, Singapore, 29 September 2017. * * * Mr Lim Swee Say, Minister for Manpower Members of the IBF Council, Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to the IBF Distinction Evening 2017. Tonight, we are honoured to have Mr Lim Swee Say, Minister for Manpower, as our Guest-ofHonour. Minister Lim, as you know, has been a lifelong passionate advocate for helping our workers build up their skills, grow in their jobs, and contribute to the economy. He will speak later in the evening on these issues – issues that are close to his heart – and also to all of us as part of the IBF community. The global economy is in a better place this year compared to last year. Let us take stock of where we are. The Singapore economy is on track to achieve slightly higher growth this year compared to 2016. And so is the financial sector. For the first five years after the global financial crisis, our financial sector grew twice as fast as the overall economy. Last year, for the first time, the financial sector grew slower than the overall economy, weighed down by weaker lending growth to the region. This year, the financial sector is expected to grow by 2.5-3.5%, slightly faster than the 2.03.0% expected for the overall economy.

Beyond the headline growth rates, Singapore has also made significant strides as an international financial centre in recent years. We are consistently ranked among the top five financial centres in the world, sometimes even top three. Singapore, along with Hong Kong, remains the dominant centre in the Asia-Pacific for offshore lending, debt markets, and derivatives trading. Our role as the leading regional hub has grown in re-insurance and infrastructure finance. We have a global position in foreign exchange, private banking, and asset management. But we have quite some way to go in the equities market space, beyond of course REITS where we are still Asia’s largest hub. Financial services are a major export engine for the Singapore market. Singapore runs a surplus in financial services trade. This surplus has grown by 40% since 2011. Singapore has been gaining market share in the imports of financial services by several major economies including China, India, and ASEAN. The medium-term prospects for the financial sector are good. 1/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  I say this, with full recognition of the daunting challenges facing the industry. But our challenges are not without silver linings – which, if we are smart and nimble, we can harness to our advantage. Global growth is very unlikely to pick up to the levels that we saw in the heady days before the financial crisis. But Asia will remain the most dynamic region in the world. Its middle class is rapidly growing and its businesses are expanding across the region.
At the same time, the Central Bank has also been conducting Open Market Operations aggressively, to manage the liquidity position in the market to be within the reserve money targets. Figure 3: Repo, Reverse Repo and Call Money Rates  Per Cent  15.00 13.00 11.00 9.00 7.00 02-Dec-06  21-Oct-06  11-Nov-06  30-Sep-06  09-Sep-06  29-Jul-06  19-Aug-06  08-Jul-06  17-Jun-06  27-May-06  15-Apr-06  06-May-06  25-Mar-06  04-Mar-06  21-Jan-06  11-Feb-06  31-Dec-05  5.00  Repo Rate Reverse Repo Rate Weighted Average Call Money rate (Tax Adjusted)  Responding to the tight monetary policy measures adopted thus far, market interest rates have increased, thereby discouraging excessive consumption and borrowing for such purposes. In turn, this has led to a deceleration in the high growth in the money supply. We believe that the tight monetary policy exercised by the Central Bank was instrumental in pulling back the growth in Reserve money from 20 per cent at end 2004 to 17 per cent by end August 2006. This decrease would have naturally led to a corresponding deceleration in broad money growth in the future, although in absolute terms, the growth in broad money remained uncomfortably high, around 19-20 per cent, during January to June 2006, a legacy of the high reserve money growth in the past.

The key policy instrument used in this endeavour is the establishment of policy interest rates for borrowing (Repurchase Rate) and for lending (Reverse Repurchase Rate) that operates through the Bank’s Open Market Operations. The Central Bank conducts Open Market Operations to keep the level of Reserve money in the system at an appropriate level, while it uses the Statutory Reserve Ratio (SRR) on commercial bank deposit liabilities to further support the monetary policy. Financial System Stability, the other core objective of the Central Bank, is achieved through the regulation and supervision of financial institutions, the overseeing of the financial infrastructure which includes critical payment and settlement systems, as well as keeping a close watch on the financial markets as a whole. To achieve this objective, the Central Bank employs a series of prudential and regulatory measures. In addition to the core objectives, the Central Bank provides policy advice to the Government and vital state sector enterprises to strengthen macroeconomic stability and to enhance growth prospects. The Bank also undertakes several agency and ancillary functions, which include managing the Foreign Reserves of the country, Public Debt and Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF). Further, the Central Bank plays a key role in broadening the financial infrastructure and strengthening the small, medium and microfinance sectors in the country. 2. Outline of today's statement  The policy statement presented today for the year 2007 and beyond focuses on several areas.
Here the Stability and Growth Pact lays down clear constraints on budget policy: the countries are to strive for budgetary positions close to balance or in surplus in the medium term and under normal circumstances they are to prevent the budget deficit from exceeding 3 per cent of GDP. A process has been set up for supporting the forces in each country that back a responsible policy. The process gets its muscle from the ultimate possibility of applying sanctions to countries that do not follow the guidelines. BIS Review 9/1999  –2–  The background to the EU countries’ agreement on strict guidelines in this field is the concern about the size of government debt and the central role of fiscal policy in relation to monetary policy. Fiscal policy affects price stability both via the level of economic activity and via expectations of future inflation. Without the support of generally consolidated fiscal policies in the euro area, the task of achieving price stability would be a heavy one. Problems and shortcomings in fiscal policy hit growth and employment in that they necessitate a level of interest rates that is higher than otherwise. Today, far too few countries fulfil the medium-term fiscal policy objectives and the major euro countries have very small margins to the Pact’s definition of an excessive deficit. This can lead to problems in the Union, particularly if a weaker economic development were to result in further budgetary deterioration.

Now that the euro has been introduced, there is still work to be done to ensure that the monetary union also functions properly in the longer run. One of the major challenges is to achieve a good working relationship in the euro area between the single monetary policy and other components of economic policy. Achieving this interaction can be difficult even at the national level. Sweden’s problems in the 1980s are a good example: fiscal policy was not sufficiently tight to counter the rapid expansion of credit and neither was the supply side functioning all that well, which also contributed to the overheating. In the monetary union, the single monetary policy has to mesh with the national fiscal, wage and structural policies of eleven countries. While decisions about the other components of economic policy are still mainly national, they are highly important for the monetary union’s success. It is envisaged that good interaction will be achieved in that the euro countries monitor each other and jointly discuss their national policies. Starting from mutually agreed policy guidelines, each EU country is to present regular accounts of how it intends to fulfil the common objectives. If a country’s policy diverges from the agreed guidelines, the idea is that other countries will protest at an early stage; each country must shoulder its share of the responsibility for this. The work of constructing uniform rules has made most progress in the field of fiscal policy.
At the end of this month, it is planned to approve the restructuring plans of the banks in Group 1 (those controlled by the FROB), and those of Group 2 (the other banks which will require State aid) will foreseeably be approved before year-end. The restructuring plans envisage the transfer of assets to the asset management company, which will become operational in December, and the recapitalisation of banks which need it. Each bank will  4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  have a schedule for implementing the measures that it must adopt, and these are expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2013. Conclusions The State Budget for 2013 represents a substantial effort in terms of austerity. The intended fiscal adjustment is certainly very ambitious, given the ongoing recessionary setting for public finances next year. Central government efforts would be insufficient if not accompanied too by the adjustment to which regional and local government have committed. From the macroeconomic standpoint, some data show progress is being made in rebalancing the Spanish economy. The bulk of the correction has already been made by the current account and it is close to balance in 2012 which, foreseeably, will enable it to run a surplus in 2013. Similarly, we can see improvements in the competitiveness of the Spanish economy both with regard to labour cost indicators and productivity. We forecast that in 2014, and measured by unit labour costs, Spain will have recovered practically all of the competitiveness lost between 1998 and 2008.

Those are absolute prerequisites for stability in banking. Active, and sometimes intrusive, supervision of banks, and particularly of global banks, has to be at the foundation for stable banking and finance. I don’t think any reconfiguration of the structure of banking and finance is going to get us to an intrinsically safer system, taken as a whole. And we have to remember that this last global crisis, which is still with us in many ways, started not with large universal banks or large global banks, but with narrow or specialised players. Countrywide (the mortgage provider) in the US, Northern Rock in the UK, investment banks like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. It was accentuated through AIG’s Financial Products division, which played a prominent role on the derivative markets. But it was not global banks that sparked off the crisis, although they helped propagate it globally. It bears reminding ourselves of that. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  No matter how we restructure the system, no matter how we cut down or dice the pieces, banking will involve risk. And without the right culture – whether it’s about an investment bank or commercial bank or a mono-line player – and without the active and intelligent supervision, we’d have the same problems over and over again. The problems that underpinned this global crisis were old-fashioned problems – property booms that were misjudged by banks, regulators and borrowers; and the problem of banks relying too heavily on borrowing short term to invest long-term.
The authorities in the Mainland of China, whilst repeatedly emphasizing that the responsibility for monetary policy in Hong Kong is for Hong Kong, in accordance with the principle of “one country, two systems”, have also expressed unequivocal support for the Hong Kong dollar’s link to the US dollar. There is a standing offer for extending help, if help is required, in the use of the Mainland’s foreign reserves. There is also a clear commitment of not devaluing the RMB, with full and convincing economic justifications in their own right, but also out of concern on the possible adverse psychological impact on the Hong Kong dollar’s fixed link with the US dollar. 32. But we obviously should not be complacent. Typically in financial markets there are inevitably those who feel that a doomsdayish forecast will bring them headline attention, without bothering too much about the facts. And as always responses from officials supported by hard facts are given only very little attention. But we shall continue to stick firmly to our policy, as we did in the past fourteen years, without wavering. We did so through an abundance of events, including the stock market crash in 1987, the events in the Mainland of China in June 1989, the collapse of BCCI in 1991, the ERM crisis in 1992, Mexico in 1994, Barings in 1995 and now financial turmoil in Asia, and every time the Hong Kong dollar remained rock solid. 33.

The Bank of Albania asserts that the financial markets and agents have sound and liquid balance sheets, but they continue to be risk averse into undertaking long-term investments. In conclusion, the Supervisory Council decided that the actual monetary policy stance is appropriate and decided to keep the key interest rate unchanged at 2.0%. The new information analysed at the meeting does not change our evaluations for the current situation of the economy and financial markets, and expectations for their outlook. The current monetary conditions are adequate for ensuring the return of inflation to our 3.0 % target in the medium term. Judging from the expected developments and the balance of risks surrounding them, the Supervisory Council deems that the monetary policy of the Bank of Albania will continue to maintain its stimulating nature, for some quarters ahead. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches