samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
On February 2, 1998, Senator Bennett, Chairman of the Banking Committee’s Subcommittee on Financial Services and Technology, introduced the Digital Signature and Electronic Authentication Law of 1998 (S. 1594) which is aimed at facilitating the use of electronic authentication by United States financial institutions. The bill establishes the right of a financial institution to use electronic authentication if it has entered into an agreement with any counterparty or has established a banking, financial, or transactional system using electronic authentication and the use of the electronic authentication would be valid according to the relevant agreement or system rules. Under this bill, financial institutions would be exempt from state law regulations governing the registration, licensing, or use of electronic authentication as well as from any state law limitations or impositions of fees in connection with electronic authentication services. Absent compliance with state laws, however, use of electronic authentication by financial institutions would not be eligible for the state law presumptions or benefits, including the presumption that an electronic signature is the equivalent of a manual signature. Moreover, financial institutions remain subject to supervision by the appropriate banking supervisor which may, by regulation or order, preclude a financial institution from using electronic authentication in its business if it determines that such use would not be consistent with safe and sound BIS Review 26/1998  -8banking practices, or if such use would threaten the safety and soundness of the institution, subsidiary or affiliate.

This assessment must also take account of the substantial uncertainty surrounding the calculation of the output gap, and of Norges Bank’s mandate which specifies that inflation shall be 2.5 per cent over time. The inflation gap and the output gap shall normally not be positive or negative at the same time further ahead. If, for example, both gaps are positive, a higher interest rate path would be preferable as this would bring inflation closer to the target and contribute to stabilising output. Depending on the initial situation for inflation and production, it may be difficult to meet these criteria simultaneously. How easy it is to meet these criteria will depend on the disturbances to which the economy has been exposed. There are also other important considerations when assessing the interest rate path. We must assess whether the interest rate path, at least in the next few months, results in acceptable developments also under alternative, but realistic assumptions concerning economic developments and the functioning of the economy. In other words, is the strategy robust? We must also evaluate the consequences for financial stability. Last, but not least, a successful monetary policy requires a reasonably good understanding of the state of the economy and its functioning. I will now discuss this in more detail. Analyses and models at Norges Bank The Executive Board’s assessments of various interest rate paths are based on projections of economic developments, supplemented by other information and discretion.
Such examples are not representative of the modern day insurance companies established since the 19th century. But I include them to illustrate that the principles of insurance were very much alive as far back as our earliest civilisations – and mostly without any controls or regulation around them. So what changed? Enter the state This brings us to my main theme today: the interest of the British state in the affairs of insurance companies. My aim is not to do full justice to this field of history given the rich body of academic literature available, but – in order to see Solvency II in context – to give a flavour of the sorts of philosophies and motivations that seem to me to have guided the British state’s involvement through time. Most textbooks will reference marine risk as one of the earliest forms of insurance in the UK. But evidence of one of the first genuine insurance policies suggests that whilst the first marine contract may well have been written in nearby Lombard Street, the risk was not taken on by British underwriters – instead, it was underwritten by Italian counterparts temporarily resident in London 5. Indeed, throughout this period, there are several mentions of insurance interactions between London and the Italian regions of Lombardy and Tuscany 6 – hence the  3  Lewin (2003). 4  Ibid. 5  Ibid. 6  Ibid.

The role of the PRA is to make sure that the risks for which insurance companies provide protection do not revert to the customer when bad outcomes happen. It would be grossly unfair if you had paid somebody to take your risks away, only to find that you had unwittingly acquired a huge credit risk by giving your money to a financially unsound company. Our main job at the PRA is to ensure that firms are safe and sound, and contribute to policyholder protection. That way, the shareholder can reap the rewards if the risks pay off, but will bear the cost if the firm loses money. This public policy case is well established in many countries, such that the approach of different regulators is often founded in commonly agreed principles. For instance, in the 1970s, the introduction of Solvency I codified these principles into a set of requirements across the EU. The birthplace of insurance However, looked at across the sweep of insurance history, this public policy case is a newfangled set of ideas. I have tried to find out what, if anything, public authorities have thought about insurance through time. In my quest to find the answer to this question, I ended up going back further than anticipated – to around 3000 B.C. – and came across the curiouslynamed practice of “bottomry” in the era of Babylon.
Wage growth may slow. Lower wage growth combined with lower profit margins will result in more subdued inflation. Second, the effect of interest rate changes may be amplified because the interest rate also affects the krone exchange rate. When the interest rate was lowered in 2003, borrowing increased and investment in NOK declined, leading to a depreciation of the krone. A weaker krone results in higher exports and improved profitability in Norwegian business and industry. This normally leads to higher employment, and a rise in wage growth and inflation. Third, inflation expectations will also influence wage demands and have an effect when companies adjust their prices. It may be difficult to perceive how expectations are generated. Confidence in the inflation target may provide an anchor. The labour market is also exposed to other disturbances that may have an effect on employment, wage growth and thereby inflation. Such disturbances influence the orientation of monetary policy. Disturbances that result in a tight labour market and high capacity utilisation can lead to higher wage growth and thereby higher inflation. A tight labour market will thus imply higher interest rates. Norway has substantial petroleum wealth, but our most important resource is labour. A smoothly functioning labour market is therefore important to our welfare. Although it is difficult to quantify in exact terms the contribution of labour to value added, there is no doubt that even a small increase in the “return” on labour could generate considerable gains. Labour market legislation must be formulated to provide incentives to work.

That actual interest rate developments will deviate somewhat from the Bank's forecast will probably be the rule rather than the exception. In Monetary Policy Report 2/07, it was pointed out that high capacity utilisation and higher cost inflation may on the one hand lead to higher-than-projected inflation. Sustained high productivity growth, a more pronounced shift towards imports from low-cost countries and a stronger krone exchange rate may on the other hand result in lower-than-expected inflation. When Norges Bank’s Executive Board decided on 26 September to raise its key policy rate by 0.25 percentage points to 5.0 per cent, it was stated in the press release that growth in the economy has been stronger than expected, cost inflation is on the rise and that there are prospects of a further pick-up in price inflation. It was also pointed out that financial markets have been turbulent since the beginning of August, the global economic outlook is uncertain and the krone is strong. The Executive Board therefore considered the alternative of leaving the key policy rate unchanged at this meeting. In addition, it was stated that if the turmoil in financial markets persists and the krone remains strong, and this has considerable consequences for the outlook for inflation, output and employment, Norges Bank’s key policy rate may be raised to a lesser extent than envisaged in Monetary Policy Report 2/07. Thank you for your attention.
Chart 12 Monetary policy, the global economy and inflation Impact of monetary policy Cost of imports Exchange rate  Global economy  Demand  Domestic demand  UK inflation  Expectations and credibility Pricing climate  The world I have described in this speech is one where UK inflation has been pushed up by global factors and the very substantial depreciation of sterling. And there is not much evidence that the margin of spare capacity is creating much countervailing pressure, partly because the margin is not very large, but also because the way in which prices respond to demand pressures is much more complex than the simple “output gap” model suggests. 9  14  The Bank of England databank of pay settlements shows that private sector pay settlements averaged 3.5% in the period 2005 to 2008. BIS central bankers’ speeches  In these circumstances, the case for not adjusting monetary policy rests heavily on wellanchored expectations of inflation and the credibility associated with the Bank’s inflation target remaining intact. The MPC entered the global financial crisis with a high stock of credibility reflecting the inflation performance of the previous decade. In 2007/8, we could reasonably assume that inflation expectations would remain well anchored at close to the target. And that gave the Committee freedom of manoeuvre to act with some unprecedented policy changes which have been effective in heading off the risk of deepening recession and a persistent deflation.

If the private sector continues to grow – in line with the latest business survey evidence – and headline inflation remains high, it is hard to see why private sector pay settlements should not return to their pre-recession average of around 3.5% and possibly move higher.9 Issue 4: Inflation expectations and credibility That brings me to my final key issue – the role of expectations and credibility in the framework for monetary policy. Chart 12 shows a diagram which I have used in a number of speeches now and which I believe sums up well the challenge that the MPC faces in trying to stabilise UK inflation in a potentially volatile global economy. The global economy affects inflation in the UK through the cost of imports, the impact of world demand on the UK economy and through the way in which international businesses perceive the pricing climate changing on global markets – which will have an impact on their pricing strategies here in the UK. All these factors can affect UK inflation – but monetary policy has three powerful counter-influences: the influence of monetary conditions on the exchange rate and the level of domestic demand, and the ability of the monetary authorities to anchor price expectations through their commitment to the inflation target or some other monetary anchor.
2  For instance, Metals Economics Group (2005) estimates that expenditures for commercial nonferrous metals exploration increased from a 12-year low of USD 1.9bn in 2002 to USD 5.1bn in 2005, a level just slightly lower than in 1997, when expenditures were at their highest level. 3  Source: Watson Wyatt in GFMS Gold Survey (2006). BIS Review 61/2006  3  Graph 2: Cumulative returns on gold, bonds and equities in USD since 1871 US equities: 7.1% p.a. US T-bonds: 4.6% p.a. Gold: 2.5% p.a. US CPI: 2.4% p.a. 100000  10000  1000  100  10  1  0 1871 1881 1891 1901 1911 1921 1931 1941 1951 1961 1971 1981 1991 2001  Fourth argument: gold mine hedging is "passé" As you know, in the second half of the 1990s, gold mines increasingly sold their future production on a forward basis. In doing so, they pushed up gold supplies by more than 10% per year, thus reinforcing the already negative price trend. As from 2001, mining companies increasingly abandoned this type of price hedging, which amounted to a de facto reduction in the supply of gold and thus contributed to rising prices. This raises the question of what constitutes an optimal hedging policy to maximize shareholder value? One of the reasons gold mine companies typically give for reducing their hedge book is that shareholders want to incur a gold price risk when investing in mines.

Reflections on the Norwegian case of minimal formal authority, TMV Working paper No. 75, Oslo: Center for Technology and Culture (TMV). 4  Øksendal, Lars Fredrik (2008), Essays in Norwegian monetary history, 1869-1914, PhD-dissertation, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration. BIS Review 131/2008  3
This points out to a sort of “circularity problem” whereby it is unclear how informative the information extracted from asset prices actually is. Consider for instance the stable break-even inflation rate at a level close to but below 2% in the euro area. Then suppose that, as sometimes observed on other financial markets -as the money market for instance- for any reason, the market for indexed-bonds is indeterminate in the sense that the market is unable on its own to determine an ex-ante equilibrium price. Thanks to the existence of a central bank, an equilibrium price may however be set if issuers or price-makers believe the central bank will commit to price stability as defined by a year-on-year increase of a consumer price index at around 2% over the medium run. The indexed-bond price will then be set on the basis of the actual conventional bond prices and the long-term nominal anchor defined by the central bank, factoring in certain margins or premia. This clearly indicates the central bank’s credibility, and a stable break-even inflation rate will reflect this aspect. But what else can we draw from this information to take a monetary policy decision? This might be another illustration of what some economists have recently named the “credibility paradox”. On the one hand, the information variable of the central bank is consistent with its definition of price stability: therefore no cause for concern.

If one assumes, for instance, that both the conventional bond market and the inflation-indexed bond market are efficient and arbitraged by economic agents so that they incorporate the same information about the real interest rate, then the difference between the conventional nominal rate and the real rate would provide, by factoring in an inflation risk premium, a measure of the expected inflation rate over the same period, known as the “break-even inflation rate”. Now, if we had both nominal and indexed bonds across the whole maturity spectrum, up to, say, 30 years which is the maximum maturity at which inflation-indexed bonds are currently issued, then we would be able to pin down market expectations of inflation for all the forecast horizons, up to 30 years, as well as forecasts of inflation for each year up to the maximum maturity. So you can easily imagine the importance of such information for central banks, information which is, moreover, updated on a daily basis. Our staff and also private forecasters are unable to routinely produce inflation forecasts in such a detail, at such a frequency and for such horizons! As far as the euro area is concerned, the reliability of both the inflation-indexed yield and the break-even inflation rate is strengthened by the significant development of the market for indexed bonds over the recent years, which accelerated further in 2003 with the arrival of two new government issuers: Greece in March and Italy in September.
Mr Clementi elucidates the core purposes of the Bank of England and gives his thoughts on the UK economy  Speech by Mr David Clementi, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, to the Cardiff Business Club Dinner, Cardiff, on 28 February 2000. *  *  *  Ladies and Gentlemen, it is a pleasure to be here in Cardiff. I last visited the city in November for the final of the Rugby World Cup. I admired the new stadium, loved the atmosphere and enjoyed the game. Of course the big match is coming up this Saturday, where the men in white will be seeking revenge for the damage done to them last year in the unlikely setting of Wembley Stadium. We can safely leave the debate on the match to the newspapers, sure in the knowledge that they will cover huge amounts of column inches on the likely outcome by the time we get to kick-off. Instead this evening I would like to outline the changes in the Bank since independence in 1997. The Bank may trace its origins back to 1694; but it has been through a period of profound change since 1997 when the Labour Government was elected: the arrival of monetary independence and with it the Monetary Policy Committee; the transfer of debt management to the new Debt Management Office; and the merger of the Bank’s banking supervision department into the Financial Services Authority.

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.
Many have concluded that this separation led to coordination problems that delayed intervention and significantly exacerbated the crisis. The experience with Northern Rock is a cautionary lesson about the potential costs of separating banking oversight from the lender of last resort function. A similar argument applies to monetary policy. In the conduct of monetary policy, it is important to understand how changes in the federal funds rate or the interest rate on excess reserves affect financial conditions. A detailed understanding of banks, capital markets and payment and settlement systems is essential to properly understand the linkage between monetary policy, the financial system, and the real economy. In other words, if you take away the Fed’s oversight of the financial system, the ability of the Fed policymakers to understand how their actions are going to affect financial conditions and the economy will be impaired. The economy will suffer as a consequence. Shifting gears, let me talk a bit about the economic outlook. My views about the outlook have not changed much recently and do not differ much from the consensus. The situation is  6  BIS Review 161/2009  slowly improving. We are having a recovery in terms of output and the pace of job losses has slowed substantially. In the second half of this year, real GDP growth will likely fall in a 3 percent to 3.5 percent annualized range. 2010 will probably be slightly weaker than that, mostly because some of the current sources of strength are temporary.

We did it because inflation is too high, but especially core inflation at 4,3%: there is for sure a significant energy and supply component in the euro area inflation; but it is also becoming broader and more domestic, and this is the field where we have to act. And second, we clearly show our determination to bring inflation back to 2% in the medium term: this is not only our target, it is our commitment towards European citizens; our will and our capacity to deliver on our mandate cannot be subject to any doubt whatsoever. That said, yesterday’s significant move sometimes raises two questions: - what about the next move? Let me be clear: we have our hands completely free. Nobody should speculate that this will be the magnitude of the next step – we did not create a new “jumbo habit” –; nor that we simply must emulate other  Page 2 sur 3 important Central banks. We obviously go in the same direction as them, but not necessarily at the same speed or with the same final level: because the nature of inflation has its differences on both sides of the Atlantic, the monetary answer has its differences too. - and this brings a second frequent question: what about the destination of the journey?