samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Beyond financial returns, SRI also accords primary consideration to the impact on economic activity and on the broader society, thereby incorporating the important dimensions of environmental sustainability, social responsibility and governance. This is in close parallel with the inherent principles of Islamic finance, in which financial transactions must be underpinned by real economic activities, and its operations are guided by the principle that money should also be used to create social good. The SRI market is also fast growing. It is expected to become a mainstream asset class by 2015, reaching a projected total of more than 26 trillion US dollars of asset-under-management, accounting for 15 to 20 percent of the global market. This recent growth has largely been driven by the demand from institutional investors which are increasingly prioritising the consideration of sustainability and social responsibility in their business conduct and institutional value system. Indeed, the ongoing economic challenges in the major advanced economies have resulted in the re-emphasising of the importance of growth that is sustainable and responsible. In the emerging economies, this is also important, given that rapid economic development also needs to ensure that the progress will be sustainable. The recent growth of Islamic finance has also been fuelled by a sustained phase of innovation. This has resulted in the development of a wide range of Shariah-compliant financial solutions to meet the differentiated needs of consumers and businesses in the global economy.

Greater collaboration will be important to create greater synergy of expertise in applied research and development in Islamic finance. Initiatives by industry associations collaborating with local and international research institutes and academia to seek for new global research findings and breakthroughs will enhance the potential for increased product development activities. This Colloquium that is organised by ISRA following the success of the inaugural Colloquium last year, to discuss the new research findings for the various segments of the Islamic financial industry with the expectation that it will contribute to opening new horizons for the future development of Islamic finance. On this note, let me wish you a productive and successful Colloquium. I would also like to congratulate ISRA on the launching of its new Islamic Financial Knowledge Repository. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3
At the same time, it is also clear that there may be negative side effects.5 Accordingly, the Governing Council will continue to assess the case for mitigating measures, which is especially relevant if further rate cuts are envisaged. Forward guidance on interest rates Our interest rate forward guidance with its state-contingent and date-based legs has become the principal tool for adjusting the monetary policy stance, especially following the end of net asset 4 / 19  BIS central bankers' speeches  purchases. The state-contingent leg expresses the anchor of our policy-setting expectations: policy rates will not be raised until we are sufficiently confident that inflation will reach levels that we consider most consistent with the ECB’s price stability objective. This, in turn, allows interest rate expectations to adjust dynamically in a data-dependent manner, which results in automatic easing if the convergence path is delayed. Through the date-based leg, the Governing Council affects interest rate expectations by expressing its views about the rate path in the near term that, given the outlook for inflation, is most conducive to reaching the objective over the medium term. This removes unnecessary uncertainty about the policy orientation over horizons that are not stretching too far into the future and prevents an unwanted weakening of the monetary policy stimulus. The evidence shows that our enhanced forward guidance has been effective. The statecontingent element is clearly understood by investors and is influencing their expectations.

Going forward, he/she could also be in charge of a common budget. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3
But the reasons for prudent management of gold reserves by central banks are, in our view, of utmost importance. Central banks are typically “risk averse” when investing their foreign assets on the financial markets; as far as gold management is concerned, an even more cautious attitude is required because of the characteristics of the gold market. Central banks must be aware that their deposits may favour the financing of speculative gold sales. In other words, for a speculator (or a producer) who wants to take a position against gold, it would be very easy to be short because he can easily borrow from the official sector, which is a potential lender on this market. The result of this policy then would be a drop in the price of gold. BIS Review 61/2000  2  Furthermore, lending is even more delicate for a big holder: what is the use of lending if, at the same time, you are depreciating the value of your holdings? This question is effectively not the same when you hold 3,000 tons as when you hold 300 tons. Consequently, our policy regarding gold lending could be expressed as follows: a responsible holder must have a responsible approach to management. This means that the Banque de France has to and does pay due attention to the trade-off between its own interests (ie enhancing the return on its assets) and the impact on the market. The gold market characteristics described earlier call for a cautious and coherent attitude. B.

The rapid pace of innovation in financial markets also promises better and wider distribution of risk which is good not just for the financial sector’s stability but should support more risk taking in the real economy. Greater investment could deliver stronger medium and long term growth. But there remain a number of sources of vulnerability in the world economy and in financial markets which firms need to bear in mind. Volatility is low, and as time passes longer memories are needed to remember when it was high. While there have certainly been improvements in macro performance in recent years, I do not know a central banker who is not surprised at the faith that markets appear to have in us to keep the great stability going. And the risks in the wider environment are as great as ever. 8  BIS Review 124/2006  It is not clear to me that these risks are fully priced into the market. Market forces may not have been able to correct any excess optimism given the incentives and constraints of participants operating in a world with a good deal of opaqueness about risk taking. In closing, I would stress that I am not saying market participants should avoid risk. But I do think it is important that market participants recognise that risk has not gone away, and that there are limits in the ability of financial engineering to insulate the financial system in aggregate against risk.
26.04.2022  The case for an incomes agreement in Spain? * 50th anniversary of the Faculty of Economics and Business Studies Universidad de Sevilla Pablo Hernández de Cos Governor  *hEnglish translation of the original speech in Spanish. Good morning, I should like to take this opportunity to share with you some reflections on the current economic environment, which, more than two years after the outbreak of the pandemic, is tragically marked by the invasion of Ukraine. The repercussions of this war, albeit difficult to predict, can be expected to be global and extremely severe, for both the geopolitical and the economic situation. In the short term, its adverse effects on activity and inflation will come through a number of channels, the impact of which will be more acute in Europe, given its greater interconnectedness with the countries at war. I will first describe the main features of the current economic situation, which is affected by the consequences of the war. Subsequently, I shall analyse the essential features of the economic policy response to the challenges of the war in Ukraine and its repercussions. In particular, I would like to stress the need for a broad incomes agreement for the coming years in Spain, the possible content of which I will detail later on. This need is justified by the initial description of the current situation and outlook for the Spanish economy, in particular as regards inflation.

The necessary coordination at national level must therefore be combined with mechanisms to ensure the agreement is able to cater to the existing productivity and activity-related differences across firms and sectors.8 Equally, where the standard of living of certain segments of households is hit particularly hard by rising energy costs, the incomes agreement should naturally seek to mitigate their straitened circumstances. In short, these considerations reveal the need to avoid overly sweeping measures to implement a potential incomes agreement that might prove too rigid for certain groups of agents. Third, any approaches that automatically link wages to past inflation or indexation clauses are also to be avoided9. The aim is precisely to reduce the risk of triggering a wage-price feedback loop. In this regard, workers with collective bargaining agreements registered up to March this year that provide for any form of wage guarantee clause linking the final wage increases agreed in 2022 to developments in inflation are admittedly in the minority. Nonetheless, the figure (30%) is notably higher than it was at the end of 2021, when it stood at 17%. Of even more concern is the fact that this figure rises to 50% of the total when considering the agreements entering into force in 2023, albeit still referring to a small number of agreements in this case. Fourth, any incomes agreement should provide for multi-year wage increase and job protection-related undertakings. This would offer households and businesses some certainty in their spending and investment decisions.
Brexit and the pound Speech given by Ben Broadbent, Deputy Governor Monetary Policy  Imperial College, London 23 March 2017  I’d like to thank Matt Corder, Chris Salmon, Michael Saunders, Greg Thwaites and Anthony Veal, along with other colleagues, for their helpful comments and assistance. I reserve particular thanks for my Economic Advisor Alina Barnett. 1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  Introduction and summary The vote to leave the EU led to a big drop in sterling’s exchange rate. One consequence is a rise in import prices and a squeeze on households’ real income. We may already be seeing the impact of that squeeze on retail spending, which in real terms fell quite sharply around the turn of the year. While it’s hit the income of households, however, the depreciation has come as a boon for many exporters. In sterling terms goods export prices rose 12% through the course of last year. This will significantly have boosted exporters’ profitability and with it the incentive to invest in extra capacity. In general, it’s not really right – not enough at least – to think about the impact of a change in the exchange rate in isolation. Asset prices are volatile in the short run, sometimes inexplicably so. But over time they tend to move for a reason. They’re driven by deeper things that can have important effects of their own.

In the case of financial infrastructures new systems may have unknown weaknesses that are not apparent in the trials, leading to financial disruption and critical episodes such as “flash crashes”. Retail payment systems may add credit risks during offline operations and transparency issues in prepaid systems. Users of payments and transfers systems may also be pressed to undertake unwanted credit operations, while “smart contracts” that are automatically executed may enhance instability if the system fails to check the solvency of each counterpart. Algorithm-based credit assessments may generate biases in the access to financial products and replace know-your-client approaches, increasing transactional costs and engendering volatility and herd behavior. Uninsured deposittaking is an area of particular concern due to its exposure to fraud. The emergence of cryptocurrencies poses a number of challenges to financial systems and central banks alike. The main risks in the use of DLT-blockchain technology to support privately issued currencies lie in the monitoring of money aggregates, the potentially damaging volatility of rates of exchange, the broader risk of volatility under fixed or unexpected changes of supply, and the risk of runs due to losses of confidence when such currencies coexist with legal tender and deposit-taking banks. Perhaps the greatest risk of FinTech is that of cybersecurity. The more financial systems depend on electronic platforms and digital records, the more exposed they are to cyberattacks, which can disrupt the flow of funds across the economy. Of course, this is not an exclusive risk of the more innovative FinTech developments, but of any electronic-based financial system.
Denis Beau: Financial regulation and supervision issues raised by the impact of Tech firms on financial services Speech by Mr Denis Beau, First Deputy Governor of the Bank of France, at the ESSEC – Centre d’excellence, Paris, 30 January 2019. * * * Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear students, It is a pleasure to be at the ESSEC Centre d’excellence today to discuss the financial regulation and supervision issues raised by the impact of Tech firms on financial services. To date, in Europe, we have been accustomed to a bank-centric intermediation model. However over the last decade we have witnessed the rise of Fintech start-ups and the entry of Bigtechs in the financial sphere. Do they bring anything new to the way financial systems operate? According to some commentators they should bring a structural shift and see the replacement of the “old world” of bank-centric financial intermediation with disintermediated peer-to-peer systems. Others consider that rather than eliminating intermediation, if left on their own these new comers will more likely bring new intermediation models, in which Fintechs and Bigtechs intermediate banks. Hence I would like to focus the first part of my remarks on the possible impact of these new competitors on the traditional bank-centric financial intermediation model (1). I will then highlight some of the risks that go hand-in-hand with the changes underway and the regulatory and supervisory challenges they raise (2).

On one side, economists at the Bank for International Settlements (e.g. White, 2006), argued that monetary policy was too loose and should instead “lean against the wind” of a credit/asset-price boom in order to reduce risks further down the road. On the other side, people such as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan (2002), doubted the feasibility of such an approach and advocated a policy of benign neglect during the boom phase, along with aggressive relaxation should there be a collapse of asset prices. As I noted some years ago (Bean, 2003), such “leaning against the wind” is in principle compatible with flexible inflation targeting: a central bank ought to be willing to undershoot its inflation target temporarily, if it believes that it will thereby improve its chances of meeting the target later on by avoiding a disruptive bust. The crisis and subsequent Great Recession seem to make this logic even more compelling. But unfortunately, by the time an unsustainable credit boom has been diagnosed, a small increase in policy rates is unlikely to do much to cool it. And a large increase is likely to generate unacceptable collateral damage to the real economy. In a paper for the Federal Reserve’s annual conference at Jackson Hole a couple of years ago (Bean et al., 2011), I reported the results of some simulations of what might have happened if Bank Rate had been 200 basis points higher during the four years before the crisis began.
Andrew Sentance: Let it grow – how monetary policy can support sustainable economic growth Speech by Mr Andrew Sentance, External Member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England, at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) East of England Annual Lunch, Horringer, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, 22 March 2011. All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/speeches. *  *  *  I would like to thank Tomasz Wieladek and Adrian Chiu for research assistance and I am also grateful for helpful comments from other colleagues. The views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Bank of England or other members of the Monetary Policy Committee. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I am delighted to have the opportunity to address this year’s CBI East of England annual lunch. In my time as a member of the Monetary Policy Committee, I have particularly appreciated the opportunity to talk to businesses and business groups around the UK. As an economist with strong roots in the business world, I place great weight on the input that the MPC receives from the business community, which we get from a wide variety of sources – including business surveys and the reports from the Bank’s Agents. But there is no substitute for visiting individual companies and meeting business groups to gauge economic sentiment at the grass roots level around the country.

Abdul Rasheed Ghaffour: Roundtable Meeting of Centralised Shariah Advisory Authorities in Islamic Finance Welcoming remarks by Mr Abdul Rasheed Ghaffour, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia (Bank Negara Malaysia), at the Roundtable Meeting of Centralised Shariah Advisory Authorities in Islamic Finance, Kuala Lumpur, 2 October 2018. * * * It is an honour for me to be here today at the inaugural Roundtable Meeting of Centralised Shariah Advisory Authorities in Islamic Finance. On behalf of Bank Negara Malaysia, I would like to welcome the esteemed Shariah scholars and delegates who are gathered here this morning to share their experiences and exchange perspectives. We are at a time where our economies and financial systems are more connected. We are seeing greater cross-border trade and services, and mobility in capital. Technological advancements are shaping the way businesses operate and influencing dynamism in customer behaviours. This gathering today therefore is an important first step – towards strengthening relations and connectivity among the scholars and regulators who share common goals – that Shariah principles are embraced not only in form but more importantly in substance, – and that Islamic finance consistently delivers positive impact to the broader economy and society. The global Islamic finance industry has seen remarkable progress over the last decade. Global Islamic banking assets have doubled over the last 10 years and Islamic financial services are now available in more than 48 countries.
On the path to achieve stronger, more balanced and sustainable growth, the potential of responsible finance has therefore become greater than ever. Most important is for finance to be aligned towards its ultimate goal of serving humanity and of uplifting social wellbeing. Thus, more than merely performing its role as a passive intermediary of funds, finance today has the distinct potential of catalysing and shaping social outcomes. As mobilisers of funds towards socially empowering activities in the economy, the financial sector can act as a "social multiplier", significantly expanding the impact of positive finance. This is what responsible finance can achieve. Infrastructure financing, with its focus on longterm and socially impactful considerations, is an area of finance that can be instrumental in filling the vast development needs of many emerging economies, with an estimated global funding demand of about USD57 trillion by 2030, or about USD1 trillion a year. Recognising this, greater attention has been focussed on infrastructure finance, both at the national and international levels. The evolution of the sukuk market, in particular, has been an effective avenue in bridging this financing gap. Since 2003, an estimated USD115 billion of infrastructure sukuk has been issued by more than 10 different countries, which has been vital in contributing towards the long-term development of these economies. In Malaysia, the sukuk market has similarly been pivotal in supporting infrastructure financing, with Malaysiadomiciled infrastructure sukuk accounting for 79 percent of global infrastructure sukuk issuances in 2015.

Less directly related, but just as important, are our Stock Exchange, and our network of asset  1/3  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  managers and professional advisers. They anchor a company, especially its finance function, in Hong Kong and naturally encourage it to tap our financial intermediaries for advice and financing. 7. Turning to policy support, a key source of growth in finance in recent years has been green and sustainable finance. An area where the Government has been active in supporting is Hong Kong's sustainable loan market. 8. It is estimated that 100-150 trillion US dollar in climate finance will be needed in the next three decades to achieve a Paris-aligned scenario of limiting global warming to 1.5° Celsius. In Asia, we will need 66 trillion US dollar; a significant share of this would go to China. 9. With surging demand for green financing, it is important that there are widely recognized standards that market participants can rely on when investing or when tapping the capital markets to meet their financing needs. In this regard, I would like to compliment APLMA for the good work. Its Green Loan Principles, Social Loan Principles and Sustainability-Linked Loan Principles provide useful guidance and benchmarks for the market. 10. Hong Kong as an international finance centre can contribute a great deal to channeling capital and investments and helping the region bridge green financing gaps. In fact, we have one of the Asia's largest sustainable loan markets.