samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
As part of regional financial cooperation and a  BIS Review 24/2003  3  step towards greater regional financial integration, cross guarantees can reduce the cost of funding for smaller economies with lower credit rating through guarantees provided by more advanced nations. The use of cross guarantees will be similar in principle to the use of credit enhancements, resulting in improved credit risk of bond issuances as well as lower funding costs for bonds. But while credit enhancement can be offered by a third party, cross guarantees are made by countries within the region in an effort to collectively develop the region. A number of concerns may arise with the use of cross guarantees, namely the problems of moral hazard arising from any type of guarantee, the resultant price distortion, and the perceived free rider problem of the smaller economies. To lessen the risks that would arise from moral hazard, such a guarantee may only be partial. The problem of price distortion will be difficult to mitigate, given that bonds issued with cross guarantees by definition will not have their total risk reflected in price. However, this in turn will help benefit issuers in terms of lower cost of funding. With regards to the free rider problem, it is clear that a system of cross guarantees will benefit the lesser developed economies most, since they will not be in a position to guarantee any other issuers.

Aside from providing stable and long-term financing alternatives for businesses and public sector agencies in the region, this would also help strengthen the financial system in the region by making available a diverse choice of alternatives for investment, as well as support economic growth through more stable financial systems in the region. 2  BIS Review 24/2003  The necessity to develop a regional bond market While many countries in the region have begun the process of developing bond markets – or where they exist already, deepen and widen those markets – countries are also looking to promote the development of the regional bond markets in parallel with development of their own markets. Given the problems of economies of scale as mentioned earlier, development of the regional bond markets would offer a more efficient and viable option in neighboring countries until these countries’ financial systems are more developed and have a more sophisticated market structure in place. Roadmap for the development of Asian bond markets Over the past year, the development of Asian bond markets has been discussed in various international fora, such as ASEAN Finance Ministers Meeting, the Executives Meeting of East Asia-Pacific Central Banks (EMEAP), Asian Cooperation Dialogue (ACD), and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). Development of the demand side, involves promoting the pooling of investor base or the pooling of reserves under the Asian Bond Fund initiative, which has had a good start under the cooperation of central banks.
3 Pisani-Ferry, J., Mahfouz, S., L'action climatique : un enjeu macroéconomique,  November 2022 4 Villeroy de Galhau, F., Looking up to achieve a Financing Union, Speech, 23 February  2022 5 Adenauer, K., "Wenn zwei Menschen immer die gleiche Meinung haben, taugen  beide nichts". 4/4  BIS - Central bankers' speeches

For example, a team of New York Fed economists published a series earlier this year aimed at understanding the gap in COVID-19 intensity by race and by income.3 And last month, they shared their findings around racial differences in ICU stress during the third wave of COVID-19.4 1/2  BIS central bankers' speeches  There’s no single or simple solution that can fully address these problems. But, as a nation we can build a stronger foundation so that everyone can fulfill their economic potential, thus better enabling the Federal Reserve to fulfill its mandate. That’s why at the New York Fed—and across the Federal Reserve System—a key area of focus is to better understand economic drivers of health and wellbeing, and to champion promising solutions. We are able to do this in large part through our Community Development efforts to better understand the needs and issues of low- and moderate-income communities throughout our District. Our Community Development team recently adopted a new strategy to concentrate on three key areas: health, household income, and climate.5 Our aim is to connect people, programs, and proposals—especially those focused on fostering racial equity—with the funding needed to promote equitable growth and tackle economic inequality. We are already doing important work in this space and there is so much planned for the future.
Though it might be worth underlining here that FSAP is independent of the Basel 2 process. As a contemporary assessment of a financial system relative to its current regulatory and macro environment, FSAP assessment will finish well before the end of 2008, when Basel 2 is scheduled to go ‘live’ in this country. Domestically, it is imperative that the new financial institutions law be enacted to give us the necessary power to implement, among other things, the all-important consolidated supervision and prompt corrective action over financial institutions. Finally, I would like to thank you all for participating in this workshop, especially those of you who have contributed to the self-assessment exercise that has already been in progress. Your continued cooperation and support will certainly be much needed in the months and years ahead. I wish you all an interesting and useful workshop. Thank you very much. 2  BIS Review 61/2004

2/4  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  I believe that mainstream acceptance of these values – even financial institutions and groups which operate in both the Islamic and conventional space – will facilitate more concrete action towards implementing value-based finance across the whole financial system. For example, in deploying blended finance to extend impactful solutions for underserved segments of society, investors and consumers must appreciate that the return on capital invested might not be immediately realised, and that the "return" should not be solely measured against a financial yardstick. After all, long-term value creation and spill-over impact to the economy, society or environment are also integral considerations for value-based finance. The second imperative that reinforces the first one is action-oriented leadership, which is very much in the same spirit as this year"s theme, "Take The Reins". One such area where we believe this to be important is in further advancing Malaysia as an International Islamic Financial Centre. With the maturity of Islamic financial sector in Malaysia, we believe that the industry is now well-positioned to drive the Malaysia International Islamic Financial Centre (MIFC) agenda. Thus, it gives me great pleasure today to announce the establishment of the MIFC Leadership Council, a joint initiative of Bank Negara Malaysia and the Securities Commission Malaysia. The Council will provide thought leadership, drive strategy formulation and implementation to enhance Malaysia"s position as an international gateway for Islamic finance.
In still too many organisations, diversity is seen as an act of corporate responsibility or philanthropy, rather than as a means of driving creativity and productivity. Despite progress, our educational, training, recruitment, promotion, and performance systems are still, to my mind, infused with biases against truly diverse candidates - unconscious 1  For further details please see: http://diversityproject.com/ For further details please see PWC (2013), ‘Mending the gender gap: advancing tomorrow’s women leaders in financial services’. 3 For further details please see: https://30percentclub.org/ 4 Please see Gadhia (2016), ‘Empowering Productivity: harnessing the talents of women in financial services’. 5 Please see Parker (2016), ‘A Report into the Ethnic Diversity of UK Boards’. 2  2  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/default.aspx  2  biases, often, but biases nonetheless. Breaking these barriers down is, for me, the next frontier of diversity policy. And I wish to argue it is essential we press on to that next frontier. Before doing so, I wanted to set out the analytical case for greater diversity in teams, organisations and 6  societies. That evidence has been accumulating at a rate of knots. But these benefits have yet to be fully understood and digested by many organisations, which is perhaps one reason why diversity may not fully have entered the corporate bloodstream. Let’s take history, dating back not years and decades but centuries and millennia.

Our assessments on economic outlook suggest a continuation of economic growth for the rest of the year. Foreign demand and public sector demand continue to provide positive contribution to aggregate demand upsurge, although more moderately than a year earlier. Private sector demand remains an important factor to determine economic growth in the future. Fiscal consolidation measures and the unfavourable situation in global markets and our trade partners will shift the short-term focus of economic growth to the internal demand: private consumption and investments. The capacity of these aggregates to compensate for the slowdown of the two main promoters of the insofar growth, will condition Albania’s economy performance over the upcoming 2–3 quarters. In the longer run, the performance of the Albanian economy shall be determined by its competitiveness and productivity as well as expansion of Albanian goods and services in foreign markets. This requires intensification of structural reforms at macroand microeconomic level as well as financial and macroeconomic stability in the country. *** Taking into account the information set out above, the Supervisory Council of the Bank of Albania deemed that inflationary pressures are downward and remain controlled in the medium run. Developments in the Albanian economy will continue to generate weak inflationary pressures, as a result of the negative output gap action. On the other hand, pressures generated by developments in global economy are expected to be downward. Economic agents inflation expectations remain anchored around the Bank of Albania target.
By choosing this topic, the National Bank of Moldova and the central bankers at its helm prove, yet again, if it were still needed, that they are constantly preoccupied with playing an active role in the development and modernisation of the Moldovan society on the road to the European Union. Let me take the opportunity of opening this event to highlight – in my capacity as a long-standing partner of the National Bank of Moldova – the remarkable progress your institution has made on its path to a European-style central bank. When acknowledging the road followed by your institution, I cannot help recalling the bumpy ride of the National Bank of Romania in the same direction, the challenges we faced along the way and how we overcame the hurdles. That is why I believe we, at the NBR, are qualified to perform an accurate, realistic evaluation of the progress achieved by our colleagues in Chișinău, all the more so that our central banks boast a tight bilateral institutional cooperation spanning three decades, alongside the strategic partnerships between our institutions with EU, IMF and World Bank support. Dear colleagues and dear friends in Chișinău, you can be sure of the NBR’s full support in the National Bank of Moldova’s endeavour to align to European standards and practices. Ladies and gentlemen, Distinguished audience, The primary objective of a European central bank is to pursue price stability in the domestic economy.

Mugur Isărescu: In support of central bank independence Address by Mr Mugur Isărescu, Governor of the National Bank of Romania, at the Conference on “The role of a central bank in modernising society – challenges in emerging economies”, organised by the National Bank of Moldova, Bucharest, 7 April 2021. * * * Dear Governor Armașu, Distinguished guests, adies and gentlemen, Good morning, Let me start by congratulating the National Bank of Moldova on the initiative of holding this conference. I believe that discussions on the proposed topic are welcome at the current juncture, when light needs to be shed both on the measures to rescue the economies hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and on central banks’ mission. The question about what a central bank can and cannot do is always on the agenda. Governments and central banks throughout the world have promptly stepped in to address the fallout from the pandemic by means of social, economic, fiscal and monetary policies. Such comprehensive and unprecedented support has proven that, in situations like this, the concerted action of the authorities – particularly monetary and fiscal ones – is critical to safeguarding the smooth functioning of markets, of economic and social mechanisms. The topic of this roundtable, The role of a central bank in modernising society – challenges in emerging economies, is however more comprehensive than the response to the challenges of the unprecedented medical crisis we are currently facing.
As evidenced by the information available so far, we have not had any problems with external financing resources; however, the Central Bank has assured that, should such problems come up, it will provide any necessary liquidity in dollars and pesos for the financial system to continue providing credit adequately. The average cost of foreign financing has dropped, although for some companies it has risen, as a consequence of greater global uncertainty and of a less fluid operation of the international financial markets (Figure 7). This crisis has also had significant implications in the real sector. Even though the world demand reduction affects all countries, the most direct impact has been borne by the economies driven by exports of manufactured products – particularly machinery and equipment – to developed countries (Figure 8). Some countries, such as Germany and Japan, have witnessed a severe effect on their output, although they initially were in a much better position than was the United States. Therefore, although a decline in investment and in durable consumption in the world has a more direct impact on exporting industrial economies, it also results in declines in exports of countries which produce intermediate and basic goods, including Chile. However, our country should not be too affected thanks to a characteristic that has always been pointed out as a hindrance to our development – with which I agree – : the low value added, or the low human capital content, of our exports. Chilean exports are closer to being commodities, which face relatively abundant demands.

Sources: Statistics Bureaus of each country. 10  BIS Review 41/2009  Figure 4  Inflation and expectations  (annual change, percent) 12  12  9  9  6  6  3  3  0  0  -3  01  02  03  CPI  04  05  06  07  CPIX  08  09  -3  8  8  6  6  4  4  2  2  0  0 06  CPIX1  Jul. 07  Jul. 08  BI 1 in 1 (1) BI 3 In 2 (1) BI 5 In 5 (1)  Jul. 09  EES 1 year (2) EES 2 years (2)  (1) Breakeven inflation calculation based on swap contracts. (2) Economic Expectations Survey conducted by the Central Bank of Chile. Sources: Central Bank of Chile and National Bureau of Statistics (INE). Figure 5 Monetary policy rate, deposit rate, and forward rate (percent) 12  12  10  10  8  8  6  6  4  4  2  2  0 Jan. 08  0  May 08  180-day prime deposit rate  Sep. 08 MPR  Jan. 09  6-month forward rate  Source: Central Bank of Chile.
While these funds do not invest only in Islamic finance products, being able to offer a large range of the latter would nevertheless represent a significant comparative advantage for the attractiveness of France. Another possible development of Islamic finance comes from the retail sector, through investment of French residents of Muslim origin in banking or saving products which are Shariah compliant and distributed by local Islamic banks. It is difficult to assess the potential demand for Islamic retail banking products in France. Nevertheless, the potential target population in France, which is estimated at approximately 4 million Muslims, seems promising: this population is 2 or 3 times bigger than in Great Britain, where Islamic finance has been growing for several years. Moreover, according to a survey, 4 more than half of the respondents expressed their interest in Islamic financial products to finance their homes, cars and businesses. Let me now address the question of the relationship between Islamic finance and financial stability, which is not an obvious one. In the current context of economic crisis, some experts argue that the very nature of Islamic finance is an effective shield against excessive exposure, providing a much higher degree of security to the economy. I doubt there is a definitive answer to the question as to whether Islamic finance in general and Islamic banking in particular, is, by nature, conducive or not to financial stability.

These findings are based on evidence drawn from banking systems with a substantial presence of Islamic banking. Therefore, they are not strictly transposable to France. Nevertheless, precisely because France is a conventional environment, I would like now to conclude my speech with some remarks on conditions Islamic banks need to meet to ensure that their establishment in France offers sufficient safety for their customers and is compatible with the smooth functioning of the French banking system. This is primarily in Islamic banks’ own interest and is also in the interest of the banking system! Regarding licensing, the Credit Institutions and Investment Firms Committee (Comité des Etablissements de Crédit et des Entreprises d’Investissement – CECEI) will assess the same criteria as for any conventional bank: financial resources and suitability of the shareholders; integrity, qualifications and suitable experience of managers; level of own funds; business plan; capacity of the bank to achieve its development objectives and so on. Indeed, there is no specific criteria or requirement for Islamic banks in the French licensing framework. But beyond these standard licensing criteria, banking authorities need to ensure that Islamic banks will interact with their conventional environment in France as soundly as possible.
The fact of the matter is that the contraction in 2009 proved to be significantly smaller than originally predicted, with the fall in GDP turning out to have been 7½%, as opposed to the 10% forecasted earlier in the year. There are probably several explanations for this. Automatic fiscal stabilisers were allowed to work more or less freely in 2009, with fiscal consolidation taking hold this year. Icelanders were allowed early withdrawal from their third-pillar pension funds, which last year and this year is equivalent to 2½% of annual GDP, as I mentioned earlier. The financial restructuring of corporations and households has been delayed and, although this is detrimental for medium-term recovery, it has postponed some of the pain. The depreciated exchange rate has stimulated the traded goods sector. Finally, although the destruction of wealth that Iceland has experienced as a result of the collapse of the Icelandic banks is enormous, it is not proportionate to the size of the banks, as foreign creditors will lose much more. But we will continue to pay the price this year, as GDP will contract further between 2009 and 2010, but unfortunately I cannot give you much new detail on the prospects for 2010, nor can I discuss monetary policy, as I have entered the seven-day silent period before the announcement of the interest rate decision and the issuance of a new forecast next Wednesday.

At the time, pension payments from the public system were still somewhat larger than those from the occupational pension funds, but the difference was slight and, as the total pensions paid out by the occupational pension funds were growing much faster, they did overtake the public system in subsequent years. It is instructive in this regard that, according to OECD, the balance between public and private provision of mandatory pensions is heavily in favour of the private provision in Iceland, or 84%, which is the highest rate amongst OECD countries. As a result, public pension spending in Iceland is 2% of GDP, compared to the OECD average of 7.2%. The occupational pension funds have grown very fast in the last few decades, through mandatory contributions from all wages and salaries, low operational costs, and long spells of good returns. Around the turn of the century, they were the third-largest in EU and EFTA countries in terms of assets as a share of GDP, at around 80%, after Switzerland and the Netherlands. Shortly before the international financial crisis struck, Iceland had overtaken even these countries. The funds were bound to grow much more, as they were far from reaching maturity in the sense that most of those receiving pensions had not accumulated rights based on their lifetime earnings. The clearest measure of this was the fact that the pension burden, or pensions as a share of contributions, was still below 50%.
i  Global Official Institutions Conference, 22 June 2023 Building together a future-proof banking and payment sector in Europe  Speech by François Villeroy de Galhau, Governor of the Banque de France  Page 1 of 6 Ladies and Gentlemen, I am pleased to be with you for this Global Official Institutions Conference organised by BNPP, and I extend my warmest thanks to Jean Lemierre, Chairman of BNPP’s board of directors, for his invitation to give this speech. Facing the obvious turbulence and challenges of the last 18 months, we come here from different perspectives. Let me focus nevertheless on some common features: I will take the European view, and not only the French one. And I will focus on two delicate interactions between public authorities and private sector financial institutions: -  the first one is about the recent past: why did the euro area escape the banking turmoil born in the US and in Switzerland, and can we be safe enough? (I)  -  the second one is about the next future: why should Central banks stand ready to issue a digital currency? (II)  I. Banking turmoil: three blessings and a funeral I spoke after SVB’s failure of ‘Three blessings and a funeral’. Let me start with the funeral, at least the one that we can welcome, but which, unfortunately, is not final. It should be the condemnation and the funeral of mismanagement.

We need the skills of both sides: the agility, innovations, customer relations of commercial banks; and the trust and stability guaranteed by Central banks. Yes, digital commercial bank money already exists, and is usually regarded as safe as central bank money; it will remain very significant in payment amounts, and you may possibly develop tokenised deposits. But the trust commercial bank money inspires is not only due to each bank’s private signature; it’s anchored by its full equivalence and permanent convertibility, 1:1, to the public money issued by the  Page 5 of 6 Central bank. Loosing this public anchor – in a world of digital payments without CBDC – would sooner or later mean undermining this private trust; think of the 19th century in the United States, before the Fed, where there were regularly confidence crises. To make it crystal-clear, a digital euro will not lead to disintermediation. It will be distributed through banks: we central banks have absolutely no intention to open private accounts. In response to some other worries, there will be no financial stability risks, due to possible significant outflows from commercial bank money to central bank money: a holding limit will apply to digital euro accounts, and it will ensure that the digital euro serves as a payment means, more than as a store of value. So commercial banks can and should get on board with full confidence. We are, in this 21st century as in the two previous ones, complementary and not competitors on money and payments.