samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Taken at face value, these patterns are both striking and puzzling. Not only do they sit oddly with Classical growth theory. They are also at odds with the evidence of history, which has been that rates of technological diffusion have been rising rather than falling over time, and with secular trends in international flows of factors of production. At the very time we would have expected it to be firing on all cylinders, the technological diffusion engine globally has been misfiring. This adds to the productivity puzzle. Sectoral Productivity Trends  Some further insight into these puzzles comes from looking at the productivity data in more granular detail. 42  We start by considering sectoral patterns of productivity among UK companies. Sectoral shifts in the economy could plausibly account for some of the fall in productivity growth. There has been a secular shift over time away from manufacturing and towards services, with the employment share in 39  Rodrik (2011). Based on the following equation: 𝑃𝑖𝑡 − 𝑃𝑓𝑡 = 𝑎𝑖 + 𝑏𝑖 ∗ 𝐺𝐴𝑃𝑖 where 𝑃𝑖𝑡 is growth in TFP for country i in year t, Pft is the growth in TFP for the frontier country (US) in year t, GAPi is the gap between the level of TFP in country i and the US as a percentage, ai is a constant capturing the average pace of convergence and bi captures how much of the speed of convergence depends on the TFP gap.

Svein Gjedrem: Current monetary policy issues in Norway  Speech by Mr Svein Gjedrem, Governor of Norges Bank, at the General Meeting of ACI Norway, held in Tromsø, on 19 August 2000. *  *  *  Introduction I would like to start by expressing my thanks for being given the opportunity to give this presentation of monetary policy in Norway. I will start my presentation with a brief review of the basis for monetary policy, and will go on to mention some of the considerations and reasoning behind Norges Bank’s recent setting of interest rates. Finally, I will turn to certain structural features of particular importance to developments in the capital account balance which can shed light on the relationship between the setting of interest rates in Norway and international interest rate developments. The basis for monetary policy The chart shows movements in the krone exchange rate between 1980 and the present. There have been three major crossroads since 1986. Chart 1 Krone exchange rate  •  Following the last devaluation in May 1986, the Norwegian authorities decided to introduce a fixed exchange rate system for the krone. The monetary policy authorities bound themselves to the mast. Under this system, the interest rate was to be set solely with the aim of maintaining exchange rate stability within narrow margins. At the same time, the krone was supported through extensive exchange-market interventions. The fixed exchange rate system led to a gradual slowing of price inflation.
By the way, let me note that this pause occurred before mid-December, so it cannot be attributed to the recent spate of heavy snow storms. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  By contrast, New Jersey’s economy has seen no pick-up in activity and, in fact, activity there continued to decline at a modest pace through the end of 2010. We monitor Puerto Rico using an index produced by the Government Development Bank of Puerto Rico. This index shows that the recession there, which started back in 2005 – well before that experienced in the mainland – appears to have subsided. As of November of last year, activity was no longer falling, although indications of a recovery are still mixed. Turning to jobs, the latest data indicate that businesses in the region, on balance, were not expanding their workforces at the end of last year. As a result, the total number of jobs in the region has held steady, lagging behind the job growth rate experienced nationally. Much of this recent weakness in employment stems from job losses in the retail, wholesale and manufacturing sectors in our region. In the rest of the nation, these sectors expanded during the last quarter. Moreover, our state and local governments cut jobs much more severely than governments did elsewhere. At the same time, job gains in some of the region’s strongest sectors – professional and business services, finance, education and health – were not large enough to completely offset these losses.

Finally, another important supervisory development has been the adoption, in 2004, of a risk based supervisory approach by SAMA. This has significantly strengthened and made more efficient the onsite and off-site supervision practiced by SAMA. This approach is proactive and requires enhanced and frequent communication with banks at all levels. It brings SAMA supervision fully in line with the new international standards. In recent years, the strength of the Saudi banking system and SAMA’s sound banking supervision practices have been recognized by a number of important international institutions. One of the findings of the Financial Sector Assessment Program by an IMF/WB Team in 2005 indicated that the SAMA Banking Supervision, fully or largely met the 25 Basle Core Principles. On the other hand, external rating agencies including S&P, Fitch and Capital Intelligence in 2004 and 2005 have issued favourable reports on the Saudi Banking system. The recent external rating upgrade by S&P to A+ reflects the inherent strength of the domestic banking system. The developments of the banking sector have been reflected positively on the performance of the Saudi economy. Over the preceding three years, GDP (at current prices) have increased by an annual average growth rate of 18.1%, and private sector GDP by 6.7%. Money supply has grown by an annual average rate of 12.9%, providing adequate liquidity to growth requirements of the economy.
Even today, the value of the Swiss franc remains high, and there are no inflation risks. With interest rates at zero, the minimum exchange rate prevents an undesired tightening of monetary conditions in the event that the upward pressure on the Swiss franc should intensify once again. Thus we remain prepared to enforce the minimum exchange rate by buying foreign currency in unlimited quantities if necessary, and to take further measures as required. Consequently the monetary policy we have conducted to date will continue to apply without any restrictions. 6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  7  8  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  9  10  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  11

There is a tendency to loosen the country's traditionally strong fiscal stance, fuelling inflation and impeding market-based measures to reduce it, as fiscal expansion, among other things, increasingly conflicts with the global and regional trend of monetary policy tightening. 1/4  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  It is, of course, worth noting the efforts of the Ministry of Finance and the current caretaker government in controlling the negative fiscal trend and achieving a budget deficit for 2022 within the nominal convergence criterion. Such a result, however, cannot be sustained without the adoption of a regular budget that is sufficiently disciplined, or in other words, guarantees the achievement of a budget deficit for this year and over the medium term firmly below 3% of GDP. Therefore, the solutions to the current problems in the process of joining the euro area can be sought along two lines: political consolidation and fiscal consolidation. By political consolidation I mean finding a sufficiently stable formula to form a regular government with clearly defined and broadly supported priorities, including, of course, the country's membership in the euro area. I hope the issue receives a sufficiently convincing response after the elections on April 2. Fiscal consolidation will be a logical consequence of political consolidation. It must provide strong enough guarantees, and not only within an annual but also within the medium-term horizon, for restoring the fiscal position of the country and fulfilment of the convergence criteria.
Monetary policy has taken a number of standard and non-standard measures which have resulted in historically low interest rates. Hence the assessment for the limited room for further adjustment measures. Given the expected low inflationary pressures, the monetary policy stance, in general, will depend on the developments in the external sector. Hence, the main point that needs to be highlighted, and which is aimed at supporting long-term growth, are the structural reforms. In the recent period, Macedonia has been making great efforts to improve the business climate, which is being confirmed by the business indicators (Doing Business). In this regard, Macedonia is ranked 30th place for 2015, which is an improvement of six positions relative to 2013. Improved ranking is observed in all categories, with the exception of the segments “obtaining credit” and “procedures for obtaining building permits”. However, there are segments where there is room for further improvement – procedure for obtaining building permits, access to electricity, registration of property, implementation of contracts. The latest Transition Report of the EBRD also refers to the areas where greater efforts are required. In fact, there are few segments where there is complete convergence to the setup in the developed market economies. The energy sector, infrastructure and financial sector (particularly in the part of providing additional funding through the capital market) are highlighted areas where further reforms are needed. The last aspect, i.e. the deepening of the capital market is a very important element in the growth pattern.

Maja Kadievska-Vojnovik: Prospects of the Macedonian economy in 2015 Address by Ms Maja Kadievska-Vojnovik, Vice-Governor of the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia, at the panel discussion on the “Prospects of the Macedonian economy in 2015”, organized by “Finance Think”, Skopje, 22 December 2014. *  *  *  Many thanks to Ana Mitreska, Manager of the Monetary Policy and Research Department, who participated in the preparation for the panel discussion on the “Prospects of the Macedonian economy in 2015”. Macedonian economy is small and open, as evident from the high and growing share of exports and imports in GDP (in the last four years the openness increased by almost 20 percentage points, reaching high 105% of GDP in 2013). Given this feature, it is undoubtedly exposed to global developments, especially developments in Europe, which is our key trading partner to which we export over 70% of the Macedonian products. Economies of this kind, by definition, are economies that absorb the shocks from external environment, with relatively limited opportunities for influence. In fact, the decrease of economic activity in 2009 and in 2012 (about 0.5% in both years) showed that the real sector of the economy cannot remain immune to the adverse demand shocks arising from Europe. Also, an important structural feature of our economy is its high import dependence of the export sector and its high energy dependence.
I should also note that evidence on the impact on productivity resulting from greater working from home is not clear (Barrero et al., 2020 and Haldane, 2020). Reduced travel time is a positive, but there may be lower innovation and creativity which would otherwise come from people being together more. I want to finish this section on the economic implications of Covid by highlighting two longer-term and important developments, both of which pre-date Covid, and neither of which is helpful. First, the UK has experienced a fall in the average rate of growth, reflecting slower growth in potential supply capacity. Chart 3 illustrates the four-quarter GDP growth rate since 2000. It is apparent that the average growth rate has fallen from around 2.5% in the years before the global financial crisis, to around 1.5% in the period immediately prior to the Covid pandemic. Chart 4 shows the same timeline for aggregate labour productivity per hour over the last twenty years. Again, the story is not encouraging. Another way of representing this, is to note that the level of activity in the UK following the global financial crisis is significantly below its level at the equivalent stage following the 1930s Depression (Haldane, 2021). Issues arising in the recovery from Covid  I want to return now to the four important points I set out at the start. First, Covid has been a shock to both demand and supply in the economy. Using an output gap measure on its own fails to capture the importance of this story.

Whilst remote working only accounted for around 8% of total hours worked in 2019, this increased sharply during the pandemic, reaching 43% in 2021 Q1. Moreover, firms expected remote working to persist into 2022 and beyond, with around 20% of hours expected to be worked from home. 1  5  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  5  has been a negative impact on productivity resulting from measures taken to contain Covid. Firms in the DMP estimated that Covid has increased average unit costs by around 7% in the second and third quarters of last year. They expected this impact to reduce to 5% by the second quarter of this year, with a more persistent negative impact of 2%. All of this reflects new costs – for PPE, screens etc., and the impact on costs from social distancing reducing capacity. However, this negative effect from higher unit costs was offset for DMP members by what is often called a batting average effect – namely that the impact of Covid has shifted the composition of activity towards higher productivity firms. But this means that Covid has seen lower total output and higher average labour productivity. This is consistent with the greater than normal supply side impact of the Covid shock. But this is not creative destruction in a Schumpeterian sense; in other words that raises output through competition and innovation. Rather, this is a form of destruction that lowers total output and welfare.
It is vital that work to identify and address systemic risks is carried out jointly across countries, taking a macroprudential perspective rather than solely focusing on the soundness of individual entities. Conclusion Let me conclude. In the past decade, we have seen the role that non-banks play in financing the euro area economy become increasingly important. While this is a welcome development in terms of promoting financial integration and supporting economic growth, it also entails increased risks for the financial system. Interconnectedness between the banking and the non-bank financial sector remains high, increasing the scope for contagion. Given these growing risks, the policy action undertaken to date is becoming ever more insufficient. Indeed, there seems to be a general inertia in the adoption of policy recommendations on non-banks. That has to change. The lack of policy action today may mean the materialisation of risks tomorrow. In particular, a more comprehensive macroprudential framework should be a priority to ensure that non-banks are more resilient and able to provide a stable source of funding to the real economy in both good and bad times. Thank you. 1. Molestina Vivar, L., Lambert, C., Wedow, M. and Giuzio, M. (2020), “Is the home bias biased? New evidence from the investment fund sector”, Financial Integration and Structure in the Euro Area, ECB, March. 2. Financial Stability Board (2013), Strengthening Oversight and Regulation of Shadow Banking. Policy Framework for Strengthening Oversight and Regulation of Shadow Banking Entities, August. 3. “All financial institutions” excludes the Eurosystem. 4.

- by discouraging the repetitive and unjustified recourse to short-term contracts, including by some employees themselves, the recent unemployment insurance reform provides better incentives to work and to manage companies' human resources in a long term perspective. It will be necessary to assess whether it is both sufficiently effective and sufficiently fair. - of course, there remains the issue of wage increases when it comes to enhancing job attractiveness. These are currently highly expected by our fellow citizens in the face of the inflationary hump; but we must prevent the return of a general price-wage spiral, which would be a loss for all. Nevertheless, for certain jobs where there is a deficit not in skills but in attractiveness, wage increases and negotiated improvements in working conditions are the key. Page 12 sur 15 All these levers for influencing labour supply must be combined, instead of being too often opposed to one another in our public debate. They must be used with perseverance, rather than remain fleeting announcements. Only then can we find the other two missing thirds to gain the half point of potential growth in five years. Only then can we hope to achieve a 5% unemployment rate in ten years. And only then, and I'm coming to this point, will we finally be able keep our public spending under control. 2) Public finances and debt The figures on public debt are well known.
Sales of Swedish and Finnish high-tech products are growing strongly in volume terms, but prices are falling. Denmark has a diversified business sector, which is overall moving on a steady path. Strong development in the petroleum sector High oil prices have provided a strong impetus for the petroleum industry and have led to a strong increase in activity on the Norwegian continental shelf. Many projects have been launched to increase recovery from fields in operation, and investment in the petroleum sector has increased sharply. The large development projects relating to the natural gas fields Snøhvit outside of Hammerfest and Ormen Lange at Aukra have made a large contribution to the high level of investment. Both these projects also involve considerable onshore development, which may have generated stronger impulses to the business sector locally than pure offshore projects. Investment activity associated with these two gas fields will probably decline in the period to completion in 2007. Production has reached record levels and is expected to remain high for some years, a continued high activity level is anticipated, and many new development projects are being considered by the authorities. The oil age in Norway has spanned 30 years and it appears that it will continue for many years ahead. Our petroleum resources can be divided into three, of which approximately 1/3 has been produced by now, 1/3 has been found but not produced, and 1/3 remains to be found.

More importantly, while we adhere to the macroeconomic framework it will shield the economy when oil prices fall and our terms of trade are reversed. Thank you for your attention! BIS Review 30/2006  5
Its first stage, which included the expansion of the rate corridor, improved applications of the bonus-malus coefficient, and an update of driving licence categories, has already reduced the cost of OSAGO in nearly all regions, with a countryaverage decrease in the policy cost totalling 4%. The next stage involves rate personalisation for drivers; it should ultimately solve problems faced by OSAGO policy holders. Firstly, it should put an end to the injustice when careful and responsible drivers have to pay for those who drive in a 3/7  BIS central bankers' speeches  risky manner and often have accidents. Microfinance organisations The microfinance market faces the same fair criticism now as in recent years because of usurious interest rates, and incredible fines and penalties. We came up with a serious tightening of the regulation of microfinance organisations. Currently, there are half as many such organisations in the market as there used to be five years ago. From now on, the law caps interest rates at 1% per day, while the full cost of borrowing with all fines and penalties included is limited to 1.5 times the loan amount. These conditions will allow borrowers to use microfinancing to settle their temporary financial problems without running the risk of ending up in an even worse situation. Moving forward, we believe that one of our priorities is to prevent losses from illegal operations in the economy and damages from fraud suffered by households.

Let me reiterate the commitment of the Board of the Central Bank of Chile with a monetary policy oriented at keeping inflation low and stable. This is certainly the best contribution we can make to the prosperity of our country. Thank you. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  Table 1 International baseline scenario assumptions 2010  2011 (e)  2012 (f) Sep.11 Dec.11 Report Report  Mar.12 Report  2013 (f) Sep.11 Dec.11 Report Report  Mar.12 Report  (annual change, percent) Terms of trade (*)  19.4  0.5  -5.3  -6.7  -5.3  -2.6  -3.5  -0.1  Trading partners World at PPP  6.1 5.1  4.1 3.7  4.3 4.0  3.8 3.5  3.8 3.3  4.6 4.5  4.2 4.1  4.2 3.9  United States Eurozone China Rest of Asia Latin America (excl. Chile)  3.0 1.9 10.4 7.7 6.3  1.7 1.4 9.2 4.3 4.2  2.0 1.2 8.3 4.5 3.9  1.8 -0.1 8.2 4.4 3.6  2.1 -0.3 8.1 4.3 3.6  2.8 2.1 8.7 5.0 4.2  2.2 1.0 8.5 4.8 4.0  2.3 1.0 8.5 4.8 4.0  LME copper price $ Brent oil price $  342 80  400 111  370 108  (levels) 350 107  370 121  350 106  340 102  360 115  (e) Estimate. (f) Forecast. (*) September and December forecasts were done with national accounts with 2003 as the base year.