samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Manufacturing in particular was supported by a surge in the production of pharmaceutical ingredients and biological products. The electronics industry also did better than expected. The modern services cluster – comprising financial, ICT, and professional services – was also less affected. The financial services sector in particular has done reasonably well in the face of the pandemic. I will touch on this later in my remarks. All in, the Singapore economy will experience a full-year contraction in 2020, with GDP growth projected at –7 to –4%. The 12% of the economy that is worst-hit—construction, travel-related, and consumerfacing domestic services—will take time to recover. While we may see strong positive sequential growth in the second half of this year for those activities, it will not be sufficient to restore activity to pre-crisis levels. The performance of the trade-related sector will be dampened by weak external demand and continued small frictions in global supply chains, but headline manufacturing output is likely to be supported by strong demand for pharmaceutical products. Growth in modern services, on the other hand, is likely to moderate in the second half alongside the pullback in business activity. Both Core Inflation and CPI-All Items inflation are expected to turn negative, averaging between −1 and 0% this year. External inflation and global oil prices will remain low, notwithstanding some upward pressure on imported food prices due to supply disruptions.

In this environment, both the negative interest rate and the SNB’s willingness to intervene in the foreign exchange market as necessary remain essential. These measures allow us to ensure price stability – and thus fulfil our mandate in the interests of the country as a whole. Facilitating and securing the operation of cashless payment systems is part of the SNB’s mandate. And for good reason: A smoothly functioning payment system is critically important to the performance of an economy. Payments connect buyers and sellers; borrowers and lenders. The ability to make payments securely and irrevocably is fundamental to sustaining confidence in the financial system. Digitalisation and the proliferation of mobile internet services are changing the way we pay for things. New applications and technologies promise ever faster, easier and cheaper payment options via smartphone, tablet or smartwatch. The entire payments ecosystem is set to undergo profound change as a result. My colleague Thomas Moser and I will take a more detailed look at how innovation is shaping developments in the payments arena. We will focus in particular on the challenges such innovation presents to central banks. In the past, payment innovations have often been driven by the private sector. Facilitating – and especially securing – the operation of payment systems has long been a fundamental task of many central banks, however. It is thus essential that all the various stakeholders maintain a constructive dialogue.
BIS Review 101/2009  11  more stable than one where gross exposures are forfeited in the event of default, as in the latter case the cascade through the network of the losses is likely to generate more failures on the way. All the discussion thus far relates to amplification within the financial sector. But what about the substantial impact on the real economy? The IMF’s estimate of total financial sector write-downs in the advanced economies since the start of the crisis is around $ trillion. If we assume an annual marginal propensity to consume out of wealth of 5%, that suggests a fall in demand of around $ billion. But the loss in advanced country GDP relative to potential is projected to be more than 10 times bigger than that. So we cannot come near to explaining the “Great Contraction” purely in terms of wealth effects. The most obvious additional mechanism for the propagation of the financial crisis into the real economy is through a “credit crunch” as banks tighten lending standards and with it the supply of credit to businesses and households. That could arise both because lenders correctly realise that they were under-pricing risk and because of a need for them to deleverage. Both the bank lending data and credit conditions surveys in the US, UK and euro area are consistent with some restriction in the supply of credit from the middle of 2007 onwards.

I believe this will culminate in Islamic finance leadership that is premised on ethics and professionalism. Islamic finance can then truly fulfil its key role in elevating the well-being of humankind, and not just for achieving halal profits. Towards Sustainability: The Role of Islamic Finance Islamic finance value propositions not only are consistent with universal and ethical values, but the economic aspirations are to elevate our overall well-being. Much of today’s discussion focus on as Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Sustainable Responsible Investments (SRIs) that centre on impact-driven and value-added outcomes, in addition to being commercial2/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  oriented. On this note, Malaysia is at the forefront of innovation and thought leadership with the Value-Based Intermediation (VBI) initiative that aims to create positive and sustainable impact to the economy, community and environment, without compromising the financial returns to shareholders. Our VBI journey has hit several key milestones. To date, 12 Islamic banking institutions have pledged to integrate environmental and social considerations in their offerings, practices and cultures. In facilitating this new journey, Bank Negara Malaysia will continue to collaborate with the industry to create an enabling environment for smooth and orderly transition. These include the issuance of several guidance documents such as the VBI implementation guide, VBI Scorecard and Value-based Impact Assessment Framework (VBIAF). More recently, the Bank and the VBI community of practitioners (COP) have embarked on efforts to develop sectorspecific guides on value-based impact assessment alongside sectoral experts.
100 Riksbank NIER Consensus Time series model (AR(1)) 80  60  40  20  0 50  60  70  80  90  Sources: Statistics Sweden, the National Institute of Economic Research, Consensus Forecasts and the Riksbank  12  BIS Review 138/2007  Figure 12. Ranking for the CPI following year per cent Note. The Y-axis shows how large a percentage of times analysts have been better than the percentage of analysts as illustrated in the X-axis. In order to see how large a proportion of times the Riksbank has been better than 50 per cent of other analysts, see 50 on the X-axis, then study the red column on the Y-axis. 100  Riksbank NIER Consensus Time series model (AR(1))  80  60  40  20  0 50  60  70  80  90  Sources: Statistics Sweden, the National Institute of Economic Research, Consensus Forecasts and the Riksbank  Figure 13. The CPIX with uncertainty band Annual percentage change 4  4  90% 75% 50% UND1X  3  3  2  2  1  1  0  0  -1 dec-02  -1 dec-03  dec-04  dec-05  dec-06  dec-07  dec-08  dec-09  dec-10  Sources: Statistics Sweden and the Riksbank  BIS Review 138/2007  13  Figure 14.

Central Bank of Chile October 2019  Third Statistics Conference: “Measuring the Economy in the Digital Age” Opening remarks by Mario Marcel, Governor of the Central Bank of Chile October 1-2, 2019 – Santiago, Chile Good morning, It is a great pleasure to welcome you to the Third Statistics Conference organized by the Central Bank of Chile (CBC), on “Measuring the Economy in the Digital Age” that brings together distinguished experts on macro statistics from many agencies and countries around the globe. This conference follows the one on “Statistics for Financial and Monetary Analysis” in 2015 and on “Measuring the Economy in a Globalized World” in 2017 and it is becoming a landmark event for the CBC, and I hope for all participants as well. The conference we are opening today will address the opportunities and challenges that digitalization imposes on us in interpreting and analyzing increasingly dynamic economic and financial phenomena. The Digital Economy Digitization is progressively changing the way we understand our world, by creating new business models and processes, generating new smart products and services, with lower costs and more timely delivery, all of which is reshaping consumer behavior. Major questions are emerging about the ability of our conventional toolkit to measure economic activity in the face of such changes. Digital products, services and means of economic interaction are making the task of identifying economic phenomena more challenging, especially for economic and financial statistics. Traditionally, economic transactions were governed by the interaction between producers and households.
I’ll also meet with the leaders of New Jersey Community Capital to learn about their cutting-edge programs for helping distressed homeowners and then I’ll speak to the students, faculty and alumni at Montclair State University. In addition, my colleagues and I at the New York Fed continually track conditions in our District, and we have created a number of tools for that purpose. For example, my staff produces indices of economic activity for New York City, New York State and New Jersey. We also track local household credit conditions, including the amount and type of personal debt and whether payments are being made in a timely way. We also conduct a periodic poll about the credit needs of small businesses, which are an important source of new jobs in the region. In our latest poll of several hundred firms, many report that they did not apply for credit because they were “discouraged.” Perhaps surprisingly, many of these non-applicants have credit profiles similar to other firms who successfully sought credit. This finding suggests that the demand for credit could pick up as some “discouraged” firms learn that they might be able to obtain credit now. If you, as a representative of a small business, would like to participate in our next poll, please pass your card to my colleagues, who are in the audience, or see me after the speech and we will be glad to add you as a respondent.

Domestic inflationary pressures, including wage pressures, have so far remained reasonably subdued and it is crucially important that that should continue. But it does explain our caution in moving interest rates down. Somewhat similar concerns explain my reaction to recent speculation that the Government would now make a strong push for early entry to the euro. I take no position on the five economic tests which are a matter for the Chancellor. But I do see the present external environment – and in particular, as I said elsewhere last week, the euro's present weakness – as a potentially serious obstacle to early entry. So I very much welcome the considered and cautious approach to making the assessment of the five tests, which the Chancellor set out this evening. Most people agree that sterling's exchange rate on entry to the euro would need to be substantially lower than our present rate, which few would regard as sustainable in the medium and longer term. Given the euro's present general weakness, that could come about in either of two ways. If, achieving what was considered to be an appropriate entry rate against the euro – whatever that was precisely – involved a substantial depreciation of sterling's overall, effective, exchange rate (that's to say sterling's rate against other currencies generally), that would be bound to put strong upward pressure on our domestic rate of inflation.
There are, however, some institutional responses that will take place if the Bank is not able to return the exchange rate back to its initial range, as defined by the mandate, without contributing to inflation or a deflationary recession. I will come back to this issue later in my speech. 1  BIS Review 101/2000  The base drift problem If the inflation rate in Norway deviates from the inflation rate in the euro countries, the nominal exchange rate will need to adjust over time. However, some of you may object that stabilising the Norwegian inflation rate at the level aimed at by the euro countries may not be sufficient to stabilise the nominal exchange rate. The reason is that inflation in both Norway and the euro countries will be subject to stochastic shocks. This means that even if the expected inflation rates in Norway and the euro countries were the same, the actual inflation rates would deviate. Technically speaking, the relative price levels will be subject to base drift, and so will the nominal exchange rate. Professor Larry Ball has discussed this in a paper on Norwegian monetary policy. Keeping the relative price level constant would require that we target the price level and not the inflation rate. However, in the 1920s Norway experienced that a policy aimed at achieving a specific level for the purchasing power of money led to substantial macroeconomic instability.

This will broaden rule-making powers for the PRA, as requirements which are now in statute will be replaced by new elements of our Rulebook, which we will have the power to change. The FSM Bill also introduces a new objective. The PRA’s primary objectives will remain the safety and soundness of firms and, for insurers, an appropriate degree of protection for policyholders. We will keep our existing secondary objective to facilitate effective competition in markets for financial services. But alongside these we will have a new secondary objective to facilitate, subject to alignment with relevant international standards, the international competitiveness of the UK’s economy and its growth in the medium to long term. We know it is important that we explain what we think these changes will mean for our policymaking. We also want to hear how other people think we should approach our objectives and use  Page 3  new powers. That is why on 8 September we published a discussion paper setting out our vision for the PRA as a strong, accountable, responsive, and accessible rule maker. [1] Today I am going to explain how those principles will guide us as we seek out new opportunities to pursue all our objectives; including competition, competitiveness, and growth. In particular, I will explain how rules that are strong and responsive can protect resilience and facilitate competitiveness at the same time. Taking our new competitiveness objective seriously will not mean entering a regulatory race to the bottom.
12 Ongoing efforts to recreate safe, transparent and consistent securitisation may, to some extent, support the  supply of safe private collateral. 13 Against this background, rebalancing the euro area fiscal stance towards faster debt reduction in high debt  jurisdictions, and using fiscal space where it is available, would yield benefits for the supply of safe collateral. 14 See e.g. Corradin, S., F. Heider and M. Hoerova (2017), “On collateral: implications for financial stability and  monetary policy”, ECB Working Paper No 2107. 15 See e.g. Mancini, L., A. Ranaldo and J. Wrampelmeyer (2015), “The Euro Interbank Repo Market”, The Review of  Financial Studies, Vol. 29(7), pp. 1747–1779. 16 See the Opinion of the European Central Bank of 8 November 2017 on amendments to the Union framework for  capital requirements of credit institutions and investment firms (CON/2017/46). 17 See Cœuré, B. (2017), “The known unknowns of financial regulation”, panel contribution at the conference on  Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy IV, Washington D.C., 12 October. See also the ongoing FSB-led review of incentives to centrally clear, the Derivatives Assessment Team (DAT). 18 See FSB (2015). 19 See FSB (2017). 10 / 10  BIS central bankers' speeches

While pull factors actually improved, and rating upgrades by Moody’s outnumbered downgrades by three to one in 2005, they cannot fully account for the magnitude of capital flows to emerging markets in that year. For example, BIS provides a measure of an average sovereign credit rating for emerging markets based on long-term foreign currency Standard & Poors ratings. While credit spreads fell to an all-time low, at the same time emerging markets sovereign ratings remained below their highest levels recorded in 1997. Therefore we may conclude that push factors have been playing an important role in emerging markets. For example, the hedge fund community came to a view that in early 2004 the Polish zloty was an obvious “no-brainer” trade, partly because it had depreciated significantly in previous years and partly because EU accession resulted in a significant and permanent drop in the country’s risk premium. In early 2005, hedge funds were telling me that the Brazilian real was another “no-brainer” trade, as the central bank would have to keep high rates to control inflation and a good external balance indicated that the exchange rate could appreciate. In both cases, the Polish zloty in 2004 and the Brazilian real in 2005 were star performing currencies, and hedge funds pursuing carry trade and momentum strategies were important players on these markets. Such a situation poses a true challenge for many central banks in emerging markets.
A third example of perceptions being at variance with reality was the prediction that the Mainland Chinese currency, the renminbi, would be devalued during 1999 and that the Hong Kong dollar would inevitably be swept down with it. It is true that the economic performance of the Mainland was for a time moving in a manner such that devaluation could have been judged a not unreasonable option. But those who predicted such an event tended to give insufficient attention to the fact that the renminbi is not a convertible currency, that the prevailing external position was strong, and that the authorities had made it clear that they were not contemplating devaluation. The read-across to the Hong Kong dollar required an even greater leap of the imagination. Our exchange rate had never been dislodged from its peg by previous depreciations of the Mainland’s currency, which have amounted cumulatively to some 75% over the period since the establishment of our peg in 1983. Moreover, any reasons for expecting a devaluation of the renminbi to have a knock-on effect on the Hong Kong dollar because of competitiveness considerations are weaker now than before, because Hong Kong has evolved much more as a complementary economy to the Mainland of China than as a competitor. As a final example I might mention the various misperceptions which people have had more generally about the relationship between Hong Kong and the Mainland of China, which have perhaps caused some volatility in financial market sentiment towards Hong Kong.

I say “have” advisedly, rather than “do”, because, now that we are in our third year of “One Country, Two Systems”, I am pleased to find that the number of foreigners that I encounter who still seriously misunderstand our system has dwindled away. I would not anyway criticise those who did, or still do, have mistaken understandings of Hong Kong’s constitutional position. After all, Hong Kong is a small territory, a third of the way round the globe from here, and it would be conceited to assume that everybody should know the intimate details of our situation. Anyway, for the avoidance of doubt, let me tell you that Hong Kong enjoys complete constitutional autonomy in its monetary and financial policies. And I can assure you that this autonomy has been fully respected by the Mainland authorities. They are, indeed, as anxious as I am to preserve a stable and prosperous financial environment in Hong Kong. I hope you will forgive me for spending all this time talking about Hong Kong and its currency rather than about the euro. I have done so with a purpose, namely to illustrate the extent to which observers may often be mistaken about the direction of policy or the status of a currency. This is the source of much frustration to those of us trying to preserve financial and monetary stability.
Others present considerable uncertainty: for example, the extent and duration of the collapse in business and consumer confidence, and the question of how far monetary and fiscal stimulus will contain the collapse; and the scope and economic effects of the war against terrorism, which, we have been told, will be long and unlike any other war. The effects on our regional economy are likely to be severe. We are heavily dependent on exports to the USA, at a time when these are declining and likely to continue to decline for some time to come. Capital inflows into the region are falling because of increased risk aversion. Within the region, many countries face persistent internal problems, in some cases - such as Indonesia - both economic and political. The big engine of the region - Japan - continues to falter, with declining exports, rising unemployment, a weak banking sector, and an economy officially teetering on the brink of yet another recession. The latest news from Singapore - in many senses our sister-city in the region - is not good at all. The bright spot in the region continues to be China, which has sustained real GDP growth of 7.6% and export growth of 7% for the first three quarters. It seems inevitable that exports, and in turn GDP, will be affected by the decline in consumer spending in the US, which accounts for around 20% of China's export market: the latest figures already suggest this.

Joseph Yam: Building stability in unstable times Speech by Mr Joseph Yam, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, at the Hong Kong Institute of Bankers Lunch Talk, Hong Kong, 24 October 2001. *  *  *  Thank you for inviting me to speak today. It is a pleasure to see such an excellent attendance - a sure sign of the vitality of the Institute and the relevance of its work to the banking community. It is less of a pleasure to be speaking at a time when the international situation is a grave and unstable one, when our own economy is under immense strain, and when conditions are likely to get worse before they get better. What is the role of our financial community in times like this? And, more specifically, what should the regulator be doing to ensure that monetary and financial systems are conducive to stability and are an aid to recovery? The answers, I believe, are to safeguard the strength of our banking system, to ensure that our financial infrastructure remains sound, even under stress, and to maintain steady policies that are conducive to stable, robust and efficient markets. I shall, in this talk, give some examples of how, thanks to the hard work that has been put in over the years, Hong Kong is well equipped to deliver on these aims. The examples may provide reassurance.