samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The study showed that out of the violin students in the elite Berlin Academy of Music, those who were ranked as top of the class and attained performer soloist standard were students that had practised most: over 10,000 hours by the age of twenty. Students ranked at the next level, i.e. professional but not quite soloist standard, had practised less, with 8,000 hours by the age of twenty. For students at the next level down, they had practised for just around 4,000 hours. The results of this study seem to suggest that, once a student had reached a certain level of aptitude and talent, at least good enough for admission into an academy of music, those who practised most diligently tended to yield the best outcome. The study did not find students that had practised more than 10,000 hours had failed to reach the top level. On the other hand, the study did not find students who achieved the top level without putting in a huge amount of practice. The reason why I wish to share these fascinating stories with you today is not out of pure academic interest or curiosity. To me, these stories carry a message with profound importance. The message is that success or more precisely, great success, does not come naturally. It is often too easy to say Bill Gates or the Beatles became idols of the world because they were born geniuses.

The greater degree of economic flexibility in the region in responding  BIS Review 11/2006  1  to shocks and the dynamic global conditions is a further feature that contributes towards strengthening the region's potential. While private consumption's contribution to domestic demand is becoming increasingly more significant in the region a renewed expansion in investment is also needed to create a more sustainable growth path. Significant initiatives are already underway to increase the contribution of private investment and secure new areas of growth. These include improving the investment climate and reducing the cost of doing business. Efforts would also continue to be on-going on the priorities in the region as countries have the potential to further expand the role of domestic demand. For several of the countries in the region, a significant boost to investment is expected to stem from an expansion in physical and social infrastructure as well as from research and development activities being relocated to Asia. On the financial front, the region's high savings rate and the pool of capital in the region for productive investments would be able to provide a boost to development of the region's financial markets. Strengthening the structure of the regional markets would facilitate the surplus savings to financing investment within the region. Significant progress has already been made in the Asian region in strengthening the financial sectors, in the banking system or the capital markets. This has increased the region's capacity to intermediate funds, especially within the region.
Culture Reform as a Complex Problem I’ll begin by observing that the issue of conduct and culture reform in the financial services industry is a “complex” problem and not simply a “complicated” one. Complicated problems have clear and relatively stable cause-and-effect patterns so that outcomes are largely predictable with the appropriate expertise and analysis. By contrast, complex problems are typically marked by interconnectedness of a large number of factors, constant evolution, feedback loops, “unknown unknowns”, and unpredictable outcomes.2 Culture reform is that type of problem. A firm’s culture can be defined as the shared set of norms that influences decision-making and is evidenced through behavior. Now consider a global systemically important bank with trillions of dollars of assets; with operations that span diverse business lines, customers, counterparties, investors and regulators across multiple jurisdictions; and that competes in a global industry against similar firms. Add in tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of employees with a wide range of motivations and goals who interact in varied but interconnected operating environments with different regional, corporate and individual values, incentives, regulations, and laws, and the inherent complexity becomes clear. This complexity makes it virtually impossible to fully comprehend the drivers of culture or predict its behavioral consequences. An implication is the need for a long-term, sustained commitment to addressing conduct and culture reform using a wide range of tools that are suitable for a complex problem.

The implications of the crisis internationally-wide entered primarily through the external sector, and particularly through the transmission channels given below: -  the export-based production registered swift and rapid fall, due to the depreciated global demand, whereas the downward revision of the domestic demand took place  2  BIS Review 127/2009  in a slower pace, leading to some import reduction (particularly in the last quarter of the last year and the first quarter of this year), -  this uneven pace of the fall in the exports and the imports brought about widening the trade gap, whereas the increase in the uncertainty and establishment of bearish expectations caused decrease in the net inflows from private transfers, Reasonably, it led to higher current account deficit in this period,  -  although the syndrome of sudden cessation was not present, the capital inflows went down significantly, making the current account funding fall considerably on the foreign reserves,  -  the perceptions for increasing the macroeconomic risks made the banks accumulating foreign assets, the households converting large amounts of Denars into foreign currencies, thus creating additional pressure on the foreign reserves of the Republic of Macedonia. Accordingly, the consequences of the crisis could not be avoided, which is understandable if the size and the openness of the Macedonian economy are taken into consideration.
Efficiency demands of us to pinpoint specific sources of risks and, where possible, choose targeted measures over generic alternatives. In certain circumstances, specific tools such as adjusted riskweights, borrower-based measures or sectoral systemic risk buffers are better alternatives to a generic tool which affects all segments of credit indiscriminately, hindering the funding of the economy's productive capacity, which is much needed for the economy to keep growing. Lastly macroprudential policy demands from banks a higher level of diversification and productive investment. As past Financial Stability Reports indicate banks' loan portfolios are highly concentrated towards real estate. This is a structural characteristic which is very well documented, so is the fact that mortgages are the prime drivers behind this concentration. Macroprudential policy has a role to play here to address systemic concentration risks. But, apart from policy prescription, the importance of portfolio diversification cannot be underestimated. Similarly, banks have a crucial role to play in financing the productive capacity of our economy and therefore they must ensure that this capacity is not crowded out. We are in the midst of a historical global transition to sustainable economic models including digital transformation. This time could therefore offer a unique opportunity for our banks to also finance this vital transition and in so doing diversify their portfolios. We are still in the early stages on the sustainability path, but we cannot afford to be late or in catching up mode if we want to ensure a more equitable and sustainable society.

In conclusion, some recent positive news to cheer us up for Christmas. We hear that the inflation across most Eurozone countries including Malta hastaken a dip in November the first drop in seventeen months. Some say it might have peaked. Gas and oil prices are on the decline. Trasfigura, a respected authority on gas reserves, tells us that the gas crisis has abated not just for this winter but quite possibly the next. The much expected recession at the end of this year might not materialise after all. So ....... the ECB will no longer continue raising interest rates.? 4/5  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  Well ....not quite. Thank you all. 5/5  BIS - Central bankers' speeches
The participation rate has stagnated in recent months, and is still below its pre-pandemic levels, lagging behind other economies, as we show in one of the boxes in this Report. This is mainly linked to lags in the recovery of employment among the under-25 and over-54 age groups, in a context in which women participation rates continue to be well below those of men (49.9% and 70.1%, respectively). According to INE publications, among the most important reasons for not participating in the labor market are family and personal responsibilities, studying, and retirement. Gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) continued to decline, in a scenario where uncertainty is high and business confidence keeps deteriorating. Seasonally adjusted, GFCF fell by 1% between the first and second quarters, after a 7% decline in the first quarter. In any case, this performance was somewhat better than expected, influenced by some large-scale investment projects. By components, the sharp drop in machinery and equipment stood out. Business confidence (IMCE) continued the downward trend it has followed since the beginning of the year, especially in the construction sector. This coincides with levels of economic uncertainty (Depuc) that remain high by historical standards, more restrictive credit access conditions and high long-term interest rates (figure 6). Despite lower consumption and weaker investment, the current-account deficit — accumulated over twelve months— increased in the second quarter, still reflecting the magnitude of the 2021 imbalances, which were subsequently compounded by a deterioration in the terms of trade and high transportation costs.

13  Figure 8 a) Growth forecast at 2022 (1) (percent)  U.S. Eurozone LatAm China (right axis)  5  4  U.S. 100 Eurozone 6,0 LatAm 80 China (right axis)  7 3,0  6  3  c) Probability of a recession within 12 months in developed countries (percent)  b) Growth forecast at 2023 (1) (percent)  2,5  5,7 60  2,0  5,4  1,5  5,1  1,0  4,8  20  4,5  0  5  2  4  1 3 0,5 Jan.21 Jul.21 Jan.22 Jul.22 Jan.22 Apr.22 Jul.22  40  12 14 16 18 20 22  (1) Latin America considers Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. PPP-weighted growth, shares of each economy according to WEO (IMF). (2) Includes the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, and Japan. Calculated as the average of survey responses for aforementioned countries. Sources: Consensus Forecast, IMF, and Bloomberg. Figure 9 Global supply chain pressure index (1)  Commodity prices  (standard deviations)  (index, 2010-2022 average =100)  5  250  4  200  Oil (2)  Metal index (3)  Wheat (4)  Copper  3 150  2 1  100  0 50  -1 -2  0  10  12  14  16  18  20  22  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22  (1) Standard deviations with respect to historical average.
Some illustrations of this include the large shift in subprime mortgage originations to less regulated institutions;  BIS Review 27/2008  5  the incentives to shift risk to where accounting and capital treatment is more favorable; and the amount of risk built up in entities that operate in the grey areas of implied support from much larger affiliated institutions. We need to move to a simpler framework, with a more uniform set of rules applied evenly across entities involved in similar functions, and a more effective balance of regulation and market discipline. And institutions that are banks, or are built around banks, with special access to the safety net, need to be subject to a stronger form of consolidated supervision than our current framework provides. Capital The U.S. banking system entered this financial shock with capital cushions significantly above the regulatory thresholds, and in a stronger position to withstand a downturn than was the case in the past. This has made it possible for bank balance sheets to expand rapidly, which in turn has helped offset the effects of the withdrawal of many nonbank financial institutions from credit markets. Yet the shock absorbers in the financial system as a whole – the financial cushions that are critical to financial stability – have proved to be thinner, and behavior has been more procyclical than desirable. This is in part the consequence of changes in the structure of the financial system.

Other countries of the European Union, including the UK and France, are faring not much better, though the markets have been more accommodative of their plight so far. The whole Europe is in fact mired in the “debt abyss”. For all the hard efforts by the European Central Bank (ECB) to minimise the risk of a total euro collapse, President of the ECB, Mr Mario Draghi, once said that these were merely attempts to buy time, so that the euro zone countries could implement fiscal and structural reforms. Hopefully the markets would be convinced that these reforms would help those countries reduce government debt and regain competitiveness. As regards fiscal reforms, the EU agreed on and signed the Fiscal Compact in March 2012. If implemented, the European countries concerned will have to pursue rigorous deficit reduction plans and lower their total sovereign debt to GDP ratio to 60% or below within years. Take Italy as an example. It will have to keep on reducing its government debt by an amount equal to 3% of GDP annually for the next twenty years so as to reduce its current debt-to-GDP ratio of 120% to the target of 60%. This shows how formidable and painful it will be for the European countries to re-establish fiscal discipline. The short to medium term economic outlook for Europe is hardly optimistic. What I would like to point out here is that implementation of the Fiscal Compact will lead to significant deleveraging by the various European governments.
BIS Review 65/2009  9  Figure 7 Consumers and entrepreneurs' perception indexes 90  140  70  70  70  120  60  60  50  100  50  50  30  80  40  40  60  30  10  86  90  94  98  IPEC (1)  02  06  04  05  06  07  Total IMCE (3)  U. de Chile (2)  08  09  30  Minus mining (3)(4)  (1) Values above (below) 50 points indicate optimism (pessimism). Before January 2003, the index was published quarterly. Since then it is published on a monthly basis. (2) Index, March 2001 = 100. (3) Values above (below) 50 points indicate positive (negative) expectations. (4) Weighted average of three sector confidence indicators: manufacturing Industry, retail and construction. Sources: Adimark, Universidad de Chile and ICARE/Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez.

MoneySENSE is also partnering the Association of Banks (ABS) to run talks on credit management, the Life Insurance Association (LIA) and General Insurance Association (GIA) to deliver seminars on insurance, and the Investment Management Association of Singapore (IMAS) and the Singapore Exchange (SGX) to present talks on the basics of personal investing. 20. You can also find a wide range of tools to for self-learning. For instance, the CPF Board has several online calculators to help you plan for your retirement and housing needs. MoneySENSE has worksheets to help you draw up your family budget and assess your debt commitments. There is also a MoneySENSE guidebook to explain commonly used terms in financial documents that you may encounter. Conclusion 21. I wish you an enjoyable time at the roadshow. Enjoy the activities. Most important of all, let's all use the tips and lessons we learn in your daily lives. BIS Review 30/2006  3
When foreign market participants assess the situation and risks for Sweden and Swedish financial institutions, they also take into account to a large degree what is happening in the other Nordic countries and in the Baltic countries. The global financial crisis has affected financial stability in Sweden, although financial institutions here have coped better than those in many other countries. At the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 there was considerable international uncertainty and the market was particularly sensitive to consequences for Swedish banks resulting from the crisis in the Baltic. There was thus good reason for the Riksbank to take measures to stabilise the situation among the major Swedish banks in accordance with its task "to promote a safe and efficient payment system”. As the problems of the Swedish banks concerned mainly lay in the Baltic region, there was even greater justification for aiming the measures at strengthening these countries and thereby the banks there. The costs of these measures would probably be much lower if the problem could be dealt with at source rather than waiting until it had spread to the parent banks in Sweden, for instance through a dead stop in the liquidity supply from international markets. When the Riksbank made an assessment of the resources required to manage a widespread Swedish bank crisis, we took into account the fact that the Swedish banks’ balance sheets nowadays amount in total to 3.7 times Sweden’s GDP (which can be compared to 1.2 times GDP during the bank crisis in the 1990s).

Philipp Hildebrand: Money and monetary policy – the ECB experience 1999-2006 Comments by Mr Philipp Hildebrand, Member of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the Fourth ECB Central Banking Conference: The role of money: money and monetary policy in the twenty-first century, Frankfurt/Main, 9 November 2006. * 1. *  *  Introduction  Dear colleagues and friends. It is a pleasure to be here today. I am honored to have the opportunity to discuss Money and monetary policy: The ECB experience 1999-2006 by B. Fischer, M. Lenza, H. Pill and L. Reichlin in front of such a distinguished audience. The paper presents an overview of the monetary analysis at the European Central Bank (ECB) since its inception. It provides market participants with detailed information on how the monetary analysis has been deployed by the ECB and how it has evolved over time. A newly created currency presents formidable challenges to monetary policy. Arguably, this is particularly true for the monetary analysis. Two challenges strike me as being paramount: first, policy makers face a fundamentally rearranged financial environment and second, empirical estimates are difficult to come by due to the invariably short sample period. A new financial regime implies potentially unstable money demand equations; a short sample induces imprecise estimates. The presented paper makes a valuable contribution in documenting extensively how the ECB has been conducting its monetary analysis in such an environment.
Lars Nyberg: Developments in the property market Speech by Mr Lars Nyberg, Deputy Governor of Sveriges Riksbank, at Stock market day, Malmö, 18 October 2003. *  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, At the Lisbon summit in March 2000 the EU’s heads of state and government decided to initiate an ambitious reform agenda that would extend over the entire decade. The goal was for the European economies to become “the most competitive and dynamic knowledgebased economies in the world by 2010”. Today, I intend to reflect upon what has happened with economic reforms in the light of the Lisbon agenda, both in Sweden and in the euro area in general. But first allow me to thank you for your invitation to speak here today. As I’m sure you all know, the Riksbank attaches great importance to participating at various events and speaking on issues of significance for monetary policy and financial stability. This is perhaps most true of issues regarding the current stance of monetary policy, of which we were informed a short time ago in conjunction with the Inflation Report that we published last Thursday and which resulted in the decision to leave the repo rate unchanged at 2.75 per cent. The interest rate decisions in particular usually attract great interest from the public and the media, which the Riksbank of course finds very gratifying.

The objective must therefore be to constantly try to find new ways of raising growth without jeopardising economic stability. This also entails a continued challenge for the Riksbank to regularly analyse the Swedish economy’s growth potential so that monetary policy will also continue to be well balanced in the future. Thank you! 6  BIS Review 45/2003
If confirmed, this should serve to improve confidence and preclude the more negative economic scenarios, although it will take time for the attendant effects on activity to become apparent. 2  As regards the euro area inflation outlook, the ECB forecasts a very modest rise this year of 0.3%, with a recovery to 1% in 2021 and 1.3% in 2022. However, these values are well short of the medium-term price stability target, defined as inflation rates below, but close to, 2% over the medium term. The latest flash estimate for the euro area Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices, referring to October, shows annual inflation of -0.3%, weighed down by the recent appreciation of the euro, low energy and services prices, and the temporary impact of the VAT cut in Germany. Core inflation held at an all-time low of 0.2% in October, unchanged on September. It is worth noting that 35% of the headline inflation components recorded negative growth rates, and around 70% of the components grew at rates of less than 1%. Consumer expectations have held on a downward path since March, while the metric derived from financial markets (five-year swaps) declined slightly to 1.16%. Meanwhile, the long-term expectations of the Survey of Professional Forecasters held stable at around 1.7%. The situation I have just described is, therefore, one of a fragile and uncertain recovery in the euro area, in which some of the downside risks for our baseline scenario, which were identified just a few months ago, are materialising.

As part of ongoing measures to further strengthen the resilience of Islamic finance, the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) in collaboration with the Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) has formed a Task Force on Islamic Finance and Global Financial Stability in 2008 to analyse and propose specific recommendations on the role and contribution of Islamic finance in promoting global financial stability and to outline the areas for strengthening the Islamic financial infrastructure including for putting in place the building blocks for liquidity and crisis management in the Islamic financial system. In this recent decade, the increasing internationalisation of Islamic finance is being accompanied by new emerging global patterns of financial and economic interlinkages. This can be observed in the strengthening of ties in recent years between Asia and the Middle East in trade and investments in a wide range areas. Both Asia and the Middle East are increasingly recognised as dynamic growth regions in the global economy. The two regions have a history of strong trade ties that flourished on the old Silk Road, which served as a major global conduit between the ancient civilisations in the East and West until about the 14th century. Islamic finance today has revitalised these economic ties with the strengthening of the financial linkages between Asia and the Middle East, a trend that will generate mutually reinforcing growth prospects. The emergence of these new financial centres in Asia and the Middle East and their increased integration has paved the foundations for a New Silk Road.