samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Credit registry established in 1998 that provides a loan–by-loan data appears to be very useful tool for financial stability and monetary policy purposes. The recent crisis has emphasized that despite the fact that there is a vast data on credit available, still more granular, frequent and flexible credit data is needed. Though this is mainly for the purpose of credit risk assessment and financial stability issues, to which I will refer later, the availability of loan-by-loan data and their characteristics allows for more profound monetary policy research. In particular, the individual loan-by-loan data can be utilized for instance, for exploring the risk-taking monetary policy channel, which has been on the margin of the research. Further, data from the credit registry allowed us to investigate where are the credit flows channeled – to what extent it supports the SME segment, which is a key segment in reviving the growth and boosting employment, to what extent it is channeled to non-tradable sector creating possible bubbles down the road. Of course, the banking system is only one sequence of the monetary policy transmission mechanism. The corporates and households are the other very important part, whose behavior affects the outcome of the undertaken monetary policy measures. As a first line of policymaking, we surely still rely on stylized macro models, where we strive to estimate or calibrate the average behavior of the economy, or the behavior of representative agents. Of course, the reality can be much more different and heterogeneity much more pronounced than envisaged.

In general, innovations in monetary frameworks and instruments go hand in hand with innovations in statistics. The non-standard measures underline a need to devise a specific dataset, produced on a regular basis, for monitoring the effectiveness of the measures undertaken. The financial crisis has underpinned the importance of the financial stability, which forced many central banks to place much higher priority to the financial stability concerns. The focus has shifted from the stability and risks pertaining to individual financial institution to the systemic risk concept. In other words, what matters evenly is the potential instability of the financial system as a whole, and the risk of adverse loops with the real sector. More importantly, the crisis has stressed the time dimension of the systemic risk that is the procyclicality of the financial behavior and the structural dimension, which arises from the interconnectedness among the financial institutions and the possible contagion effects. Hence, the macro prudential analysis and measures are gaining more and more weight, and so are the new datasets requirements for pursuing the macro prudential role. I think that even prior to global crisis, central banks were well equipped with a wide range of macroeconomic, monetary and financial data. What was probably missing was a wellestablished platform for pursuing strong macro-financial analysis, higher frequency of some of the indicators, and uniformity in the way indicators were calculated.
Ladies and gentlemen, We find ourselves, today, at a juncture where governments and central banks alike have promptly stepped in globally to counter the negative impact of the coronavirus pandemic through social, economic, fiscal and monetary policies. The unprecedented mobilisation of the authorities 1/2  BIS central bankers' speeches  in a complex and determined manner has largely ensured the proper functioning of markets, and of the economic and social mechanisms. In this regard, enhancing the response capacity to adverse situations is essential, and this goal can also be achieved by strengthening corporate governance, supervision, and risk management in the financial sector. These are the key coordinates of the new twinning programme as well. The twinning project we are launching today has a wide scope, not only for the banking sector, but also for the entire financial market in the Republic of Moldova. It aims to be beneficial for both the National Bank of Moldova and the National Commission for Financial Markets of the Republic of Moldova, by strengthening institutional capacity and governance, as well as developing the regulatory, supervisory and operational frameworks for enhanced functionality. From my perspective, the National Bank of Romania has gained over time, after 1990, with the support of its partners in the European Union – including the support of De Nederlandsche Bank, which I would like to mention explicitly – a solid experience and expertise.

I wish success to the beneficiaries of this project, to the National Bank of Moldova, to Governor Armașu, a reliable partner in our bilateral collaboration. I am convinced that achieving the objectives will lead to increased resilience and will support the development of the economy of the Republic of Moldova. Thank you! 2/2  BIS central bankers' speeches
We should understand each other, and adopt and adapt what could usefully travel across borders, but not proselytise. Communications, and forecasts If, adapting Mike Woodford, monetary policy is nearly all about expectations, then communication matters hugely in real-world policy making (a world in which rational expectations don’t hold and so one in which we cannot passively rely on households and firms just getting it right by observing our actions). I agree entirely with Blinder that what kinds of communication are feasible and effective will vary according to the type of decision-taking structure a central bank employs. In the Bank of England’s case, given one member/one vote, the challenge is how to achieve a sensible balance of centripetal and centrifugal forces. How this plays out varies across the different dimensions of monetary policy: the objective, ‘model’ of the economy, reaction function, month-by-month decisions, and forecasts, and so on. As already noted, the objective is laid down by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. As well as helping to fill the democratic deficit, this coheres with a one person/one vote committee. The structure would not work well if different members were free to form our own views on the objective. Amongst other things, that would mean that as the composition of the MPC changed, the objective could change. This also underpins the utility of the UK MPC’s objective unequivocally giving primacy to inflation; in the jargon, the objective is lexicographic, with ‘avoiding unnecessary volatility in output and employment’ occupying a subsidiary role.

Ravi Menon: Stepping up the Chongqing-Singapore connection Keynote address by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Singapore-China (Chongqing) Financial Conference, Singapore, 4 September 2017. * * * Vice Mayor Liu Guiping, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. More than 2000 years ago, the Silk Road connected, by land and sea, the major economies of the time, enriching the lives of many people along its routes. And now 2000 years later, Chongqing, one of China’s “super-cities”, is part of the effort to revive this great heritage. Chongqing is strategically placed. It is a pivotal node on the One Belt, One Road, connecting the growing economies of South and Southeast Asia with the rest of China It is also an important city along the Yangtze River Economic Belt and a key player in the overall development of the Western Region. In short, Chongqing is a cornerstone of regional connectivity. Singapore is proud to be a partner to Chongqing in this historic project, through the Chongqing Connectivity Initiative, or CCI. And so, I am happy today to welcome you to the second Singapore-China (Chongqing) Financial Conference, to take stock of the progress we have made together and to set new goals for the future. China and Singapore – a vibrant economic relationship The backdrop to CCI is, of course, the larger China-Singapore economic relationship – one of the strongest in Asia. China is Singapore’s largest trading partner. Singapore is China’s fourth largest trading partner in ASEAN.
The projections published in June envisaged GDP growth of 4.1% in 2022, 2.8% in 2023 and 2.6% in 2024. Meanwhile, inflation of 7.2%, 2.6% and 1.8% was forecast for 2022, 2023 and 2024, respectively. In any event, the latest developments I referred to earlier point to a downward revision for economic growth in 2023 and an upward revision for inflation throughout the projection horizon, in line with those for the euro area. Thus, the latest Consensus Forecasts (relating to September) project 4.3% growth in Spain for 2022, holding stable relative to June, and 1.6% for 2023 (vs the 3.0% forecast in June). As for inflation, average rates of 8.8% and 4.1% are projected for 2022 and 2023, respectively, up 1.3 pp and 1.5 pp, respectively, on the June projections. The projections are surrounded by great uncertainty, with downside risks for activity and upside risks for inflation. In the near term, developments depend to a great extent on energy commodity prices. Possible interruptions in energy supplies and harsh winter weather could bring about further increases in energy prices and more severe production cuts than expected under the baseline scenario. Indeed, the ECB’s latest projections include a downside scenario that envisages slightly lower growth in 2022 and, in particular, a contraction in GDP of 0.9% in 2023, while maintaining the expected increase of 1.9% in 2024. Under this scenario, inflation will be even higher than under the baseline: 6.9% in 2023 and 2.7% in 2024.

Other economic policies can play a key role in limiting the loss of well-being ensuing from these shocks that are exogenous to the economy. 13
In a shorter-term perspective the past five years appears to have been a period of unusually high productivity growth. Productivity in the business sector increased by an average of around 4 per cent a year during the years 2002-2006. From this high level, the rate of increase in productivity is now declining. At the beginning of the period 2002-2006 employment fell, but in the past two years it has increased rapidly. This is the explanation as to why growth is still high, despite the fact that productivity is now increasing at a slower rate. The statistics on productivity for the first quarter of this year are an excellent example of this. More or less the entire increase in GDP was due to the number of hours worked increasing rapidly, while productivity contributed to a very small degree. Reasons for the strong productivity growth I have now come to the first of the issues, which concerns the reasons for the strong productivity growth in recent years. BIS Review 61/2007  1  Structural changes have the greatest significance The strong productivity growth in recent years is mainly due to structural changes – deregulation of product markets, increased globalisation, increased use of information technology, and so on. Economic activity is also significant in the short term, but developments in recent years have been dominated by structural changes. Several markets were deregulated during the 1990s. This includes taxis, domestic airlines, post, telecommunications and electricity. Deregulation opens up the current market to competition, which triggers productivity.

We expect to enter the next phase over the coming years when GDP growth will slow down. This indicates a lower rate of increase in productivity. Another factor that indicates a lower rate of increase for productivity is the composition of the labour force. The rapid increase in employment means that an unusually large number of new job-seekers are entering the labour market. It is reasonable to expect that those who now obtain jobs have a slightly lower productivity than those who already have jobs. In addition, employment is mainly increasing in the service sector, which also indicates a lower rate of increase in the future. Structural factors also indicate a slowdown It is more difficult to assess how globalisation, deregulation, IT investments and other structural changes will contribute to productivity growth in the future. Some structural changes are of a one-off nature while others are ongoing processes without any clear ending. And even if these changes are of a one-off nature, such as the fact that Sweden joined the EU, they may have significance for a long period of time. Globalisation is a factor that will probably continue to be a driving force behind productivity for a long time to come. Integration within the EU is deepening. The countries in eastern and central Europe who  6  4  Greenwood & Krusell (2007)  BIS Review 61/2007  have moved away from planned economies have many years of rapid development ahead of them before they reach levels corresponding to those in western Europe.
I would like to address a more fundamental issue, concerning the ability of our current analytical tools to capture the changes which have taken place over the last two decades. As surveillance is ultimately based on a conceptual framework, then if that framework is biased, we are inevitably less able to capture imbalances and to detect risks to the world economy. So it’s important to assess whether the crisis has challenged some of the main assumptions of our framework. Work in this area has already started, to some extent. One key assumption which has been challenged, for instance, regards the efficient market hypothesis. In prevailing models, markets are assumed to price risk efficiently and to reflect underlying fundamentals. Thus, as long as asset prices do not reflect a change in the market assessment of risk, the risk is assumed not to exist or is underestimated. And often policy-makers behave as if the risk simply didn’t exist as has been the case for sovereign risk or inflation risk. I would also like to examine another fundamental assumption of our economic models which has largely gone unchallenged, or at least has been insufficiently considered in my view. It is the impact of “globalisation”, i.e. the strong and sustained growth of emerging market economies (EMEs), on the long-term trends of the world economy, including the effects on advanced economies (Charts 1 and 2).

Philipp Hildebrand: Global and Swiss economic outlook – overview for 2011/12 Introductory remarks by Mr Philipp Hildebrand, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the end-of-year media news conference, Berne, 15 December 2011. *  *  *  The Swiss National Bank (SNB) reaffirms its commitment to the minimum exchange rate of CHF 1.20 per euro. It will continue to enforce this minimum rate with the utmost determination. It is prepared to buy foreign currency in unlimited quantities. The target range for the Libor remains at 0.0–0.25%, and the SNB continues to aim for a three-month Libor close to zero. Even at the current rate, the Swiss franc is still high and should continue to weaken over time. The SNB stands ready to take further measures at any time if the economic outlook and the risk of deflation so require. In the third quarter, the global economy picked up again slightly, thanks to positive stimuli from Japan, the US and China. Growth in Europe, however, remained weak and the economic outlook for the euro area deteriorated. In Switzerland, the pace of growth slowed considerably in the third quarter. The substantial appreciation of the Swiss franc over the summer is weighing heavily on the Swiss economy. For 2011 as a whole, real GDP growth of 1.5–2.0% can be expected. This is only because of the favourable economic development in the first half of the year. For 2012, the SNB is expecting economic growth in the order of 0.5%.
Even now, four or five months into recovery, recession is out-Googling recovery by a factor of 15 to one, above its pre-Covid level. The prevailing popular narrative on the economy has remained recessionary. Chart 5: Ratio of Google Trends topic searches for the term recession vs economic recovery  Ratio of searches for recession:economic recovery  Economic growth  200 Monthly GDP  Q2 GDP  released showing growth  release  180 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0  Sep-19 Oct-19 Nov-19 Dec-19 Jan-20 Feb-20 Mar-20 Apr-20 May-20 Jun-20  Jul-20 Aug-20  Source: Google Trends  A particularly revealing episode is associated with the notable spike in the pessimism ratio on the 12 August. This was when the Office for National Statistics published second quarter GDP figures for the UK. These showed a huge fall of over 20% in GDP, the largest quarterly fall on record by far. This, understandably, was one of the top three new stories on the day. Here are some of the headlines that accompanied it:  8  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  8  Yet the irony is that the only news in this release was GDP growth for the month of June, the final month of the quarter. This saw an almost 9% rise in activity, by far the largest rise in any month ever and above market expectations. Yet negative media headlines outnumbered positives by many multiples. Positive economic news was media-filtered into an extreme negative event.

On that assumption, around two-thirds of the net job losses from the Covid crisis have already occurred, with a further 500,000 losses expected in the remainder of the year. That unemployment projection, while necessarily very uncertain, flowed from an assumption that UK output would be around 7% below pre-Covid levels by year-end. With an Okun coefficient of around 0.6, that translated into a rise of unemployment of 3-3.5 percentage points. In the August projections, this took unemployment from its pre-Covid level of 4% to around 7-7.5% at its year-end peak. 11  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  11  Since then, there have been three significant pieces of news about the jobs outlook. First, output has continued to recover faster than expected. By the end of Q3, output is now expected to be only around 3-4% below its pre-Covid level. Other things equal, this lowers risks to the MPC’s unemployment projections. Second, acting in the opposite direction, there are downside risks to this output projection as we move into the fourth quarter due to the new lockdown measures and any future measures. The third piece of significant news is the announcement of the Government’s new JSS last week, which provides wage subsidies to workers returning on reduced hours for a six month period. With details still to be finalised, it is too early to reach quantitative conclusions on the impact of the JSS.
Mugur Isărescu: The power of the mind Opening address by Mr Mugur Isărescu, Governor of the National Bank of Romania and President of the Romanian Association for the Club of Rome, at the Annual Conference of the Club of Rome “The Power of the Mind”, organized by the Club of Rome, the Romanian Association for the Club of Rome (ARCoR) and the National Bank of Romania, Bucharest, 2 October 2012. *  *  *  Dear colleagues of the Club of Rome, Honoured guests, Ladies and gentlemen, It is a pleasure and a privilege for the Romanian Association for the Club of Rome and for the National Bank of Romania to be the host of the International Conference of the Club of Rome, here in Bucharest, with such a challenging topic: “The Power of the Mind”. As we all know, 2012 is an anniversary year for the Club of Rome, since we are celebrating the 40th anniversary of the first Report to the Club, which was entitled “The Limits to Growth”. When this Report was published, it created shockwaves all over the world, including the communist countries. I can testify this, because I addressed comments concerning this issue when I was a young research fellow, after graduating the University. Actually, I confessed to my colleagues that my first public appearance in 1973 was related to the Club’s first Report. But the debates were not limited to Romania or to Europe. They were manifest all over the world, and are still continuing today.

I believe that we can say something similar about the arc of progress. Europe moves forward in stops and starts. It often learns lessons the hard way. But its arc bends towards a stronger and more united Europe for all citizens. The common currency 3/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  reflects this continued progress, with support for the euro at its highest level on record at 80%, up from 66% a decade ago.8 This should give us hope as we look to the future. And it should give us confidence that, even when Europe may seem divided or lacking in direction, there is a thread guiding us forwards. Over my career, I have had the privilege to watch this process unfold up close, to share in its highs and lows. I have been lucky enough to see it from three different perspectives – national, European and global. And I am honoured to continue working to take Europe forwards. I am very pleased to see the contributions of the European Central Bank recognised through my acceptance of this prize. Thank you. 1 Common Equity Tier 1. European Banking Authority (2020), “Basel III monitoring exercise – results based on  data as of 31 December 2019”, December. 2 Lagarde, C. (2019), “The future of the euro area economy”, speech at the Frankfurt European Banking  Congress, 22 November.
And if you don’t have that, then I think that has its own set of consequences. Maureen O’Hara: Yes, well, I think you’ve raised a great point, that there are both positive and negative consequences of globalization. Let me raise something that may have similar negative and positive, and that’s the impact of technology. I think we’re all beginning to see a brave new world in which technology is entering ways that even 10 years ago were hard to fathom. And you know, I think that just as globalization seems to have made people nervous about the future, so has technology. Now, what are your thoughts on that? Is technology going to be the bigger influence over the next decade? Is that what’s going to change our economy and the ability of people to make that leapup that you just talked about? President Dudley: Well I think technology is always challenging. I think it’s been challenging for decades, even centuries. My mom for many years lived in Westville, Massachusetts, and if I have this right, it was the buggy whip capital of the world at one point. Well, Westville had to make the transition from being the buggy whip capital of the world to other things. And I think – so, I don’t think this is new. I don’t think this is a new story about technology.

One of the things that we’ve been talking about for a long time is that the New York Fed has tried to have better partnerships between businesses and education, so that the skills that people are getting when they go to the university match the opportunities when they actually graduate. And I think we’ve made a lot of progress on that, but that’s something that I think we could even do better on going forward. Maureen O’Hara: Can you turn us back to monetary policy again for a minute because, you know, one could argue that one of the major forces that helped us get through the crisis was monetary policy, with its 5 / 13  BIS central bankers' speeches  expansive, you know, quantitative easing with the role that the central bank took up and really helped keep the financial markets from collapsing, and now also keeping the economy from collapsing. Now we have, as you mentioned earlier, the prospect for more fiscal stimulus, which in some ways makes it a little better… President Dudley: Potentially. Maureen O’Hara: Because it’s not just monetary policy, we’ll have fiscal policy. But we also have a variety of other factors that may influence monetary policy. One of which is the possibility that we as a country are going to become more isolationist. And that has implications, doesn’t it? For your monetary policy and how you implement it?