samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Our country was in the midst of solid economic growth and was experiencing a strong inflow of foreign workers. In the first three quarters, year-onyear growth amounted to 2.4%, buttressed by all components of global demand except construction. At the end of summer, however, the situation turned completely. The faltering international credit markets and the mounting uncertainty caused global trade to plummet and prompted a decline in growth in our export markets; indeed, most of our trading partners actually went into recession. In the fourth quarter of 2008, Switzerland’s GDP receded to 1.2% and unemployment, which had reached a low-water mark of 2.5%, started to climb again. In our quarterly assessment of last December, we predicted a 0.5-1% drop in GDP for 2009. In March this year, based on the latest data available, we revised the forecast downwards to a 2.5-3% decline. The SNB’s reaction In autumn 2008, as I said, we experienced an abrupt downturn of the economic cycle and, owing to plunging commodity prices, a spectacular change in the inflation outlook. Whereas inflation had been at 3.1% in July, price stability was entirely re-established from November onwards. This reversal forced the SNB to take rapid and decisive measures to ease its monetary policy. In a series of five steps between October 2008 and March 2009, we lowered the target range for the three-month Swiss franc Libor and brought down the market rate from 3% to 0.25%.

Despite the intensification of our repo operations, tensions on the money market increased throughout the year owing to the ongoing deterioration of the economic and financial environment, and reached their peak in autumn. A particular source of difficulties was the  BIS Review 48/2009  1  extremely strong demand for Swiss francs coming from eastern European countries, where banks had granted Swiss-franc-denominated loans on a massive scale, refinancing themselves on the money markets. Since these banks have no access to our loans, they found themselves in a delicate position when the Swiss franc money market dried up. The increased demand for Swiss francs contributed to the rise in our interest rates, which we deemed undesirable from a monetary policy perspective. To satisfy demand from eastern European banks, we sought the support of the European Central Bank (ECB), to which we remitted Swiss francs under a euros against francs swap arrangement. The ECB then transferred these francs to its counterparties. Similar agreements – euros against Swiss francs – were subsequently concluded with the Polish central bank and the Hungarian central bank, enabling them to conduct analogous transactions in their respective countries. Moreover, to ensure a better distribution of francs across the market, the SNB itself engaged in swaps with its counterparties. By the end of 2008, our supply of Swiss francs to three central banks and a certain number of other banking institutions by means of swap transactions had reached a total of CHF 50 billion. Thus, the demand for liquidity was considerable across the board.
Africa Meeting of the Econometric Society  Introductory Speech of Mr. Abdellatif Jouahri Governor of Bank Al-Maghrib  Rabat, July 11 2019  Honorable guests, Distinguished researchers and professors, Dear friends and colleagues, Ladies and gentlemen,  First of all, I would like to assure you that I will not venture giving a lecture in front of such an audience. I am here today more to listen. That being said, I would like to start by expressing how pleased I am to welcome you in Bank Al-Maghrib and to wish our visitors from abroad a wonderful stay in Morocco. I would also like to thank all officials for joining us, the distinguished researchers for kindly accepting to speak at the plenary sessions and the mostly-young researchers for coming from different spheres to present their works. I also extend my warmest thanks to Econometric Society which approached us to organize this conference, thus paving the way for a valuable cooperation between both teams. We view this meeting as an opportunity for us as a central bank, as well as for all the national institutions here represented today, to inquire about the progress made in economics research, namely with regard to quantitative economics. It is also an opportunity to strengthen the bonds with the academia and initiate new cooperation relationships.

The second challenge is that economic modeling requires reliable and regular data. This entails significant financial and human resources that are sorely lacking in statistical institutes in several countries. In this respect, I think that central banks, owing to their autonomy, can play an important role in research development and have a ripple effect on its ecosystem. This is exactly what we are trying to do in Bank Al-Maghrib. 4  In fact, we have always put research and human capacity building at the core of our strategic plans. Thus, alongside the various operational entities, we have set up since 2007 a division dedicated to research, whose task is to reflect on all strategic matters and issues related to the Bank's missions. Several cooperation programs were developed with the national and international academia, as well as with many central banks around the world. More particularly, we have launched the "fellow researcher" program which allowed the Bank’s executives to collaborate with experts from central banks of other countries such as the United States, Canada and Poland, and I hope we will soon be able to extend this cooperation to African researchers. In addition to our institutional publications, a series of working papers were drawn by the Bank staff, and are gradually becoming a reference for research in various areas directly or indirectly related to our missions. Moreover, the Bank organizes a series of timely or regular scientific meetings, such as the International Days of Macroeconomics and Finance, which we hold each year.
Page 1  Moderation in all things speech by Charlotte Gerken Given at the 20th Annual Conference on Bulk Annuities  Page 2  Published on 27 April 2023  The Bulk Purchase Annuity (BPA) market is in a period of accelerated growth, and insurers may be tempted to over-indulge in new business in the short run. Charlotte Gerken outlines three areas where we are already seeing this in practice: an expansion of BPA insurer risk appetites; an increased reliance on third party capacity; and greater interconnectivity with the wider financial system. Insurers will be playing an increasingly important role in providing financial security to millions of annuity policyholders and as investors in the UK real economy. To be successful in both over the medium to long term, insurers’ senior managers need to exercise moderation in the short term. Their decisions today commit them and their successors to pay pensions for many decades to come. Charlotte explains how, working with insurers, the PRA aims to strengthen senior management accountability and enhance market discipline through the implementation of the Solvency UK package. Speech Introduction Thank you for your introduction, and for inviting me back to the Bulk Purchase Annuities Conference. A lot has happened since I spoke at last year’s event[1] – in financial markets, the economic outlook and on the regulatory side.

But central banks around the world are also called upon to engage, to a greater or lesser extent, in the supervision of financial institutions. Unlike monetary policy, where in large part a common framework prevails around the world, there is no uniformity in the roles played by central banks in the supervision of the financial system. The supervision of financial institutions is sometimes regarded as part of the functions of a central bank and sometimes given to one or more other regulatory bodies. It is striking how varied are the arrangements in different countries. In the United Kingdom, an important ingredient in the 1997 reforms which took banking supervision away from the Bank of England and handed it to a single regulatory body, the Financial Services Authority, was the view that it was no longer sensible to try to distinguish commercial banks from investment banks, and banks from securities companies. A common regulatory framework was needed. There are, however, important differences between prudential supervision and “conduct” of business regulation, so some countries have adopted a “twin peaks” solution in which the central bank is responsible for prudential supervision and conduct of business regulation is given to a different body. This is evidence that the appropriate division of responsibilities will depend on local circumstances. One of the most important of those is the number of institutions which merit supervision.
Furthermore, from my point of view as a central banker in charge of ensuring price stability in the medium term, the main risk has changed radically in recent months: it is no longer that of "too low for too long" inflation but that of "too high for too long" inflation. Hence the need for the immediate normalisation of monetary policy that the ECB Governing Council decided upon and started to implement by reversing the exceptionally accommodative measures that were designed to address the risk of inflation being too low for too long. But the ECB's commitment is clear: the Governing Council will do whatever is necessary to reduce inflation and stabilise it at 2% over the medium term. The ongoing normalisation of monetary policy will follow a clearly defined sequencing. Last December, the ECB announced the gradual reduction of net purchases under the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP). These net purchases were stopped last March. In March and April, it announced the reduction of monthly net purchases under the Asset Purchase Programme (APP). At the last Governing Council meeting, the ECB announced the end of net purchases as of 1 July 2022, and its intention to raise all key ECB interest rates by 25 basis points at its July monetary policy meeting. The ECB is also planning a further increase in key interest rates in September, the calibration of which will depend on the updated medium-term inflation outlook.

But, more importantly, there is a political pressure towards it, driven by populist impatience that would like to have a lot, right away. For a number of years this impatience has been hindering long-term efforts in the form of fiscal consolidation and structural reforms, and these have unfortunately slowed in G20 countries. When we compare the performances of our different European Member States, it is clear that debt and public spending are not the engines of growth. There is a need today for fiscal stimulus in those countries that have surpluses, and for structural reforms across the board: without this there can be no sustainable growth. On this issue, I would just like to say a word on France, which has stood out as a positive exception over the past two years: the gilets jaunes (yellow vest) crisis provided justification for an emergency “package” to bolster purchasing power; but I do not think it should or even could halt the transformation efforts already underway. Lastly, and this is our third challenge, isolationism, characterised by the escalation of trade tensions, constitutes the biggest short-term threat to global growth. Even before the tariff hikes, the uncertainty caused by protectionist stances, essentially on the part of the United States, already appears to be threatening growth via its impact on business investment. More broadly, uncooperative economic strategies – including within Europe – are on the rise.
In line with this road map, we kept our policy stance tight against the inflation outlook, stabilizing for the FX liquidity, and supportive of financial stability. In order to simplify the operational framework of the liquidity policy, we terminated the lower interest rate on borrowing facilities provided for primary dealers by the CBRT and simplified collateral conditions following the announcement of the road map. We aimed to enhance the efficiency of banks’ liquidity management by adopting the use of foreign exchange deposits as collaterals against Turkish lira transactions. Moreover, we took further steps to support foreign exchange liquidity, core liabilities and long-term borrowing. In view of inflation expectations, the pricing behavior and other factors affecting inflation, we maintained the tight monetary and liquidity stance throughout 2015. Accordingly, we kept the one-week repo rate, the overnight lending rate and the overnight borrowing rate unchanged at 7.5, 10.75 and 7.25 percent, respectively, during the last quarter of 2015 and the first month of 2016. One-week repo auctions continued to be the main tool for the CBRT funding, while the share of the marginal funding remained high (Chart 3). Thus, the average funding rate settled at around 8.9 percent as of January 2016, higher than the one-week repo rate. Additionally, we kept the interbank overnight repo rates at the upper band of the interest rate corridor (Chart 4). Our future monetary policy decisions will be conditional on the inflation outlook.

To conclude, I should like to join the Chairman of the National Securities Market Commission in expressing my sincere and deep gratitude for the work and effort over the past eight years of all those persons and institutions who have collaborated directly or indirectly on the Financial Education Plan. Thank you very much your attention and I hope you will enjoy this event. 5/5
An important development, which researchers should take into account when thinking about liquidity provision and moral hazard, is new liquidity regulation. 16 Ulrich is not an optimist when it comes to the ability of regulations to mitigate moral hazard. As exhibited in Figure 6, he notes that “…managing liquidity risk is a core activity of banking, and it seems unlikely that centralizing this subtle activity through liquidity regulation can be done without efficiency costs. Therefore liquidity regulation must not be overburdened, and central banks providing some well-designed and rule based economic counterincentives to an excessive reliance on the [lender of last resort] is an important contribution to reduce the burden put on regulation.” I agree with Ulrich there, and would emphasize that banks’ core functions can be strengthened through the aims and standards set by regulation. 17 But the task is not just calibrating the combination of well-designed regulation and appropriate incentives for taking recourse to the lender of last resort. Ulrich seems to ignore the importance of prudential supervision and its potential contribution to mitigating moral hazard. 18 Regulation involves the development and promulgation of the rules under which banks and other regulated financial intermediaries operate. Prudential supervision involves the monitoring and oversight of regulated institutions to assess whether they are in compliance with law and regulation and whether they are engaged in unsafe or unsound practices, and it ensures that firms are taking corrective actions to address any such practices. 19 Regulation cannot be subtle, although its implementation, through supervision, likely can be.

Even so, nonbank lenders may be captive to perceptions of their investors (who may be less informed and more skittish), resulting in preemptive reductions in exposures to some bank counterparties and contributing to market freezes in spite of lenders’ own analysis. 8  The leverage ratio creates a direct cost only if it is binding but banks also appear to take into account the possibility of it binding in the future and how it might be treated in stress tests. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  illustrates is that interbank trade increases the aggregate size of the balance sheet of the banking sector. Suppose, instead, that a nonbank that is currently lending to Bank A would lend to Bank B. As a result Bank A would have fewer reserves and deposits, so its balance sheet would decrease in size. Bank B would have additional reserves and its balance sheet would increase in size, just as in the above example. However the size of the aggregate balance sheet of the banking sector would not change, as shown in the lower part of Figure 4. The two sets of transactions achieve the same movement of reserves from Bank A to Bank B, but if there is a cost associated with the size of banks’ balance sheets, then the second option would likely be preferred. The three parties would be expected to find a way to share the surplus generated by the lower balance sheet cost.
And this tax is: undemocratic (rarely approved or discussed in the Parliament), regressive (a heavier burden is put on the poor; those that cannot protect themselves from it), and economically inefficient (high inflation inhibits economic growth and ultimately reduces budgetary revenues). And an inflationary environment creates the wrong incentives. In a highly inflationary environment incentives to produce are reduced. For entrepreneurs to take a decision to produce (the “make it” approach) and not redistribute (the “take it” approach) one needs a long-term stable environment. Therefore by maintaining price stability the central bank gives a clear incentive to gain experience in production, not in redistribution. Per contra, by not carrying out its main function, but letting inflation rise in the economy, the central bank gives incentives to engage in redistribution and in higher than necessary transaction costs to avoid the inflation tax. Let me illustrate this with some Croatian experience. In the twenty years preceding independence (from 1971 to 1991 - Croatia at that time being part of former Yugoslavia), average inflation was 69% per annum. In 1992 and 1993 the average yearly inflation was more than 1000%. Similar trends remained until October 1993, when the Stabilisation program was launched. From my personal experience I can assure you that in a highly inflationary environment a household’s objective is to avoid the inflation tax. Currency substitution and “shopping around to find old prices” are the main behavioral patterns, not long-term planning. The same can be said for production.

Technical details about the decomposition presented here are forthcoming in the Banque de France Bulletin. ii See Posen, A., “A US Monetary Regime Change What Difference to Overheating?”, April 1, 2021, Peterson Institute for International Economic, Spring 2021 Global Economic Prospects Meeting iii Keynote address by François Villeroy de Galhau, Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, webinar, 25 September 2020. iv For a recent review see Lagarde (2021). v Introductory statement to the press conference, 11 March 2021. vi Villeroy de Galhau, F., “The role of central banks in the greening of the economy”, Speech, 11 February 2021. See also the recommendations of the recent NGFS annual report vii Bean, C. « The Future of Monetary Policy » speech at the London School of Economics, 20 May 2014. i
In addition, it has become far too difficult to monitor the financial sector with its large, complex institutions that have operations and commitments all over the world. And even if monitoring had been simpler and better, there are still no effective mechanisms for counteracting bubbles. The regulation and supervision that has existed has proved inadequate to prevent either exaggerated risk taking in upturns or destructive herd behaviour in downturns. The global extent of the current crisis points to the need to further develop inter-national cooperation regarding financial regulation, supervision and crisis management. A number of proposals are accordingly being put forward at the international level concerning how regulation and supervision can be developed to reduce the risk of similar crises occurring in the future. 6  BIS Review 135/2009  The measures that are now being discussed by authorities around the world largely stem from the fact that in many areas supervision has focused far too much on the state of health of individual institutions and far too little on broader development trends, for example the expansion of credit in the economy, and on the links between institutions in the financial system. Above all, financial supervision has not sufficiently taken into account the risk of financial problems becoming highly contagious. It is, after all, the contagion effects that may have the most serious repercussions for the financial system and, ultimately, the real economy.

We are doing so with the firm conviction that this will be the new statutes of the BNB in the following, at least, 20 years. We have been actively working on other euro area-related legislative amendments as well. For example, yesterday the Governing Council adopted the required amendments to the Law on the payment systems concerning the euro area. This draft will be submitted to the Ministry of Finance today or on Monday at the latest because the BNB is not entitled to direct legislative initiative. 3/4  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  I do not have to dwell on this any further. What I would like to say is that on the part of the BNB, there is not a single day of delay with regard to the euro area-related legislative programme, nor is there any unsettled issue in this regard, with the ECB or with the European Commission. And yesterday, during our debates with Mr. Dombrovskis, we cleared up this topic. The same is true for the technical preparations. The BNB and commercial banks provided in their 2023 budgets the funds required for these preparations which are well underway. For example, yesterday we discussed with Mr. Dombrovskis and his team as to how we can move forward with the implementation of the memorandum on the minting of test Bulgarian euro coins, signed in December. A few words about the date. We do understand the considerations of the European Commission and the Government about changing the date.