samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
According to the forecast of Statistics Sweden, the population will only increase by around 0.1-0.2% this year and during the first decade of the 21st century. With GDP growth of 3% and a population increase of around 0.7% a year, a rough measure of productivity is obtained which shows that it has increased on average by 2.3% per year during the 20th century as a whole. Nowadays, the figure is lower; most analysts estimate that trend productivity is under rather than over 2% per year, although there has been some improvement in recent years. The standard of living has accordingly not risen as quickly during the 1990s as it did during a number of earlier decades during the century. Figure 3. GDP per capita  3. GDP per inhabitant Average annual percentage change of GDP per inhabitant in 1990 prices in US dollars 4  3  2  1  0 1820-50 1850-70  1870-90 1890-10 1910-30 1930-50  Sweden  1950-70 1970-90  UK  In order to obtain an idea of developments in Sweden we can look at the United Kingdom. Sweden is considered to have become industrialised about hundred years after the UK. GDP per capita therefore grew more quickly in Britain than in Sweden during the first half of the 19th century. From 1870 onwards, however, the relationship between the two countries changed. Growth per capita became the same in both countries and after 1890 and up to 1970, Sweden took the lead.

7  BIS Review 137/1999  Employment was provided for more and more people, living standards rose and growth was among the highest in the world. Opinions about the causes of the pronounced change in the Swedish economy are not completely unanimous. An increasingly stable form of government presumably contributed. A series of constitutional reforms provided a guarantee of stability. The stable prices presumably played a part. When inflation is low or the price level is stable, those who have to plan for the longer run face less uncertainty. After a rather chaotic period in the history of the monetary system, the introduction of the silver standard in the early 1830s and subsequently the gold standard led to price stability. Another significant factor was probably the credit system’s development. Banks were established and the abolition of interest controls was followed by more financial expertise. That made it possible to exploit the inventions and finance investments in the emerging industries. Economic activities benefited from the abolition of trade guilds, freedom to trade and the reform of joint-stock companies. The reform of elementary education was, of course, another important step that ultimately promoted human capital. This catalogue is not intended to be a complete account of all the factors behind Sweden’s transformation from a poor country into a rapidly expanding industrial nation. The point I want to make is that a variety of institutional changes seem to have been needed to provide a stable framework for the subsequent process of industrialisation.
Another consequence of higher productivity growth is that inflation tends to be held back in that unit labour costs are curbed. Labour costs are the dominant item of expenditure in the economy as a whole. Everything suggests that the higher productivity growth in Sweden has contributed to the favourable economic development since the end of the crisis in the early 1990s. But there are other explanations, too. Labour market working better than expected One is the workings of the labour market. Many studies have shown that, at least in a formal sense, Sweden’s labour market is characterised by more or less the same rigidities as continental Europe. So there was every reason to suspect that after the crisis in the early 1990s, unemployment would also stick at a high level in Sweden. Here are some of the grounds for this: •  Labour demand is liable to be low in a labour market that is heavily regulated. Firms are reluctant to recruit because of uncertainty about being able to cut costs if economic activity were to decline. •  Labour supply may be affected after unemployment has risen as steeply as it did in the early 1990s. People are excluded from the labour market. Long-term unemployment may leave competence out of line with what firms are now looking for. The determination to find a job can be affected both by a long period of unemployment and by the structure of unemployment insurance.

The fact that the coming pay negotiations are taking place in a situation where it is expected that there will be a high demand for labour increases the risk of the historical pattern being repeated. In some industries and regions there are indications that a shortage of labour is developing. However, it is at the same time important to bear in mind that we are a long way from the scarcity levels experienced at the end of the 1980s. Another challenge for wage formation is that the first pay negotiations taking place are for public sector employees. In this sector, there are large groups that have obviously fallen behind in their pay development, leading to shortages. Among these are certain categories of teachers and many health care employees. The Swedish labour market has not only had problems in dealing with pay balances between different occupations. It has also found it difficult to tackle regional imbalances in the same occupational category through adaptation of relative wages. Shortage of labour has, for instance, particularly affected big city areas, although it has hardly affected relative wages between areas where there is shortage and where there is unemployment, despite the cost of living and not least housing costs being lower outside the big cities. With a more flexible wage formation, the imbalances in the labour market would probably be reduced. Changes in a positive direction The starting situation for the pay negotiations is thus not unproblematic.
We should all be mindful of the very strong need for transition financing, in particular for Asia-Pacific which accounts for nearly half of global greenhouse gas emission and where the social and economic reality is especially complex for achieving carbon neutrality. Hence, green finance is not just about financing green. It’s also about financing transition, meaning supporting the “brown” industries to adopt greener and more sustainable business models. Talent development 26. I have talked about the importance for the financial system to push for technology adoption and green finance with the broader concept of financial inclusion in mind. However, one of the biggest challenges facing banks is shortage of talent. We do need the right talent with necessary skills and know-how to drive the transformation. If we do not even have the requisite people to understand the risks involved and balance the competing objectives, our journey is going to be arduous. So, let me spend a few minutes to talk about capacity building. 27. With useful contributions from HKIB and the industry, the HKMA conducted a “Capacity Building for Future Banking” study last year to take stock of potential talent gaps that the banking industry will face. The study revealed notable skills gaps in fintech and green finance. These are the two key growth areas in the financial world. And their developments are evolving so fast that the skill sets of the existing workforce cannot keep pace with the latest industry needs. 28. This is a global issue, not unique to Hong Kong.

So, have we done enough in terms of financial inclusion? 14. The pandemic has taught us that we must deepen our commitment to financial inclusion. And we should try to weave that into our financial development objectives going forward. In fact, our ability to enhance the financial inclusion role can be helped hugely by technology. With technology, our banking system can provide a more equitable and fairer access to banking services for all. 15. And this brings me to the second role the financial system can play – to build a smarter financial system. Let me share with you an example of how a smarter financial system can help promote financial inclusion. For a long time, SMEs have found it difficult to obtain bank financing without collateral, because banks lack reliable and timely financial data to assess the repayment ability of SMEs. 16. We believe that the introduction of the Commercial Data Interchange can help address this long-standing pain point. This next-generation financial data infrastructure can facilitate banks’ access to customers’ commercial data with their consent. With such data, banks can apply advanced data analytical tools for credit risk assessment. This could allow corporates, especially SMEs, without sufficient collateral or credit history to borrow more quickly, easily and at a lower cost. It is a win-win situation as this will also enhance banks’ risk management capability and unleash new business opportunities. 17. So, we strongly encourage banks, large or small, to embrace digital transformation to provide fair and efficient financial services to customers.
I am pleased to inform all of you that Bank Negara Malaysia has accorded Islamic Financial Planner module as a recognised qualification for financial advisers’ representatives and we are currently considering to also recognise the Shariah Registered Financial Planner module as a qualification. Apart from takaful products and services, Bank Negara Malaysia has also allowed banking institutions and Labuan offshore financial institutions to draw on the services of financial advisers as one of their distribution channels. This measure was taken in view of growing interest from financial product providers to leverage on the expertise and capabilities of financial advisers in reaching out to the wider community and at the same time promote access to financial services. 2  BIS Review 136/2008  As some of you may be aware, Bank Negara Malaysia and the Securities Commission have signed a Memorandum of Understanding in August 2007 which provides for the mutual recognition of financial advisers licensed by the Bank and financial planners licensed by the Securities Commission. In addition to providing for the mutual recognition of both licensing regimes through the harmonization of licensing requirements, the MOU also introduces green-lane processes for financial advisers and financial planners licensed under the respective regimes to apply for licences under the other regime. Bank Negara Malaysia will fast track the issuance of a financial adviser’s licence upon the financial planner having a RM100,000 paid-up capital as a corporate body.

In conclusion, I would like to reaffirm the importance of continued training and development of human resources working in this field to insure that they have necessary skills and to keep them acquainted with developments. Thank you for your attention and I welcome you all once again, wishing you a successful gathering. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches
Gent Sejko: The need for a retail payments market and infrastructure, and promoting financial literacy Address by Mr Gent Sejko, Governor of the Bank of Albania, to the 5th meeting of the National Payment System Committee, Tirana, 1 October 2019. * * * Dear Minister Denaj, Dear members of the National Payment System Committee, Dear ladies and gentlemen, Please allow me, at the outset, to express on behalf of the Bank of Albania our sincere appreciation for your continuous commitment and collaboration to achieving common objectives in the field of payments and beyond. The collaboration and discussion of development alternatives among the main market actors is considered as one of the main pillars for the success of the undertaken reforms. In this light, since 2015, the Bank of Albania has organised the National Payment System Committee (NPSC) to support and contribute to increasing the security, stability and efficiency of the national payment system in Albania. These objectives are rather important for the implementation of our monetary policy and for the financial and economic stability of Albania, by building up firm foundations for development and welfare. I would like to highlight that the NPSC is set up based on best international and European Union practices. It is a strategic, consulting and communicating entity, whose decisions support the activities of the participating institutions in the area of payments.

Claims of unemployment-related benefits fell further in October  105  Unemployment rate  104  Claimant count rate  Per cent  9  103  Other sectors  8  102 101  7  100  6  99 98  5  97  4  96  3  95 Apr 19  Oct 19  Apr 20  10  Oct 20  Apr 21  94 Oct 21  ‘Public services’ include public administration and defence, social security, education, health and social works. Payrolled employment data from Pay As You Earn (PAYE) Real Time information (TMI). Sources: HMRC and Bank calculations. 2 05  07  09  11  13  15  17  19  21  As part of the UK government's response to COVID-19, more people became eligible for unemployment-related benefits, although still employed. As a result, changes in Claimant Count will not be due wholly to changes in the number of unemployed people. Unemployment data up to September, claimant count data up to October. Claimant count (CC) rate = CC / (CC + workforce jobs). Sources: ONS and Bank calculations. There remain two possibilities, I think, as to why the labour market looks so tight despite somewhat higher unemployment than before the pandemic. One, which I discussed in the summer, is that there’s a continuing degree of mismatch between the jobs on offer and the people looking for work.
The same is true if banks seek to repair their balance sheets by cutting back on the extension of credit: less credit implies lower activity and greater loan losses. Fire sales and credit crunches can thus greatly amplify a financially-driven downturn. Both played a role in the latest crisis. Assuming that policymakers are not actively seeking a reduction in the supply of credit, shrinking the balance sheet leads to an unsatisfactory outcome from a macroeconomic perspective. Injecting additional equity capital would be preferable. But while banks may be prepared to do this over time, by cutting dividends to shareholders or reducing staff compensation, they are typically reluctant to raise new capital directly in such circumstances. In part, that is because the benefits of extra capital accrue initially to existing debt holders who will consequently be less likely to suffer losses. Moreover, investors may see additional injections of capital as a signal that the bank is in difficulties. In sum, there is a collective action problem, to which mandatory stress tests coupled with forced re-capitalisation is one possible solution. So my third lesson is: financial intermediation needs to be brought into mainstream macroeconomic analysis. That such a lesson should even be necessary may be somewhat surprising giving the frequency of financial crises around the globe in recent years; see Chart 5 taken from the work of Rong Qian, Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff (2010).

James McAndrews: Negative nominal central bank policy rates – where is the lower bound? Remarks by Mr James McAndrews, Executive Vice President and Director of Research of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, 8 May 2015. *  *  *  The views expressed in this speech are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or of the Federal Reserve System. The Swiss National Bank (SNB), the European Central Bank (ECB), Danmarks Nationalbank (DNB), and the Swedish Riksbank recently have pushed short-term interest rates to levels below the “zero lower bound.” The current extent and depth of negative policy rates is unprecedented; previously only Denmark had a modestly negative policy rate in 2012 through 2014. The actions of the four central banks have led a number of commentators to ask, Is the concept of a zero lower bound on interest rates valid? If not, what might be the lower bound, if any, on nominal interest rates? Indeed, some economists have suggested that with changes to the monetary system, we could in fact eliminate the lower bound to interest rates altogether. I’ll first review the reasons given by the central banks for setting negative policy rates – in all cases, the negative rates were seen as a means of advancing the banks’ macroeconomic objectives in the current environment.
Even if some allowance is made for changes in velocity of money or money demand due to possible behavioral changes and financial sector development, the growth of money vs. the real growth of the economy and inflation cannot be explained for this period. 15  This was sufficient evidence that the strong and reliable relationship between the goal of price stability and the nominal anchor of money growth, which was essential for the success of the monetary aggregate targeting framework, has significantly weakened over time. This phenomenon was not limited to Sri Lanka, but was observed over time in many other economies as well. With the ending of monetary aggregate targeting in Canada in as early as 1982, Gerald Bouey, Bank of Canada Governor at the time famously stated “we did not abandon monetary aggregates. Monetary aggregates abandoned us.” Even the recent experience with quantitative easing in many advanced economies yet again proved that the tremendous expansion of central bank balance sheets that these countries undertook was insufficient to raise either growth or inflation. Earlier it was argued that Sri Lanka’s achievement of single digit inflation for 105 consecutive months had little to do with monetary aggregate targeting. Instead, it was a result of the Central Bank’s ability to anchor inflation expectations, by repeatedly emphasising its utmost desire to maintain inflation at mid-single digit  16  levels. The behaviour of the Central Bank during the 2008-2009 episode of disinflation would have raised credibility of monetary policy.

Improved communication also would have played a key role in this achievement. It must be noted that the neighbouring economies struggled with double digit inflation during some parts of the same period. For example, India was unable to tame inflation until 2014. One might argue that international commodity prices were in our favour. However, this was not always true, as global crude oil prices remained, on average, above US dollars 100 per barrel during the period from February 2011 to September 2014. Inflation Targeting as an Alternative: Lessons from Other Countries Therefore, without a formal announcement, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, similar to many other central banks in the world, has moved to a monetary policy framework governed by expectations and credibility, rather than by monetary aggregates or exchange rates. In the global economy, such a monetary policy framework that emphasised the role of expectations and credibility existed, and it was known as “inflation targeting” that I briefly referred to at the beginning. First adopted by New Zealand in 1990, inflation targeting was chosen as the monetary policy framework in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Sweden in quick succession. Encouraged by the success of inflation targeting, a number of other advanced economies as well as emerging market economies adopted this framework thereafter. These countries used inflation targeting either to bring down inflation from stubbornly high levels or to maintain inflation at low and stable levels on a sustained basis.
2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Among the factors underlying the demand trend is the recovery from the crisis and the earthquake, together with the banking credit expansion combined with reduced lending spreads, which is consistent with the flexibilization of lending standards as reported in the Banking Credit Survey to financial institutions undertaken by the Bank. Therefore, projections are that GDP will grow 5.2% in 2010, while demand will increase 16.1% annually, reflecting that output gaps are narrowing and close to exhaustion (figure 6). In 2011, domestic demand will continue to drive GDP growth, with a y-o-y increase of 6.6%. Consumption and investment will be dynamic, but not as much as in 2010. This trajectory is based on still optimistic confidence indicators, a positive labor market, ongoing expansionary monetary conditions and a favorable scenario for borrowing (figure 7). In addition, next year will see a stronger impact of public and private reconstruction works, which should be visible mainly in infrastructure investment, in line with a dynamic construction sector. Accordingly, the investment rate will rise next year, to more than 30% of GDP in real terms. Inventory change, meanwhile, will be smaller than in 2010, due to the completion of the inventory replacement process triggered by depletion in late 2008 and the earthquake last February. In the case of the public sector, the baseline scenario is consistent with provisions in the Budget Law.

But if severe shocks hit the economy, other areas of economic policy must play a key role. When the pandemic hit Norway, we cut the policy rate to zero. At the same time, fiscal support measures were implemented on a scale unprecedented in modern Norwegian history. The aim was to cushion the downturn and support households’ and firms’ income. Chart 6 Economic downturns are countered by rate cuts Norges Bank policy rate. Percent 1.75  1.75  1.5  1.5  1.25  1.25  1  1  0.75  0.75  0.5  0.5  0.25  0.25  0  0  –0.25  2015  2016  2017  2018  2019  2020  2021  2022  –0.25  Source: Norges Bank  The actions taken could not, however, prevent a situation where a large number of workers were suddenly out of work. The risk that the pandemic would leave lasting scars on the labour market was an important reason why we kept the policy rate at a historically low level for more than a year. Now that we can look at the years 2020 and 2021 in the rear view mirror, we can see that employment in Norway picked up more quickly than expected (Chart 7). Employment exceeded the pre-pandemic level in autumn 2021, and the same degree of monetary policy stimulus was no longer needed. We have now raised the policy rate twice, and we have signalled a further rise.