samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
There is also evidence that euro area economic agents are setting greater store by recently observed inflation when determining their inflation expectations and, therefore, their price and wage-setting decisions. The persistence in recent years of very moderate inflation rates might be behind this.6 In this setting, the risks to the euro area growth outlook remain clearly tilted to the downside. They reflect the prolonged presence of protectionist tensions; the uncertainty associated with geopolitical factors (such as Brexit and the political uncertainty in Italy); the doubts over the intensity of the ongoing slowdown in China and the possible repercussions for the global economy as a whole; and the vulnerabilities that some emerging economies, such as Turkey and Argentina, continue to evidence. There are also some structural factors suggesting that a setting of low growth, modest inflation and, consequently, low interest rates might prevail over time. Among the main determinants is population ageing. This is a common trend in the advanced economies whose consequences go far beyond public finances and health systems. Ageing alters economic agents’ patterns of saving, investment and labour supply, and affects the potential growth of economies by reducing the working-age population and its productivity, among other factors. The other major challenge the European economies must face is the lower rate of productivity growth. This is admittedly common to other advanced economies, and is in contrast to the technological progress of recent decades. But we cannot ignore the fact that productivity growth in Europe is far lower than that observed in the United States.

Chart: Distribution of exports – 1835, 1950 and 2016 The oil sector has generated substantial revenues for Norway. And we have extracted large quantities of oil and gas at favourable prices. From the end of the 1990s and up to 2014, the price of North Sea oil rose from about USD 10 to more than USD 100 per barrel. In spite of the fact that oil prices have fallen by about half compared with a few years ago, sales of oil and gas still provide a third of the country’s export revenues. 3/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  The substantial profits generated by the petroleum sector have been managed efficiently. Our economy is in good order. Well-functioning institutions and a high degree of trust between the various social groups provided a solid foundation. It was established at an early stage that Norway’s oil and gas reserves belong to the people. The system of taxation and framework conditions for the petroleum industry were designed so that the large profits from this sector would accrue to the state. We have been able to enhance public welfare and prosperity. Chart: From natural resources to financial wealth At the same time, Norway’s subsea petroleum wealth has to a large extent been transformed into foreign financial assets. With the oil fund, not only current but also future generations will benefit from our oil and gas reserves. The capital in the oil fund is more than two and a half times the size of mainland GDP.
I would like to make a clear pledge: the Basel III agreement is intended to apply everywhere in a consistent manner, including of course in the United States. Those anywhere who would recommend not transposing Basel 3 would give in to the temptation to forget, ten years after the Great Financial Crisis; they would take the responsibility of increasing financial stability risks, at a time when these risks are already significant. That said, rest assured that we will insist on a fair and reasonable implementation in Europe, taking into account the specificities of the European banking sector in order to avoid undue impact on capital requirements. II. The French economy is resilient, with growth expected at 1.3% this year Despite this darker context, the French economy is resilient, with growth expected at 1.3% this year, three times higher than the German one. This expansion is being sustained by a robust internal demand. Real household income per capita is accelerating sharply (increasing by around 2% in 2019) at its fastest pace since 2007, due to the fiscal stimulus and to a larger extent to the strength of labour income – 1 million jobs have been created over the past four years. Many important reforms have already been adopted. Of course, much remains to be done to tackle structural unemployment, which is still too high. III. Beyond Brexit, building a new European financial architecture Brexit is and remains bad news for everybody but above all for the British economy.

Secondly, Paris is bolstering its position as a European leader in digital innovation. Last year, the ACPR has launched a task-force on artificial intelligence. Paris has also been a pioneer in the development of sustainable finance. The creation of the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) by the Banque de France in Paris in December 2017 has been a decisive step forward. In 2 years, this coalition of the willing has increased from 8 founding members to more than 50 members from all 5 continents. ** Let me conclude with an unusual quote for a central banker, a sentence from Hayao Miyazaki in one his animated films: “You cannot change fate. However, you can rise to meet it.”4 This is exactly the state of mind in which we have to be to face the challenges of our disruptive world. We cannot stop the course of phenomemons such as digital transformation or climate change. But we can roll up our sleeves to tackle them – together and across continents. This is the purpose of such a forum today. Thank you for your attention. 1 Rostagno, M., Altavilla, C., Carboni, G., Lemke, W., Motto, R., Saint-Guilhem, A. and Yiangou, J., “A tale of two  decades: The ECB’s monetary policy at 20”, 2019, forthcoming. 2 Speech by François Villeroy de Galhau, Governor of the Bank of France, at the Conference of the Chair Bank of  France/Paris School of Economics, at the Paris School of Economics, Paris, 24 September 2019.
When making decisions we have also had many other kinds of model-based estimates and scenarios to go on than those published. Moreover, from October 1999 until March 2003, our Inflation Report contained boxes in which we published estimates based on a survey of market expectations of the repo rate.5 The estimates were seldom given any great significance in the monetary policy debate, however. So what are the points of attaching greater importance to, and also publishing forecasts based on, other interest rate assumptions than a constant repo rate? There are chiefly two: The first point has to do with comparability and the possibilities to assess our forecasts. As things currently stand the Riksbank’s forecasts can be difficult to compare with others, since other forecasters do not normally base their forecasts on an unchanged policy rate. This risks confusing those that monitor the Riksbank and compare our forecasts with others in, for example, the media. So it is possible that an interest rate assumption that is more consistent with the market's view of how the interest rate will develop could make our communication easier in certain situations. That is especially true of course if there is a large deviation between the assumption of an unchanged repo rate and a more realistic assumption of the rate's path. What is clear in any case is that ex post assessments of forecasts of economic and inflation developments become generally easier if they are based on an assumption that better reflects the interest rate expectations of market players.

One consolation for those who wish for an answer is that they can form an opinion of how the Executive Board develops its view of monetary policy through the Inflation Reports, speeches and the minutes of the monetary policy meetings published. 1. Different measures of inflation Annual percentage change  6  6  5  5 CPI UND1X  4  4  3  3  2  2  1  1  0  0  -1 1993  -1 1995  1997  1999  2001  2003  Sources: Statistics Sweden and the Riksbank  8  BIS Review 11/2005  2. Repo rate decisions and inflation forecasts, 1999-2004 Per cent  0,50 IR01:1 IR02:3 IR03:4 IR04:2  Repo rate change  0,25  0,50 IR00:4 IR02:1  IR99:2 IR00:2 IR01:3 IR04:3 IR04:4  IR01:4  0,25 IR99:4  IR03:3  0,00  0,00  -0,25  IR99:3 IR00:1 IR00:3 IR01:2 IR02:2  IR99:1 IR02:4 IR03:1  IR03:2  -0,25  IR04:1  -0,50 -0,6  -0,50 -0,4  -0,2  0,0  0,2  0,4  0,6  Forecast deviation from inflation target  Source: The Riksbank  3.
I am simply describing the sort of economic risks which might occur, and which have been identified in the debate about monetary union in the United Kingdom as the potential downside to be set against the potential benefits of nominal exchange rate certainty which I touched upon earlier. You here in Belgium may think that these risks are sometimes exaggerated - you have after all been effectively in de facto monetary union with Germany for some considerable time. But I don’t think one can reasonably argue, certainly in the case of a larger country, that the risks can be ignored. It was against the background of this kind of economic debate that the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced a year ago that the United Kingdom would exercise its opt-out and not participate in the first wave of euro membership. That was a disappointment to some of our European partners. But it was a considerable relief to others, because UK participation from the outset would undoubtedly have complicated the project - not least because of the substantial cyclical divergence between ourselves and the major countries on the Continent. But the Chancellor also made it clear that the present British Government is not opposed to euro membership as a matter of principle; it will make its decision on pragmatic grounds - the test being whether membership would be in our economic interests; and it would BIS Review 88/1998  -4-  submit that decision to Parliament and to the British people in a referendum.

What then can the United Kingdom bring, initially as an ‘out’, or ‘pre-in’, to the European party, in terms of contributing to the euro’s success? There are, I think, two things in particular. First, we can continue to pursue macro-economic - both monetary and fiscal discipline alongside the euro-area countries. The Government is committed to that course as a matter of national economic self-interest, but it reflects the same philosophy as that which underlies the Maastricht Treaty. One of its very first acts in Government, for example, was to give operational independence for the conduct of monetary policy to the Bank of England, and we have been set the objective of delivering, consistently, underlying retail price inflation of 2½%. That objective appears to be compatible with the ECB’s target for the European Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices of less than 2% - in fact while we are, on the most recent data, precisely on track in terms of our own target measure, our inflation rate in terms of the harmonised index is down to 1.3%. And on the fiscal side the Government has committed itself both to maintaining the debt to GDP ratio at a stable and prudent level over the economic cycle and to the “golden rule” (under which public sector borrowing is limited to the financing of investment). These fiscal rules, too, are broadly consistent with those established for euro-member countries under the Stability and Growth Pact, and will ensure that we continue to comply with the Maastricht Treaty fiscal criteria.
Among other things, the increased focus in the New Accord on internal ratings and risk-adjusted pricing might encourage a more sensible approach to the setting of margins on syndicated loans. I know that many banks in Hong Kong think that margins are now too low to fully compensate for expected loss, the cost of capital and operational costs. However, more rational pricing policies are currently hindered by the lack of consistency among banks on how they price risk and allocate capital. The New Accord should go some way to correct this. Under the internal ratings based (IRB) approach, banks will be required to use internal ratings as a factor in the pricing of credit risk. Progress on the New Accord As part of the process of creating incentives for better risk management, the Basel Committee is now engaged in a more general effort to recalibrate the New Accord to adjust the amount of capital charge under each of the main approaches. The aim of the revised set of proposals is that, on average, the total amount of capital required under the standardised approach to cover both credit and operational risk should be the same as that required under the current Accord to cover credit risk only. Modest capital relief would be available to those banks that move to the foundation IRB approach, with still more relief for those which opt for the advanced IRB approach. These, and other revised proposals of the Basel Committee, seem to have got the New Accord back on track.

The recent experience of the credit derivatives market shows that ambiguities can arise even in standardised documentation, and the sponsors and users of the documentation need to be alert to this and make changes where necessary. The link with operational risk But the bottom line is that standardisation will reduce the risk that something goes wrong with the documentation. This feeds in turn into reduced legal risk, which is included within the definition of operational risk adopted by the Basel Committee. This defines operational risk as “the risk of loss resulting from inadequate or failed internal processes, people or systems or from external events”. This definition focuses on the causes of operational risk - internal processes, people, systems or external events. Operational risk losses can be further classified into various “event types” and assigned to each of a bank’s major business lines. By classifying losses in this way, banks are better placed to identify appropriate risk controls and to assess the impact of these. In its draft paper on Sound Practices for the Management and Supervision of Operational Risk, the Basel Committee has identified seven main loss event types for operational risk. These include losses related to “execution, delivery and process management” within which resides documentation risk. Why has the Basel Committee decided to focus on operational risk? The answer lies in the growing diversity and complexity of banking operations arising from well-known phenomena such as globalisation, the growing sophistication of financial technology and outsourcing.
Hence, the new job opportunities which the pro-poor growth should create should harness these labour services in full in self-employment and in wage employment. Successful poverty alleviation should focus equally on both these types of labour engagement. When the poor are to be provided with self-employment opportunities, they should have access to land, credit, infrastructure, technology and productive inputs so as to keep their labour services continuously and gainfully employed 7 . Similarly, when the poor are to secure wage employments, both industrial and agro-based enterprises should be promoted in rural as well as urban centres. Any concentration of such enterprises in urban areas would result in an undesirable migration of the poor to urban centres and an uneven development across different regions of a country 8 . The pro-poor growth strategy in Sri Lanka, as has been the case in other countries pursuing this strategy, has placed heavy emphasis on developing the rural agricultural sector 9 . The reasoning behind this policy would have been the belief that agriculture is the main stay in the economy and the development of labour intensive agriculture as against capital intensive industry would enable the rural population to increase their income levels. However, this rural bias in growth strategy poses several problems for the sustainability of the policy. First, the policy is urban-neutral and, hence, if the incomes of the urban sector do not increase correspondingly, the rural folk would find it difficult to market their products.

To prevent farmers from resorting to out-selling for short-term price benefits, buyers on many occasions agreed to raise the contract price to assure them an uninterrupted supply line. However, it is encouraging to note that the established farmers could not be lured by these temporary gains and preferred to enjoy long-run relationships with buyers. 10  BIS Review 22/2008  credit and continuous government patronage to cross the poverty line and join the mainstream of the economy, the Central Bank’s Isuru Project, coupled with the forward sale contract system, has been able to establish a more effective poverty alleviation system through the market mechanism. The success of the Isuru Project in this respect is due to the following features unique to the project: •  Selection of beneficiaries was free from political or other elitist interference and done by the beneficiaries themselves through a self selection process. Hence, undeserving elements were kept out of the project activities. •  Interest rates were deliberately set above the normal market rates so as to compel the borrowers to reckon the cost of funds in their project planning and avoid the misuse of funds. •  Lending was done on easy terms and procedures similar to the systems followed by informal money lenders. The objective was to eliminate money lenders competitively by providing a better service at a lower rate. •  Thrift and savings preceded lending to inculcate proper conservation habits among beneficiaries.
The creativity that was suppressed during the time when standard of living, work, education, housing and travel depended on the grace or wrath of the Communist party has now been released to create new ideas. For each part of the GDP that has declined, another part has grown, for each old, heavy industry that has closed its doors, a dozen new, small businesses have started up. Let me give some examples: in 1991 the private sector accounted for 10 per cent of GDP in Estonia, today it accounts for 80 per cent. Manufacturing, which stood for 47 per cent of GDP in the Czech Republic in 1992, now accounts for 42 per cent, while services have increased their share from 44 to 54 per cent. In addition, the development of eastern Europe has proved that wise economic policy and improved institutions have a real importance in liberating human creativity. This is actually more important than the Communist inheritance and the pre-war traditions that some analysts said would predetermine the countries' economies in the new capitalist era. Few believed, for instance, that "agrarian" Poland would grow much more quickly during the 1990s than the former GDR, which boasted of its old industrial traditions during the Communist days, but thanks to Poland's more efficient economic policy, this is exactly what has happened. Unfortunately this dynamism of creative destruction and renewal does not show very clearly in the figures for GDP per capita.

Eva Srejber: A reunited Europe – the roles played by Sweden and the Riksbank Speech by Ms Eva Srejber, Second Deputy Governor of Sveriges Riksbank, to the Baltik Financial Network, Stockholm, 13 February 2002. *  *  *  Thank you for inviting me here to speak of and discuss this important subject with such a knowledgeable public. The enlargement will change Europe and Sweden and will also affect the Riksbank. For those of us in western Europe, this is an important opportunity to regain the right geographical, economic and historical perspectives. We talk about "eastern Europe", despite the fact that Prague and Ljubljana lie west of Stockholm, we forget that Riga and Tallinn are actually closer to Stockholm than Gothenburg. We often still have a mental curtain where the iron curtain once prevailed. Now this division will soon be at an end. A hundred million Europeans, who lived under a totalitarian Communist dictatorship for half a century, can now finally return to a single European community. The political dimension is undoubtedly the most important. The new community confirms democracy and thereby guarantees peace and stability throughout Europe, which will in turn provide a good foundation for growth and development. Today I intend to say a few words about an important facet of the EU enlargement, namely the economic consequences, which will affect the work of the Riksbank more directly.
I have outlined the key role of authorities in ensuring the stability of money, through issuing and ensuring confidence in central bank money (from monetary policy through to making it hard to counterfeit), and regulating banks to ensure commercial bank money is stable and convertible on demand. Oversight of payment systems transferring this money ensures they are resilient and can be used with confidence. But the changing nature of money causes us to pause and consider the importance and implications of money which extend much further than a simple exchange of value or financial transaction, and the policy implications are much greater than the specific mission of a central bank. In short, money has social, and not just financial functions. Who should be responsible for the integrity and security of the digital payments architecture? Digital currencies will create not just a novel form of money, but also a new payment infrastructure, which while likely bringing benefits to payment efficiency, raises questions around transparency and how resilience and consumer protection will be ensured. Central banks might be involved in this infrastructure too, but where might the role of the central bank start, and stop? Privacy and data protection issues are also a key question. Digital currencies, depending on their design, could provide considerable information on how people spend their money, and we cannot compromise on the protection of our privacy. Private firms might seek to use these data, with appropriate user consent, to offer improved services, but we’ve seen widespread mis-use of data in the past.

Rather, the New York Fed's actions have consistently been directed at securing its objectives as lender. As any lender in our position would do, the New York Fed has put into place a loan agreement that contains covenants designed to help ensure ultimate repayment of the loan – but these creditor's rights do not create an ability to manage AIG. Responsibility for AIG's day-to-day affairs continues to rest with AIG's chief executive officer, Edward Liddy, under the oversight of AIG's board of directors. Mr. Liddy, who has only become involved with AIG in a public-spirited attempt to resolve its troubled affairs, has  BIS Review 35/2009  1  made strides in dealing with AIG's opaque corporate structure, lack of centralized controls and complex risk exposures, but much remains to be done. In light of the inherent conflicts that would arise from either the U.S. government or the Federal Reserve exerting ownership control over the world's largest insurer, the Federal Reserve, with the support of the Treasury Department, directed in the loan agreement that an approximately 77.9 percent equity interest in AIG be issued to an independent trust established for the sole benefit of the United States Treasury. The trust, which now holds that controlling equity interest, is overseen by three independent trustees who are of the highest integrity and who have considerable experience leading major companies.