samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Even if you accept cash has other benefits that mean it is the preferred payment method for some, the inability to pay interest on public money is a relic of a bygone era. In principle, a widely-used digital currency could mitigate, perhaps even eliminate, this technological constraint. Specifically, CBDC would enable interest to be levied on central bank issued monetary assets or digital cash. The extent to which this relaxed the ZLB constraint depends, in addition, on the elasticity with which physical cash is provided to the public alongside CBDC. Access to physical cash is an issue well above the pay grade of central bank technicians; it is a political-cum-social issue. Nonetheless, the potential macro-economic benefits of easing the ZLB constraint are large and have grown over time. Studies suggest the ZLB constraint can result in significant shortfalls in output relative to potential (of around 2%) and inflation relative to target (of as much as 2 percentage points).31 These are potentially enormous gains in macro-economic terms. To those benefits needs to be added the gains to digital cash users of holding a remunerated instrument, helping protect their purchasing power. These financial stability and monetary-macro benefits should be at the centre of the debate about the desirability and design of digital currencies. To give an example, the design of the remuneration schedule for CDBC will in my view be one of the most significant decisions made by central banks in the next half-century.

At the end of 2001, it was estimated that the number of persons who had been on sick leave for longer than one year amounted to 120,000, which is almost three times the figure for 1997. The number of those on 4 sick leave shorter than one year is also continuing to rise. The problems are accentuated by the fact 1  According to Stephen Oliner and Daniel Sichel at the Federal Reserve in Washington, the productivity trend has increased by one percentage point during the second half of the 1990s. Half of this increase is a result of investments in IT. 2  Economics council report 2001: kluster.se. Sweden in the new geographical economy 2001. 3  800 000 full-time posts is calculated on approximately 400 000 early retirements plus total sick leave, including the qualification days and absence during the sick-pay period which when translated becomes approximately 400 000 full-time posts (Source: SOU 2002:5, An action plan for increased ill-health at work.) 4  Source: SOU 2002:5, An action plan for increased ill health at work. 4  BIS Review 14/2002  that the pensioner support ratio, which expresses the number of professionally active in relation to those retired due to ill-health or old age, is moving up from 2.1 in 2000 to 1.4 in 2030, according to 5 Statistics Sweden's population forecasts. This means that if potential growth is to be sustained through more people working, more need to participate in working life in the higher age groups.
Central Bank of Chile 29 June, 2017  “FinTech and the Future of Central Banking: A Latin American Perspective” Annual Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance Conference Keynote speech by Mr Mario Marcel Governor of the Central Bank of Chile June 2017 Ladies and gentlemen, Let me first thank the organizers for inviting me to participate in this Conference. This gives me the opportunity to link my present job as Governor of the Central Bank of Chile, with my past, as a student of Economics at Cambridge, nearly 30 years ago. At that time, the Judge Business School was still in the making, but I am glad to see how it has grown to become a world leader in business education. The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, housed at JBS, is a good example of how a centuries-old university can undertake vibrant, emerging subjects and use good intellectual discipline to tackle them. I attend this meeting not as somebody that is “navigating the contours”, but as a head of a quintessential mainstream economic institution—a Central Bank. In the past few days I attended the BIS Annual General Meeting of Governors and the ECB Forum on Central Banking, so it is good to switch to a more distended environment. Yet I am not the only one coming from that different world, since FSB representatives are also here alongside Juan Ketterer of the Inter-American Development Bank, with whom I was lucky to work a few years ago.

Slide 3  Commercial bank balance sheet Banking sector balance sheet (percent of GDP) ASSETS Loan Portfolio Commercial Consumer Mortgage Comex Cash Other liquid Derivatives  88 48 10 24 5 7 12 5  Other  9  LIABILITIES Demand deposits Time deposits External credit Debt instruments Derivatives Other  22 46 5 23 5 11  EQUITY AND RESERVES 10  All figures as of December 2016, based on individual balance sheet. Source: Central Bank of Chile based on SBIF data. [SLIDE 4] Hence, a key concern of a central bank is risk. Risk from external shocks that may threaten price stability; risk of misjudging the macroeconomic scenario and make wrong policy decisions; risk of changes in the behaviour of banks that may compromise the transmission of monetary policy to market rates; risk of liquidity excess or shortage in the banking sector; risk of bank insolvency; risk  3  Central Bank of Chile 29 June, 2017  of disruptions in the flow of funds at the interbank or retail level; risk of risk misjudgement, and, ultimately, risk of compromising trust. Slide 4  What do central banks worry about?
François Villeroy de Galhau: New Year wishes to the Paris financial centre New Year wishes to the Paris financial centre by Mr François Villeroy de Galhau, Governor of the Bank of France, Paris, 18 January 2018. * * * I would like to thank all of you for coming, like each year, to our Golden Gallery. I am pleased to welcome you, together with Denis Beau, Deputy Governor since July and first Deputy Governor since yesterday. I also commend Anne Le Lorier, who unfortunately left us on 5 January but who has contributed so much to the Banque de France over the past six years: this evening is an occasion to thank her. And I am delighted to announce the appointment of Sylvie Goulard, who will be taking over from her. As of next Monday, she will bring to the Banque de France all her competence and independence. I would like to start by extending to you our warmest wishes for 2018, for you and your loved ones, as well as for all of your staff, hoping that 2018 will be an excellent year; an excellent year, not only for each of you, but also for Europe and our country. But before presenting my collective wishes for this new year, I would like to return to 2017 and three positive elements that marked it. 1.

Bank lending to households and firms is growing at almost 6% per year. This is good news, but we must avoid excesses. There are thus several efforts to be made in 2018 to ensure the smooth financing of our economy:  Remain vigilant to ensure financial stability, first and foremost. At last December's meeting of the Haut Conseil de Stabilité Financière (HCSF – High Council for Financial Stability), we decided to take a macroprudential measure to limit the sharp rise in the debt of certain large companies, including bond debt. It will apply as of 1 July after approval by the European authorities. If credit cycle risks persist – i.e. growth that is significantly higher than that justified by economic fundamentals – we stand ready to act further at any time in 2018, including if necessary by implementing a countercyclical capital buffer. Promoting the attractiveness of the Paris financial centre in the context of Brexit, second: irrespective of the possible transition, the City will most likely lose its EU passporting rights. The Paris financial centre must continue to develop, notably in the area of the clearing of financial instruments, and promote its numerous qualities, enhanced by the arrival of the EBA, in order to become the main euro area centre for market activities. This is our collective challenge, over and above announcements of welcoming registered head offices. Lastly, better channelling our savings. Overall, the French economy has no lack of financing, thanks also to the soundness of its financial institutions.
In the current situation, Norwegian interest rates on a par with interest rates in the euro area would lead to instability. If monetary policy had not contributed to curbing demand, the pressure on economic resources would have led to accelerating inflation. Countries participating in EMU have gained access to a large, liquid financial market in their own currency, with low transaction costs. The risk of exchange rate losses associated with cross-border investment and borrowing in the euro area has been eliminated. This can result in substantial gains, not least for some of the smaller countries. The business sector in the euro area is taking advantage of this. The volume of bonds issued by non-financial corporations has increased substantially each year since the introduction of the common currency in January 1999. Financial markets are small and fairly illiquid in Norway compared with the euro area. Combined with the uncertainty associated with exchange rate developments, this can add a premium on the required rate of return on investments in NOK. This can in turn contribute to a higher long-term interest rate in Norway than in the euro area countries over time. In the long term, financial market participants expect Norwegian interest rates to be close to 1 percentage point higher than in the euro area.

It is just as important to avoid an inflation rate that is too low, as it is to avoid an inflation rate that is too high. Economic policy in the euro area The introduction of the euro on 1 January 1999 also meant the introduction of a single monetary policy in the eleven member countries. Greece joined as the twelfth country on 1 January 2001. The population of the euro area is a little more than 300 million and the euro area economy accounted for about 16 per cent of world GDP last year.1 Price stability is the primary objective of the single monetary policy in the euro area. The Governing Council of the European Central Bank has defined price stability as a year-on-year increase in the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) for the euro area of below 2 per cent. The project will be completed in January and February 2002. On 1 January, euro banknotes and coins will be put into circulation. During a changeover period, national currencies can be used as a means of payment alongside the euro. This period is no longer than two months in any of the member countries. As from the beginning of March, the euro will be the only legal tender in all euro area countries, and all prices will be in euros. The objective of monetary policy in the euro area is price stability in the euro area as a whole.
Thirachai Phuvanat naranubala: The role of non-bank financial institutions in relation to monetary policy Speech by Mr Thirachai Phuvanat naranubala, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Thailand, at the Regional Seminar on Non-Bank Financial Institutions in East Asia Region, Bangkok, 4 September 2002. *  *  *  I wish to congratulate the Securities and Exchange Commission of Thailand and The World Bank for organizing such an interesting seminar in Bangkok, and to thank them for inviting me to share my thoughts with you today. I can see that the topics in the seminar will cover many important aspects of non-bank financial institutions’ operations -- ranging from the regulatory and supervisory framework to capital market development as well as the issue of governance. But I am the only person touching on monetary policy aspect. Monetary policy does affect an important part of your business, which is the bond market. Because the one factor reflected in the bond market yield curve is inflation expectation. Therefore, if the framework and the conduct of monetary policy result in low and predictable inflation, it will help curb volatility of the yield curve and support development of the bond markets. Change in monetary policy stance also directly affect interest rate and hence the bond market. Thus, it pays for you to understand monetary policy. Monetary Policy in Thailand In order for you to do that, I have to start by telling you about how the monetary policy framework has evolved here in Thailand.

In time to come, I hope that it will be further fine-tuned so as to reflect the five qualities that I have just spoken about. In this process, it might be useful to modellers in Singapore and even from the region to meet more regularly to exchange ideas and learn from each other’s experiences. In the post-Asian crisis era, one of the main concerns of regional policymakers is that of monitoring vulnerabilities of the domestic economies to external shocks. There is a need for a formal and reliable monitoring mechanism to help supplement overall surveillance efforts. Perhaps macro models could be employed to this end. If workable, this might just be the function that renders models not only relevant but actually indispensable to policymakers. I leave you with this thought and wish you all a day of fruitful deliberations. 4  “Empirical Modelling in Economics: Specification and Evaluation”, The 1998 Marshall Lectures. 3  BIS Review 9/2000
But it went on, “…there are serious possibilities of conflict between them.”4 Second, the rate of inflation in the long run is determined by monetary policy, not by microeconomic factors. Again, that is now taken for granted, but much effort was devoted to the imposition of detailed direct wage and price controls in the 1960s and 1970s. Nicholas Kaldor, adviser to Harold Wilson, wrote in 1971 that “It is also far more generally acknowledged – even by Conservative Prime Ministers – that the process of inflation is 'cost-induced' and not demand-induced', with the evident implication that it can be tackled only by an incomes policy'”. Not many Whitehall advisers would give that answer today. Third, in the short run monetary policy does affect output and employment and so has the potential to be an effective stabilisation tool. Reflecting a post-war consensus that monetary policy was rather ineffective, however, the Radcliffe Report concluded that “…. there can be no reliance on this weapon [interest rate policy] as a major short-term stabiliser of demand”5 It is now accepted that monetary policy lies at the heart of any attempt to stabilise the economy. The source of monetary policy’s influence over output and employment lies in frictions, which mean that prices and wages do not adjust instantaneously to clear markets whenever demand and supply are out of balance. Firms change prices only irregularly in response to changes in demand; wages adjust only slowly as labour market conditions alter; and expectations are updated only slowly as new information is received.

Although economic activity in the first quarter of 2010 has been broadly in line with the outlook presented in the January Inflation Report, there have been some developments, which necessitated an upward revision of the inflation forecast for 2010. As I believe that interpreting these developments accurately is very important, I would like to further elaborate on these developments. First of all, the revisions to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) series, and somewhat stronger than expected domestic demand have led to an upward revision in the output gap estimates, which have pushed the inflation forecast for end-2010 up by 0.4 percentage points (Table 2). Considering recent developments, our oil price assumptions stated in the past Report have been revised slightly upwards (Figure 32). In this context, the previous assumption of oil prices are revised up from 80 USD per barrel to 85 USD for 2010, and from 85 USD to 90 USD for 2011 and thereafter (Table 2). Besides, in April, commodity prices surged to their highest levels for 2010 on the back of ongoing favorable growth expectations (Figure 33). Therefore, while producing medium-term forecasts, in line with oil prices, imported input  costs are also assumed to increase gradually throughout the forecast horizon in response to the recovery in the world economy. This revision has shifted the 2010 inflation forecast up by 0.15 percentage points. The January Inflation Report envisaged food inflation to be 7 percent at end-2010, 6.5 percent for 2011 and 6 percent for the following years (Table 2).
1) The changing nature of systemic liquidity risk Stripped of its superficial idiosyncrasies, the LDI episode provides an almost canonical example of the structural trends we identified in our BIS work: First, the growing use of LDI[6] increased the exposure of real people, in this case current and prospective UK pensioners, to developments in gilt markets. Second, key features of LDI funds left them, and their Defined Benefit (DB) pension scheme investors, exposed to very substantial liquidity risks in the event of a sharp change in interest rates. Those features were: large leveraged holdings of longer-duration gilts or interest rate derivatives; liquidity buffers for meeting margin or collateral calls that had not been rigorously stress tested for more severe shocks; and an overly cumbersome recapitalisation process that left DB schemes unable to inject resources quickly enough into their LDI funds, even where they had the means to do so. Third, in such circumstances, the LDIs’ business model was reliant on being able to liquidate their gilt holdings in size, and at stable well-defined prices. In markets where there was limited intermediation capacity and few if any other marginal buyers, that proved impossible. Expressed like this, and abstracting from the very different initial trigger, these features bear a striking resemblance to the 2020 dash for cash. A wide range of non-bank players with leveraged positions and thin liquidity buffers all rushed simultaneously to get out of positions in normallyliquid financial instruments in order to raise funds for margin calls and other liquidity needs.

This was a fundamentally different approach to that taken in QE, where the goal was to achieve the MPC’s stock targets. As a consequence, our eventual total purchases were far lower than some early estimates – and that, combined with the short holding period, very clearly differentiated the LDI operations from the much larger and more persistent path of QE holdings (Figure 4). Page 11  Judged against the criteria we set ourselves, these operations were highly successful, a view supported by most market participants and commentators. But there were many important learning points for us, and for anyone contemplating such operations in the future too. The first is simply to underscore the value of effective preparation across every element of design. As I mentioned at the start, we had benefited substantially from the thinking of the BIS working group in the months ahead of the LDI crisis. Establishing and communicating a rigorous approach to governance is critical. Ensuring your operations genuinely are temporary is a vital but high stakes decision: make sure your deadlines are credible and clearly communicated. Most importantly of all, invest heavily in how you want to price your facility. The standard MMLR theory of operating at a spread wider than in normal market conditions but narrower than in stressed conditions is nice in theory.
4  BIS Review 8/2007  This rule was easy to understand and in that respect it was a good educational tool. However, there were also disadvantages. In normal cases it is not, for instance, particularly realistic that the policy rate would remain unchanged a couple of years ahead. The assumption made it difficult to assess our forecasts and to compare them with those of other forecasters. The latter usually base their assessments on the policy rate being changed. It was also difficult to apply the assumption in a consistent manner in the forecasting process. These problems would have become worse when we extended our forecast horizon. Moreover, it gradually became clear that this rule could sometimes be an obstacle in our communication. It created an exaggerated focus on the current interest rate decision and on the inflation forecast exactly two years ahead. The gradual shift towards more flexible monetary policy led to a greater need to illustrate the fact that it is the entire expected sequence of events for inflation and the real economy a few years ahead that is important in monetary policy decisions, and not only the levels we foresee two years ahead. And the focus should not only be on current interest rates, but also on expectations of future interest rate changes. 5 We left most of these problems behind us when we changed over in October 2005 to making forecasts based on market expectations of the future development of the policy rate.

2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  The remaining two-thirds of the financing of international trade are covered through intercompany credit, without the direct involvement of banks. Nonetheless, these transactions might be indirectly backed by the banking sector, for instance through the discounting of bills that enables the company to obtain financing by using its customer trade receivables. The instruments used by banks to finance international trade share certain characteristics. They are short-term instruments with low credit risk (low default rates) and are nonrenewable. Notable among these instruments are pre-export credit, which allows the exporter’s production or transport costs to be covered, and export loans, whereby companies obtain short-term financing to cover financing needs in the event of deferred payment by the supplier. Also of note is the recent securitisation of assets linked to international trade financing. Securitisation is a habitual practice in the finance industry, but its application to these assets is quite new. By means of such securitisation, banks release capital and liquidity while nonbank institutions are able to invest in international trade-related securities. Asset securitisation has been regulated in Spain since 1981, but the developments aimed specifically at promoting securitisation linked to the financing of foreign trade are much more recent. “Internationalisation covered bonds” were introduced by Royal Decree-Law 20/2012 on 13 July 2012, and in Law 14/2013 of 27 September 2013, on support to entrepreneurs, this legal framework was amended with a new instrument, namely “internationalisation bonds”.