samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
For this reason, it is in my opinion important that a review is made of the total complex of regulations governing the functioning of the housing market, in order to allow it to function better. From the Riksbank’s point of view, a higher potential growth means that demand in Sweden can be higher at the same time as price stability can be maintained. The credit granting process If the housing market can become more flexible, it will enable new construction where housing is most needed. These new investments will need to be financed. It is therefore important to be aware of the professionalisation of the credit granting process that has occurred within the financial institutions following the bank crisis. This is reinforced by the new capital adequacy rules that are being worked out. The modern credit granting process focuses more on the individual borrower’s cash flows. This individualisation means that the interest paid will to a greater extent reflect the market’s valuation of the profitability of the individual object, e.g. a particular property. Does the banks’ setting of interest rates vary between different borrowers and credit objects? How is credit granted today? How do the banks assess a loan application? I shall not explain these processes in detail, but outline the most important elements. Credit granting is part of the banks’ core business. It involves mediating savings to borrowers. As managers of our savings, the banks have always needed to be able to assess, measure and manage the risks inherent in these operations.

Productivity growth usually slows down when economic activity slows down, but in recent years productivity growth has been unusually low. It is also unusual that productivity growth falls as long as eight quarters in a row, as it has now. It is difficult to find a simple explanation for the low productivity growth in recent years. The National Institute of Economic Research has studied the composition effects, to put it simply, if the composition of industries with different rates of productivity has changed, and it finds no great effect on productivity. 13 Another possible explanation could be that the recent increase in employment has meant that new groups with a lower productivity than others have entered the labour market. For instance, it can take time to train new employees. It may also be the case that companies have prepared for coming retirements by employing additional staff so there are currently two to a job in some cases. When productivity slows down, unit labour costs increase, and this puts further pressure on companies to raise prices. There is thus risk of higher inflation. We are currently facing a situation where it is difficult to predict how companies will adjust to high unit labour costs. It is always difficult to dismiss staff, but indicators such as job vacancies, redundancies, companies’ employment plans, etc. point towards an adjustment having begun. At the same time, a general decline in demand makes it difficult for companies to pass on cost increases to consumers.
BIS Review 23/2009  10  11  12  Sources: Bureau of Economic Analysis, Eurostat, Statistics Sweden and the Riksbank  15  Recovery will begin in 2010  The measures implemented will take effect  Credit markets will function better  Confidence will return to households and  companies   Consumption and investment will increase  Large fluctuations in the CPI Annual percentage change M PR09:1  5.0  5.0 CPI  4.0  4.0  CPIF  3.0  3.0  2.0  2.0  1.0  1.0  0.0  0.0  -1.0  -1.0  -2.0  -2.0 00  01  02  03  04  05  06  Note. Broken lines represent the Riksbank’s forecasts. 16  07  08  09  10  11  12  Sources: Statistics Sweden and the Riksbank  BIS Review 23/2009  Unusually great uncertainty in the forecasts The crisis may worsen but …  The recovery may also come sooner  Weaker exchange rate and lower productivity growth may lead to higher inflation   Extraordinary events may require extraordinary measures… …but we are prepared! M any gloomy headlines, but a turnaround will come eventually Why will things go better this time?

The latest retail sales figures provide some comfort with volume growth below that in the middle of last year when consumption was stimulated by windfall gains, predominantly from the conversion of building societies. (Rarely have so many, been so grateful, to so few building societies.) Highs and lows in house prices In the past, domestic demand has been sensitive to developments in the housing market. In the late 1980s house prices increased by 40% in two years, while consumption rose by over 9%. Borrowing using housing as collateral - so called equity withdrawal - amounted to almost 50% of the increase in consumption over that period. The impact of rises in house prices on consumption - which is cause and which is effect - remains hotly contested by economists. A rise in house prices leads not only to an increase in wealth but also to an increase in the cost of housing services. Or, to put it another way, if the price of your home goes up, you will not be able to spend more on other things if you wish to carry on living in your home. So it is not at all clear that changes in house prices will in fact have a significant impact on household spending. Perhaps of greater importance is the role which house prices play in signalling consumer confidence about the future. In common with other assets, such as equities, house prices can respond quickly to news about future economic prospects.
You shouldn’t see this as too accurate a prediction of the future path of monetary policy; rather it’s what is right today for our current level of inflation, for the state of the economy and for growth. Low rates provide an incentive to diversify savings, but, as we all know, this raises important challenges. Therefore, without claiming to have any clear-cut answers, I’d like to suggest three avenues worth exploring in this important debate. 1  Gross average over four quarters. 2  Risky assets are defined here as debt securities, listed shares, unlisted shares and other equity interests, shares in non-money market funds, shares in pension funds and shares in unit-linked life insurance products. Risk-free assets include cash, sight deposits, term deposits, shares in money market funds and shares in eurodenominated life-insurance products. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  II  We need to act in two main areas, while taking one essential precaution. a) First we need to gradually pass the decrease in interest rates through to the returns on risk-free investments. This is why I proposed lowering the interest rate on new French housing savings plans (PEL), which since yesterday has been set at 1.5%; it’s also why we need to continue lowering the returns on life insurance savings invested in eurodenominated funds, in addition to the cuts already announced this year. b) The second focus for action is the development of new savings products.

Is it established, or is it new and unknown technology? We also know that attitudes towards security and operational risk are important. But with tech firms rushing to offer new products to the market, there is the risk of insufficient emphasis on security. This is a risk that must be monitored – not only for new products or for new players, but also for incumbent businesses. Tech giants like Google, Apple, and Alibaba look set to become dominant players. Their advantage comes from providing cross-border services and having already gathered significant information about users. They are already present in the Nordic marketplace. This development may lean towards monopolies, as it can create entry barriers for new and smaller players in the market. If that proves to be the case, it could have a negative impact on competition and go against the aims of the PSD2 (the recent EU Directive on payment services in the internal market (2015/2366). This risk is greater when the payment mechanisms are outside the jurisdiction of the relevant state. Then there is the question of supervision. Will the new solutions be supervised, and if so, how? The challenge here is that many new solutions are global, and thus outside the European Economic Area or the European Single Market. Such supervision thus requires crossborder cooperation among supervisors. The challenge for the supervisor is also to maintain a comprehensive overview of the market.
Indeed, the first time I came to Reading was in 1977 when I was supporting a pub-rock band called Sounder, who persuaded me to drive the band members to a gig in the town centre. Also around that time, the great rock band Led Zeppelin released a film and soundtrack album called “The Song Remains the Same” – featuring their live performances around the world in the mid-1970s. The question in my mind now is how long the monetary policy song can remain the same, when it might be out of tune with the rest of the background music from the real economy – of economic recovery and above target inflation. That Led Zeppelin album “The Song Remains the Same” contained an extremely long live version (lasting nearly half an hour!) of a track which appeared on their first album – entitled “Dazed and Confused”, in which Jimmy Page plays his guitar with a violin bow – something I must say that I have not attempted in my guitar-playing career. There have been many aspects of the current financial crisis and the recent performance of the economy which have left us all “dazed and confused”. The financial crisis has served as a severe jolt to the prevailing view in the mid-2000s that the economy had entered a period of “Great Stability” of steady growth and low inflation.

Between 2007 – right before the last recession – and last year, employment grew by 10 percent in New York City, making it one of the best performing areas in the nation. In the Bronx, employment grew even faster, rising by more than 14 percent. While job creation in the Bronx has been quite broad-based, I would like to highlight two particular industries, each very different in nature, to illustrate the diversity of Bronx’s economy. Both health services and wholesale food distribution have been flourishing here. These sectors, on average, pay relatively well and both have been contributing strongly to 1  Jason Bram, Christopher Calabia, Tony Davis, Jacqueline Fenton, Claire Kramer Mills, Don Morgan, James Orr, Joseph Tracy and Luis Uranga assisted in preparing these remarks. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  overall job creation and to the borough’s economic resurgence. By health services, I don’t just mean hospitals and clinics serving the local population. For example, Montefiore Medical Center is a nationally-ranked institution in a variety of specialties as well as a highly regarded teaching hospital. Additionally, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine is a graduate medical school and clinical research facility. And, of course, the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center houses institutions such as the Fulton Fish Market, which moved here from lower Manhattan about a decade ago. But, of course, these aren’t the only industries driving the Bronx economy.
Even though the Committee is communicating a monthly pace and composition of purchases, the predominant effect of those purchases on interest rates likely still comes from the expectations of the total stock of risk that will be removed from private investors and the length of time that the Federal Reserve will hold this risk. One feature of the current program  4  For more information about Treasury market liquidity, see Fleming (2002) and Fleming (2000). 5  For example, see Li and Wei (2012), Gagnon et al (2010), Krishnamurthy and Vissing-Jørgensen (2011), Wright (2012), and Hancock and Passmore (2011). 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  is that market participants’ expectations of the total amount and composition of securities that the Desk will purchase – and thus, the amount of monetary policy accommodation – will evolve over time, along with incoming information about the economy, as well as considerations about policy efficacy and costs. The Desk’s most recent Survey of Primary Dealers indicates that the median respondent expects the FOMC to purchase about $ trillion in securities, roughly equally split between Treasuries and agency MBS, over the course of 2013 and early 2014.

Christian Noyer: The history and future of corporate social responsibility Welcome speech by Mr Christian Noyer, Governor of the Bank of France, at the Symposium ICCA – EABH, Paris, 27 October 2008. *  *  *  Minister, Chairman, Ladies and gentlemen, It is a great pleasure to welcome you to the Banque de France today together with the founder of the Institute for Corporate Culture Affairs, Manfred Pohl, who has organised this event. I would also like to thank Ms Kosciusko-Morizet for doing us the honour of joining us in this debate, in her capacity as Secretary of State for the Environment. Welcome to all! I wish to thank those who have come from neighbouring countries, and especially those who have travelled from further a field to take part in this symposium. This symposium is being held in this prestigious setting that is rich in history: the Golden Gallery of the Hôtel de Toulouse. It is in this Hôtel that the Banque de France set up its headquarters two hundred years ago to this year. Much time would be required to recount the history of this building. I should at least mention that this Gallery was designed at the start of the 17th century by François Mansart for Mr de la Vrillière, a minister of Louis XIII.
The Government has also reduced its stake in the commercial banks over the most recent years and intends to have them largely or fully privatised by the end of the current electoral term next year. The privatisation process creates opportunities for continued rationalisation in the financial system creating ample opportunities in the period ahead, including closer ties with foreign financial institutions. It is tempting to put recent economic developments in Iceland into the context of developments in some of the other Nordic Countries about a decade ago. Liberalisation of the Icelandic financial markets was more or less completed in the mid-1990s when the last restrictions on the movement of capital between Iceland and other countries were removed. Our liberalisation came a few years later than in the other Nordic Countries. You will recall that in some of the other Nordic Countries, liberalisation was followed by a boom period in the economy, partly or largely fuelled by a rapid growth of credit and in some cases large fiscal deficits. At the same time, these countries were pursuing a fixed exchange rate policy vis-a-vis the ECU. Developments in the domestic economies were such that the fixed exchange rate policy was gradually undermined, the rapid credit growth of banks resulted in weakening loan portfolios when asset prices fell, the exchange rate fixety gave way to floating, the currencies depreciated and inflation rose. The current account of the balance of payments also deteriorated.

Birgir Ísleifur Gunnarsson: Iceland in a global setting Keynote speech by Mr Birgir Ísleifur Gunnarsson, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Central Bank of Iceland, at the Euromoney conference on the Nordic Financial Markets and Investment Opportunities, Stockholm, 13 September 2002. *  *  *  Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen. It is a pleasure to participate in this ambitious conference on the Nordic Financial Markets and Investment Opportunities. I will in my remarks today mainly focus on aspects relating to Iceland. Size separates Iceland from the other Nordic Countries, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Other factors separate the Nordic Countries as well. Finland is a member of the European Union and the Economic and Monetary Union, EMU, as well. Denmark and Sweden are members of the European Union but are outside the EMU. Norway and Iceland are outside the European Union but maintain very close ties to it, particularly through the European Economic Area Agreement. That agreement makes Norway and Iceland a part of the single market of the European Union, which entails among other things that they are obliged to maintain financial market legislation, which fully conforms to that of the European Union. The Nordic Countries have different monetary regimes. Finland is a member of the EMU, Denmark is linked to the EMU through an ERM II agreement entailing that the Danish krona is very closely tied to the euro. Sweden, Norway and Iceland have chosen an inflation-targeting regime as their monetary framework (Iceland in March 2001).
Given the growth in world population over the period since, the number of global volunteers may well now top the one billion mark. To put that in context, imagine if these volunteers comprised a single country – “Volunteerland”. It would have the second largest working age population of any country in the world, behind only China (Figure 5). The Charities Aid Foundation calculates a World Giving Index each year which ranks the generosity of people in different countries with their money and time. For volunteering, top of the league are the unlikely trio of Turkmenistan, Sri Lanka and the United States; bottom of the pack are Yemen, China and Greece. The UK ranks 26th out of 131 countries. This is respectable, if outside an automatic Champions League place (Figure 6). Of course, cross-country comparisons can be quite difficult. For example, the high rates of volunteering in ex-Soviet states, like Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, are in part down to the authorities having national days of volunteering – “subbotniks”. As these are more or less compulsory, they stretch to breaking point the definition of volunteering. 8 Third, the volunteer army is a diverse one. Volunteering is slightly more prevalent among older people and slightly less prevalent among people of child-rearing age (Figure 7). But all age groups make a significant contribution. Women and men are broadly equally likely to volunteer. And there do not appear to be major differences in volunteering across ethnic minority or socio-economic groups. 9 Fourth, numbers of volunteers appear to be stable (Figure 8).

John C Williams: A jack of all trades is a master of none Remarks by Mr John C Williams, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at the 2022 US Treasury Market Conference, New York, 16 November 2022. ***  As prepared for delivery Good morning, everyone. We are excited to have you back in person at the New York Fed for the annual U.S. Treasury Market Conference. You may have noticed that our auditorium has gotten a new look since you were last here. I hope you'll find it a comfortable space since we have a very busy day ahead. The Last Time (LIBOR's Version) The topic of today's conference is resiliency in the U.S. Treasury market. Before I speak about that, I'd be remiss if I did not take this opportunity-hopefully for the last time-to remind everyone that we are entering the final stretch of the transition away from the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR). I'm pleased to report that the transition has been extremely successful so far, thanks to the significant and coordinated efforts from stakeholders across the globe. A special shout-out to the Alternative Reference Rates Committee (ARRC) for its outstanding work and dedication in guiding the move off of U.S. dollar LIBOR and promoting the adoption of more robust rates like the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR). They proved that LIBOR was far from irreplaceable. But there's still more work to do.
I will also provide empirical evidence that challenges the view that financial regulation has adversely impacted repo market activity so far. But I will also argue that further evidence is needed to draw conclusions on this matter. 1 / 10  BIS central bankers' speeches  Asset purchases and repo market activity Let me start with the impact of central bank asset purchases on recent repo market activity. Asset purchases may have two broad effects on repo markets. The first is their impact on excess liquidity. With central banks exchanging large amounts of reserves for longer-dated securities, banks may no longer need to tap the interbank market, both secured and unsecured, to manage their short-term liquidity needs. As a result, trading volumes may fall. The second effect is closer to one of the main transmission channels of asset purchase programmes, namely portfolio rebalancing. In imperfect financial markets, those in need of scarce securities, or those who have a special preference for them, need to bid harder to obtain them, thereby pushing up their price and lowering their yield – which then delivers financial conditions supportive of higher output and prices in the real economy. There is growing empirical evidence that this channel has been very effective in the euro area.4 The flip side to this is that, although purchases are conducted in the secondary cash market, price adjustments in this market can also be expected to affect conditions in the repo market. A simple way to think about this is through short-selling.

When the ECB Governing Council, in December last year, decided to also accept cash as collateral in our securities lending facility, we effectively increased the supply of bonds available in the repo market, thereby swiftly reducing the share of bonds trading special.7 The price effects of this decision can be seen on the next slide. Before we accepted cash as collateral, there was a strong positive relationship between the level of excess liquidity and repo rates, not only for trades backed by German collateral, but also for those involving French and, to a lesser extent, Italian securities. The moment we amended our securities lending facility in December last year, the relationship broke down, as you can see on the right-hand side. 4 / 10  BIS central bankers' speeches  Recent ECB analysis confirms the intimate relationship between cash and repo markets and the impact of supply and demand effects.8 The authors estimate that a 1% reduction in the effective supply may increase specialness, on average, by up to five basis points. Studies for the US market come to qualitatively similar conclusions.9 In other words, whether a bond trades special, and by how much, depends crucially on its effective supply, which is itself affected by factors such as the amount of investors that are willing to lend out securities in the repo market. These effects are also found to be persistent. You can see this on the same slide. The “scarcity” premium stabilised in spite of continuously increasing excess liquidity, but did not regress.