samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The average price difference is 16 per cent,  BIS Review 92/2001  1  which means that the difference is approximately 40 per cent larger than is the case between various states and regions in the USA. The price of a normal Volvo, for instance, can differ by 15 per cent or more from one country to another in Europe. Some of this difference is created by difference in cultures and languages, but new studies indicate that the actual psychological barrier involved in differing units of currency may bear a large part of the responsibility. The US economist Charles Engel, for instance, has calculated in extensive studies of price differences between the USA and Canada that a currency border creates price differences corresponding to a geographical distance of almost 8,000 km, even if the countries on either side of the currency border (as in the case of Canada and the USA) are entirely open to one another and share the same language and culture. The largest negative effects of having different currencies probably have to do with trade and resource allocation. In the same way that we believe inflation results in large national economical costs by creating uncertainty about future expenses and income, a fluctuating exchange rate does too. In addition, the allocation of resources in society is distorted by an exchange rate that is not fully motivated. The EMU has particular significance for trade.

News conference on new 20-franc note  Berne, 10 May 2017 Fritz Zurbrügg  Introductory remarks by Fritz Zurbrügg  Ladies and gentlemen It is a pleasure to welcome you to our news conference. My colleague Thomas Wiedmer and I are delighted to present the Swiss National Bank’s new 20-franc note to you today. We showed you what it looks like just a few minutes ago – I hope you like it. Personally, I really like the way it has turned out, and I know that both of my colleagues on the Governing Board are also very pleased with the result. I shall start with a brief review of our experiences with the ninth banknote series so far; the 50-franc note – the first denomination in the new series to be released – entered circulation over a year ago. I shall then make some observations about the theme and design of the 20franc note, before handing over to Thomas Wiedmer, who will go through the security features and present the accompanying information material. We presented the new 50-franc note in April 2016 and, as expected, it attracted a great deal of public interest. Not only had it been 20 years since the last banknote series was released, but the new notes also contained features that clearly set them apart from earlier series. For starters, they feel different due to the new substrate. Furthermore, an entirely new design approach was adopted.
The upwards trend over this period generally was also driven by the secular decline in the long run equilibrium interest rate that we have seen over the past 30 years, and which makes higher levels of debt more sustainable2. By 2008, household mortgage debt relative to income had risen to 110% from 67% at the beginning of the decade and roughly four times its level in 1980. The debt service to income ratio remained relatively constant as the impact of higher levels of mortgage debt relative to income was offset by lower debt servicing costs. Access to credit was easy and the cost of credit was relatively low. By 2007, the spread on a 2 year fixed rate 90% Loan-To-Value (LTV) mortgage product over risk-free rates was just 0.4pp. And a large share of mortgage products advertised were available to relatively riskier borrowers, such as 90%+ LTV or to borrowers who had recently faced repayment difficulties. Over this period, the market was very active, with mortgage approvals averaging over 100,000 per month. In the financial crisis and ensuing recession, house prices dropped and the market effectively froze. Transactions fell from their peak of 150,000 in December 2006 to their trough of 52,000 in January 2009. And house prices contracted by over 15% in February 2009, from a peak growth rate of over 10% in June 20073. The housing recovery, as with the UK economic recovery in general, was slow and painful.

Eddie Yue: Connecting the digital islands - next steps in trade finance Opening remarks by Mr Eddie Yue, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, at the roundtable on “The Future of Trade Finance: Opportunities for Hong Kong, Asia and the World”, co-organised by the University of Hong Kong (HKU) Asia Global Institute & International Chamber of Commerce, Hong Kong, 26 January 2022. * * * 1. Good afternoon everyone. Thank you, Dr Fung, for inviting me to speak, and the HKMA is very pleased to support today’s event. It would have been a pleasure to meet you all in person, but I am thankful that this event could go ahead as planned. 2. Today’s topic is the future of trade finance, and I believe we all agree that, to elevate global trade finance to the next level, the recurring pain points of the existing trade finance system need to be fixed. The issues—including a paper-based system that is inefficient, prone to fraud and human error—have been discussed many times; so I believe by now, we all have a basic understanding of the problems. Indeed, various stakeholders, including the HKMA, have been attempting to solve the pain points by using emerging technologies. 3. For example, in 2018, the HKMA facilitated the launch of eTradeConnect, which is a blockchain-based platform that aims to digitise paper based documents and automate the trade finance process. The platform was subsequently connected to a similar platform built by the People’s Bank of China to facilitate cross-boundary trade finance processes.
According to assessments made by the Bank of Albania, there exist some long-term factors whose operation has influenced on appreciating the Lek’s value: •  Constant consolidation of the country’s economic stability. •  Interest rate spread between the Lek and the foreign currencies. •  Consolidation of public finances and budget deficit, dictating a low government demand for monetary assets. •  Stable remittances by Albanian emigrants working abroad. In the meantime, during 2004 the exchange rate performance was also impacted by specific factors of the year. Specific factors relate to starting of tourism earlier than in the previous years, rise of agricultural produce and decline of demand for agricultural merchandise imports, impacting on the supply and demand for foreign currency in terms of the Lek appreciation. Also, the international foreign exchange market developments are reflected in our foreign exchange market. The euro appreciation versus the dollar over more than a year is reflected in the reduction of the dollar’s value even in our country, though no strengthening of the euro is observed. During 2004, the dollar was depreciated by 7.5 percent against the euro in the international market. During 2004, the Bank of Albania intervened in the foreign exchange market in terms of purchasing foreign currency, in an effort to prevent large exchange rate fluctuations reflected mainly during the summer and end-year period. Financial markets Growth of deposits in Lek, in the presence of a low government demand for monetary assets, created premises for increasing banks’ liquidity and extending interbank market activity.

They thereby trigger a payment that reduces their deposits while increasing the deposits on the payment recipient’s account. By far the most common form of loan in Switzerland is a mortgage. When a mortgage is taken out for the purchase of a house or an apartment, the deposit does not normally even appear on the borrower’s account, since the bank remits the loan amount directly to the seller of the house or apartment in exchange for the mortgage certificate. To execute the payment, the bank needs to have sight deposits with the SNB. If it holds enough liquidity in the form of central bank money, the payment can be made without delay. If not, the bank needs to obtain liquidity on the interbank market or via credit facilities at the SNB, which only works if the bank has sufficient collateral in the form of securities or if it is prepared to pay a premium. Our example illustrates the following key points: An individual commercial bank cannot use the granting of loans to ensure a lasting increase in the deposits it holds. Due to payment transfers, the deposit created by a loan flows out and disappears from the books of the lending bank. For the banking system as a whole, however, things look different. The payment transfer creates a new deposit at another bank. While the total volume of central bank money remains unchanged, lending by an individual bank increases deposits in the banking system and hence also the overall money supply.
Indeed, such monitoring has already been implemented and will result in the improved implementation of the programme at educational centres and the improvement, in turn, of the evaluation of the Survey as a whole. Conclusion Allow me to draw some conclusions. The results of the Survey of Financial Competences show that a very broad group of Spaniards are not familiar with basic financial concepts that are essential for informed decision-making in respect of investment and debt. The lack of financial knowledge is particularly high among youths and the over-65s. These results justify financial education actions focusing particularly on these groups, as has been the case with the Financial Education Programme developed by the Banco de España and the CNMV in recent years. In any event, it is crucial to systematically evaluate the measures adopted in order to identify and prioritise those which are most evidently effective. The regular and rigorous evaluation of public policies is vital for a better definition of their effectiveness, and access to reliable statistical sources is an essential step for performing these evaluations. All institutions should contribute, within the scope available to us, to making progress in this area. In any event, I should clarify that the Financial Education Programme is only a part of the set of basic training actions in market conduct, reporting transparency, good practices, consumer information, financial education, conflict resolution and other similar areas that the Banco de España, the CNMV and other public and private institutions are developing.

The Survey is a very extensive study in which over 8,000 people were interviewed and asked – among other issues – about their financial knowledge; their holding and acquiring of saving, credit and insurance products; their work-related expectations; and their attitudes to consumption and saving. It is the most comprehensive, representative and internationally comparable information source available on Spanish citizens’ financial competences. 3/8  It is, therefore, a most useful survey. And it is novel regarding the additional information it provides on the social and economic context in which Spaniards take their financial decisions. In this connection, it measures competences which, without being strictly financial, can indeed affect peoples’ decisions, such as their degree of reading comprehension and their ability to understand specific graphics. The Survey thus provides us with a sound database for assessing our efforts to increase financial literacy. I encourage you, as specialists in this area, to exploit it by using both its aggregate findings and its microdata, which are available for research on the Banco de España’s Internet portal.1 With regard to the population’s financial knowledge, the Survey shows that an extensive group of Spaniards are not familiar with basic concepts such as inflation, interest rates or risk diversification. To answer correctly the question on inflation in the Survey requires understanding that an amount of money loses purchasing power when prices rise. 42% of interviewees are not able to answer this question correctly.
And deposit insurance schemes have been extended in at least 40 countries around the world. Extending public sector credit on this scale relies on the deep pockets and prudence of our grandchildren. It can be no more than a stop-gap – a temporary bridge – until private sector trust can be restored. So far, the bridge has served its purpose. There are signs over recent months from surveys that confidence is returning to banks, non-financial companies and consumers. And there have been some signs of a turnaround in the housing, equity and some debt markets. It has been said that every recession in history has been associated with a collapse in confidence.8 This time’s was plainly no exception. So with confidence turning can we anticipate an imminent return of credit to the economy? Rising confidence among firms and consumers is a necessary condition for recovery. But it is questionable whether it is sufficient. That is because confidence and trust are subtly different concepts.9 Confidence derives from observable, authoritative proof. At the time of the failure of Lehman Brothers, people struggled to make sense of the state of the economy and financial system. Without a compass, they lost their financial bearings. Lacking authoritative  7  Bank of England Financial Stability Report, June 2009. 8  “Animal Spirits”, George Akerlof and Robert J Shiller (2009), Princeton University Press. 9  For example, see “Restoring Confidence and Trust in UK PLC”, Henley Business School (2009). 4  BIS Review 108/2009  proof, confidence collapsed.

14 Most government authorities in democratic countries have solved this problem by delegating interest rate setting to an independent central bank. But how can the conduct of monetary policy, which has such far-reaching consequences for so many, be delegated in a democratic country? How is one to ensure that decisions are in line with the interests of society? These questions become more relevant, the more room there is for judgement in interest rate setting. When the operational objective was a fixed exchange rate, the room for judgment was very limited. Norges Bank’s task was to maintain a fixed krone exchange rate. Monetary policy was more or less on “autopilot”. In a narrow sense, this was a very open policy. The public could at all times observe the krone exchange rate and monitor that the Bank was performing its duty. Many of you perhaps remember the era when a dollar cost 7 kroner and 14 øre. 15 On the basis of purely democratic considerations, there was little need for transparency about the assessments underlying the use of instruments. The exchange rate was fixed, but occasionally the target value was adjusted. At those times the cards were held close to the breast. On occasion it was even necessary to break the eighth commandment (that is to lie). Around the end of 1986, journalists in the newspaper Nordlys were asked to take a retrospective look at the past year. One of them recalled an interview with the state secretary of the Ministry of Finance, Bjørn Skogstad Aamo.
Major technical advances have taken place enabling manufacturing and other production to be made more efficient. However, a crucial factor has been the increased opportunities for contact between people in different parts of the world, and increased opportunities for making use of each other’s abilities. All prosperity is based on people producing goods and engaging in trade to obtain other goods from those who are comparatively better at producing them. This was the case when the Vikings exchanged fur and amber for salt and it still applies today when banks sell foreign exchange derivatives and equity. These greater opportunities for exchange are the foundations of globalisation. It materialises in increased trade, increased capital investment, increased travelling and increased flows of information. The greater opportunities are often related to political decisions on deregulation and opening of borders. Since 1950, the quantity of tariffs and other trade barriers has drastically reduced. This has meant that the total trade in goods and services in the world is now sixteen times larger than then. The  1  BIS Review 78/2000  market for consumers and producers has thus become many times larger than before. This has meant that workers and companies in different parts of the world have been able to concentrate on producing what they are relatively best at. Specialisation and increased competition have pushed down prices. The housekeeping money lasts longer. Moreover, we can buy far more types of goods. It was not so long ago that oranges were a luxury.

We and the FCA[11] plan to consult later this year on the regulatory frameworks we will apply to stablecoins. The Bank of England’s regulatory framework, in line with the legislation, will cover the issuance of stablecoins which are used for payments at systemic scale, the systems for transferring the coins, and also extend to systemic service providers such as custody wallets that are an intrinsic part of the stablecoin arrangement. It will give effect to two expectations for systemic or likely to be systemic stablecoins that have been set by the Bank’s Financial Policy Committee. First, that payment systems that use stablecoins should be regulated to standards equivalent to those applied for traditional payments. And second that stablecoins used as money for payments should meet equivalent standards to those provided by commercial bank money. It will follow the guidance on the relevant international standards set last year[12], including the requirement that the coins should be redeemable from the stablecoin arrangement, in fiat money, at par value and on demand[13]. This matches the requirement for commercial bank money and is crucial both to ensure confidence in the coins and their uniformity with other sterling money. Systemic stablecoins will need to be backed with high quality and liquid assets to be able to meet these expectations and standards, as set out by the Financial Policy Committee. [14] These could include either deposits at the Bank of England or very highly liquid securities, or some combination of the two.
Another reason is that the Executive Board of the Riksbank is what is usually known as an individualistic committee.4 Put simply, this means that the members of the Executive Board act as individuals, both in the communication of monetary policy and when deciding on the interest rate. They can thus make their own assessments of which measure or measures of developments in the real economy they consider should be the focus of monetary policy. I will return shortly to the consequences of our being a group that makes such decisions. The second variable in the loss function, inflation, is not as problematic as it can be measured in a much better way than resource utilisation. But it is not entirely clear which measure of inflation should be used. Although the inflation target is worded in terms of the CPI, when the repo rate changes a lot, as it did during the crisis, it will have a large direct impact on the CPI through households’ mortgage expenditure. It may then be more appropriate to focus on an inflation measure that excludes these direct effects of interest rate changes. This is what the Riksbank has done recently, focussing primarily on CPIF inflation. However, it is largely a question of judgement which measure of inflation one should focus on. For instance, it is possible that one might sometimes want to disregard other components of the CPI, for instance, the direct effects of oil price increases.

Encik Abdul Rasheed Ghaffour: Value-Based Intermediation (VBI) propelling Islamic finance Address by Mr Encik Abdul Rasheed Ghaffour, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia (Bank Negara Malaysia), at the Value-Based Intermediation (VBI) Dialogue, Kuala Lumpur, 24 August 2017. * * * Over the years, finance has lifted the lives of many, enabled businesses to grow and helped to fund the construction of public infrastructure that we now depend on. Yet, as the global economy transforms and society evolves, the question as to whether the financial sector is sufficiently serving the needs of the real economy continues to be debated. The evidence from the global financial crisis underlines the need for the financial sector to restore its balance with the real economy. There is a need to rethink, reassess and re-strategise the role and contribution of the financial industry. Undoubtedly, there is an increasing expectation for the financial sector to deliver greater impact to the economy and society. I am pleased to be here with you today and be part of this important milestone in our Islamic finance journey. The issuance of the Value-Based Intermediation (VBI) Strategy Paper by Bank Negara Malaysia marks the next step to realising the full potential of Islamic finance. On behalf of the Bank, I wish to thank all of you who have devoted time and effort to work with us in this important initiative.
Essentially, this extends the production possibility frontiers to create new areas of growth. The participation of a wider pool of investors also enables better risk sharing and consequently, increases the viability of projects as well as the returns to the investment. New value is also created is in mutually beneficial collaborations, such as in downstream energy activities. Products resulting from hybrid ideas are also evident in innovations in several areas, including in Islamic finance, with the early global sukuks being issued from Asia and the Middle East economies. 4  Refers to IMF data  5  Refers to individuals with at least USD1 million in financial assets. Sourced from Merrill Lynch - Capgemini World Wealth Report 2006  2  BIS Review 31/2007  Islamic Finance: strengthening the financial linkages between Asia and the Middle East Ladies and Gentlemen, Islamic finance has demonstrated its viability and competitiveness in a more liberalised and globalised financial environment and has become important in strengthening the linkages between the two regions. While the sizeable Muslim populations in both regions have been attracted to the unique features of Islamic finance, it has also attracted interest and participation from non-Muslims within these regions. At present, there are more than 100 6 Islamic banks in both regions, while Islamic financial transactions involving sovereigns and corporations have amounted to USD 35 billion during the period 2004 and 2006 7 . Several factors have supported this trend.

Promises about future actions may be seen as not fully credible given the potential for changes in a central bank’s leadership and policy committee and the degree of uncertainty about economic conditions that will prevail far out in the future. 8  In addition to acting to manage inflation expectations, the central bank can also support expectations about the outlook for growth and job creation. This can be implemented by making it clear that, subject to mediumterm price stability, it will seek to stabilize the economy and has the means to do so even at the zero bound. 6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  In recent years, we have developed considerable positive experience providing accommodation through changes in the size and composition of the central bank balance sheet. Taking interest rate risk and mortgage prepayment risk out of private hands has proven to be effective in easing financial conditions, increasing wealth and lowering private sector borrowing costs.9 The impact of purchases may be attenuated to some degree by deleveraging and ongoing adjustments in markets such as real estate. But it is material even in these circumstances, and builds over time as these needed adjustments proceed. The sum is greater than its parts Another important insight is that each of the components of policy – the current stance in terms of the policy rate and the balance sheet, expectations about the future stance, the degree of commitment to future policy, and the clarity of communications – all interact.