samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Similarly, the number of those aged 19 in higher vocational training (as a percentage of the total of those either enrolled in these programmes or at university) increased from 20% to 25% over the same period. 12  On Eurostat data for 2020, 24% of students in tertiary education in Spain are enrolled in a field related to the natural sciences, mathematics, statistics, information and communication technologies, engineering, manufacturing and construction, compared with 28% in the euro area. In the Global Innovation Index (WIPO, 2022), Spain is ranked 61 out of 109 countries by number of science and engineering graduates. 4  school students, according to the OECD’s PISA database. Improving in this area calls for better trained, more professional teachers able to teach based on best practices. 3 Longer working lives, which will be unavoidable given current demographic trends, increase the need for sufficiently skilled, versatile workers able to switch jobs and lines of work over their working lives, especially in a context in which certain professional skills are rapidly becoming obsolete and the cognitive skills of the older population are increasingly deteriorating.13 Having workers take part in lifelong learning will require combating job instability, lowering the institutional barriers to business growth and helping to ensure that the training on offer at universities and vocational training centres caters to the changing demands of the job market. 4 Education spending in Spain is slightly below that seen in the euro area (on average, 4.2% and 4.7% of GDP, respectively, between 2010 and 2021).

At its monetary policy meeting on 3 November, the Executive Board decided to leave the sight deposit rate unchanged at 1.75 per cent. At this meeting, the Executive Board did not see any clear alternatives to leaving the interest rate unchanged. In reaching its decision, the Executive Board has weighed the objective of bringing inflation back to target against the risk that output growth may eventually be too high. 6  BIS Review 67/2004
The consumer education efforts are also complemented by initiatives to promote a higher level of disclosure and transparency so as to ensure that consumers have access to relevant, comparable and timely information on products and services. A significant focus has been on the insurance sector, given that a significant segment of the Malaysian consumers do not have good understanding of insurance products. In particular, guidelines on medical and health insurance and the requirements for marketing of life insurance policies, have been strengthened while rules for independent financial advisers have been introduced. In meeting socio-economic objectives, there is also a need to ensure that the welfare and interests of all segments of society are protected and that no target group is excluded or marginalised. Indeed, an important component of our consumer protection framework is to ensure that all consumers continue to have access to basic banking services at reasonable costs. In this connection, a more interventionist approach has been pursued to require banking institutions to offer a list of basic banking services to all Malaysians and to set guiding principles for the imposition of fees and charges for these retail products and services for individuals and small and medium sized enterprises. Efforts have also been taken by the Central Bank in collaboration with the financial services industry to enhance the integrity of the payments systems and instruments, aimed at promoting confidence and ensuring that consumers' interests are safeguarded.

The single supervisory mechanism has been defined as an integrated system of surveillance of financial institutions under the clear leadership of the ECB, which in turn benefits from the supervisory experience of the competent national authorities. Specifically, the ECB assumes all the relevant powers in respect of the supervision of credit institutions, and exercises them through decision-making arrangements centralised in a Supervisory Board on which both the ECB and the national supervisory authorities sit. The latter contribute, according to the Regulation, to the preparation and application of the decisions taken in a centralised fashion. The work of the national authorities will be channelled through what are known as the Joint Supervision Teams. These teams, which will regularly monitor each institution, will be made up of supervisory staff from the ECB and from the national authorities. Regular on-site inspections will, as a general rule, be conducted by the national authorities, following centrally set mandates and arrangements. As you can imagine, the work ahead over the coming months will be very intense. Having to assume supervisory powers in scarcely one year will make great demands in terms of organisation. Specifically, several groups made up of staff from the ECB and the national authorities have been set up in Frankfurt and are pushing ahead with the extensive groundwork.
These events have brought to the forefront key issues regarding financial intermediation, financial innovation and the corresponding regulatory and surveillance mechanisms that need to be put in place to provide the necessary oversight over such activities. Although our domestic financial system was not impacted by the sub-prime crisis, its underlying causes bear important lessons for Malaysia, and indeed, for other emerging economies, as the forces of globalisation continue to drive the modernisation of our financial systems. Firstly, the combination of a misaligned incentive system, a favourable macroeconomic environment and heightened competition generated excessive risk-taking by financial institutions. Under these circumstances which prevailed prior to the current crisis, financial innovation occurred at a pace that outstripped the capacity of the financial system to manage the risks associated with such innovations. Indeed, one of the fundamental underlying weaknesses was the erosion of sound practices in the mortgage market segment, with banks compromising on sound underwriting standards and risk management practices in pursuit of short term gains and market share. While the banking institutions had increasingly employed sophisticated financial engineering techniques to repackage mortgages into complex structured securities, such financial innovation was not supported by commensurate enhancements to governance processes and the risk management infrastructure and practices. This resulted in a significant underestimation of the risks being borne by the financial institutions and to an overestimation of the capital buffers in the financial system. Secondly, the events of the financial and credit market crisis have re-focused attention and debate on the susceptibility of the financial system to market failures.

Without sensible economic policy implementation, however, the construction programme would be likely to lead to overheating of the economy, high inflation and instability. There is no the scope to discuss the Bank’s analysis further here, however, so I shall merely refer to the coverage in the latest Monetary Bulletin. In recent public discussions it has repeatedly been claimed that the exchange rate of the króna is too high and the Central Bank needs to take measures to bring it back down, such as a large-scale cut in interest rates, which are said to be much higher in Iceland than elsewhere. The fact of the matter is that the interest rate differential between Iceland and its main trading partner countries has narrowed significantly recently. The short-term interest rate differential has not been less since 1996. The Central Bank of Iceland’s policy rate is now lower than, for example, those of the Norwegian Central Bank and the New Zealand Reserve Bank, both of which also apply inflation targeting. The same applies to the policy rate in real terms, calculated relative to these banks’ respective inflation targets. In fact, in real terms the Central Bank of Iceland’s policy rate is at its lowest point since 1996. In this context it is also important to point out that after the change in the monetary framework in March 2001, i.e.
See also Forbes (2022) for further reasoning. 14 See also Hauser (2021). 6 [19]  celerated. However, this does not necessarily mean that the order of the increases in the policy rate and QT changes. This is also reflected in the way that many central banks around the world are reasoning.15  … which means “reinvestment-rate increase-QT” but at a faster pace The consensus that can be seen internationally is for central banks to manage the tightening phase by following the principle of "reinvestment-rate increase-QT" but at a much faster pace than was seen before. Let me give some examples. The Federal Reserve has now raised its policy rate twice by a total of 0.75 percentage points and plans to start reducing its asset holdings on 1 June, making the 'reinvestment phase', which started in March, very short compared to the period of almost two years preceding the previous QT period prior to the coronavirus crisis.16 The Bank of England specified its plan at the beginning of the autumn.17 This involved QT beginning when the policy rate had reached 0.5 per cent, which it did in February this year. As they concluded the QE phase in December, when they raised their policy rate for the first time after the crisis, it also means in this case that the 'reinvestment phase' has become very short.

This workshop is conceived as a platform for getting better insight in the fintech developments, exchanging opinions, sharing ideas with a view of drawing the outlines of our future FinTech Strategy. In this light, I am delighted to invite Mr. Tikam to share with us part of his rich experience and knowledge on this topic. Mr. Tikam is an experienced Executive Level Advisor with 26 years commercial experience, having played multifaceted roles, with the last 22 years in financial services. Having in mind Mr. Tikam’s proficiency, I have no doubts that today we will have fruitful discussions and valuable exchange of experiences to the benefit of all participants. Mr. Tikam, thank you for your efforts in making this workshop happen. The floor is yours. 1/1  BIS central bankers' speeches
Returning to the U.S. and inflation concerns, Figure 14 shows that the growth rate of employee compensation has generally been declining over the past two decades. With compensation slowing and productivity increasing, many firms have been profitable and able to withstand increases in commodity prices without passing such costs on to final prices. This fits with the observation that higher food and energy prices have not tended to have much of an impact on prices in situations where food and energy are not direct costs of doing business. 4  The Fed’s Large-Scale Asset Purchases have partly, but not completely, substituted for the constraint imposed by the zero lower bound on policy easing. With all the excess capacity – a reflection of our inability to be as accommodative as we might have liked, given the zero bound – it seems unlikely that supply shocks will turn into increased inflation expectations that will affect wages and non-oil, non-food prices. 5  Vice Chair Yellen notes that “a key lesson from the experience of the late 1960s and 1970s is that the stability of longer-run inflation expectations cannot be taken for granted. At that time, the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy framework was opaque, its measures of resource utilization were flawed, and its policy actions generally followed a stop-start pattern that undermined public confidence in the Federal Reserve’s commitment to keep inflation under control.

A sustained rise in medium-term inflation expectations would represent a threat to our price stability mandate and would not be tolerated.” [http://www.newyorkfed.org/newsevents/speeches/2011/dud110228.html]  6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  and salaries are reflecting heightened unemployment, and show no evidence that potential inflation concerns are placing upward pressure on wages and salaries. Core inflation rates tend to be a reasonable predictor of inflation in the intermediate term. Core inflation remains well below my long-run target for inflation. This gives us flexibility to focus on accommodative monetary policy doing what it can to promote more rapid growth in the economy. As Figure 18 illustrates, the percent of the adult population that is employed now is quite low in relation to recent history, and has shown only a slight improvement over the course of the recovery. So with significant slack in labor markets, stable inflation expectations, and core inflation well below our longer run target, there is currently no reason to slow the economy down with tighter monetary policy. Until we make more progress on both elements of the Federal Reserve’s mandate – employment and inflation – the current, accommodative stance of monetary policy is appropriate. Thank you.
An important risk we highlight in this Report is an intensification of financial volatility and the slowdown in the growth of emerging economies. In Chile, the effects of this greater international volatility have so far been limited and have manifested mainly in the depreciation of the peso and a stock market downturn. Another important source of risk that we consider in this Report is related to China. As we have mentioned time and again, the evolution of this economy concerns us not only for its importance as driver of global growth, but also for its impact on exports from Chile and, in particular, the price of copper, since China is the largest copper consumer in the world. In recent times there have been doubts about the situation of their financial system, especially after the strong growth in bank credit and non-bank intermediation from 2009 onwards. Another source of risk is the behavior of oil prices because of the geopolitical situation in the  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  Middle East. Moreover, although there are encouraging signs from the Eurozone, risks remain associated with its complex political, fiscal and financial outlook. These external risks are important enough for us to evaluate that Chile’s economic growth risks are biased downward. The challenges from abroad are diverse, but as we have mentioned several times, the Chilean economy is well prepared to face them.

BIS Review 72/2004  5
As may repeatedly be observed in uncertain times, higher demand for Swiss francs resulted from the greater attraction exerted by our currency on foreign and particularly also on domestic investors. One of the reasons for this is the extremely high international net creditor position of our country (139% of GDP). In times of instability, Swiss investors reduce the risks by investing a larger part of their holdings (or the yields thereon) in the home currency or by hedging their foreign-currency balances to a greater extent than previously. Both strategies strengthen the demand for Swiss francs. With interest rate differentials between Swiss franc and foreign currency investments having widened since spring, the «price» to be paid by investors for the «safe haven» offered by the Swiss franc has, however, risen. The yield differential between long-term investments in euros and those in Swiss francs again amounts to almost two percentage points; since the start of the year alone it has increased by approximately 40 basis points. Interest rates, which have reached a relatively lower level in this country, to some extent mitigate the economic burdens associated with the appreciation. They have probably also contributed to the slight recovery of the euro vis-à-vis the Swiss franc in the past few days. In the first half of 2002, capital market rates were influenced by economic expectations in the United States. The positive economic data in March triggered a vigorous rise in long-term US interest rates by approximately 50 basis points within a very brief time.

Bruno Gehrig: Review of the Swiss economy Introductory remarks by Prof Bruno Gehrig, Vice-Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the half-yearly media news conference, Geneva, 14 June 2002. *  *  *  Developments in the financial markets From a Swiss vantage point, the situation on the financial markets in the first half of 2002 was predominantly influenced by the exchange rate development of the Swiss franc. The appreciation against the euro, which set in after 11 September 2001, has been arrested but has failed to bring about a sustained correction of the exchange rate. Moreover, the US dollar, too, has declined since April. At the beginning of June, it had fallen to its lowest level against the Swiss franc in two-and-a-half years. There are several reasons for the decline of the US dollar – by approximately 7% against the euro and the Swiss franc since the end of March, by approximately 6% vis-à-vis the yen – : imponderables of global political significance, growing doubts concerning a sustained upswing in the United States and – exacerbated by the collapse of Enron – the scepticism of investors with respect to the future development of yields. The record US current account deficit is increasingly being financed by means of short-term capital flows from abroad, which, by their very nature, are volatile. Against this background, high-risk investments generally showed a weaker trend. Equity markets and the US dollar lost in value while the gold price, bonds and the Swiss franc moved up.
The FPC also has a secondary objective, to support the economic policy of the Government, including its objectives for growth and employment. The root of the introduction of macro-prudential regulation sounds quite obvious, which is to take into account the impact of financial regulation on the functioning of the real economy. Obvious you might say – yes, but it wasn’t done in the past. Macro-prudential regulation is focused on protecting the financial system as a whole. It is quite simply about ensuring that financial regulation is conducted with an eye on the state of the economy. In a very big picture sense, there is nothing new about this activity. The problems of the last five years have emphasised the close links between the health and behaviour of banks and the condition of the economy. This is a lesson of history, and one that should not have been forgotten. But, forgotten it was. A clear objective of macro-prudential policy is to act in a countercyclical fashion – to restrain booms by acting to tighten regulation, and to seek to dampen the impact of busts. Unfortunately, the record of the past shows that the behaviour of regulators has not been consistent with these objectives. The crisis illustrates the dangers of not applying restraint in what appeared to be good times. But it requires a very strong culture to allow this type of restraining to happen.

To achieve this end, we need a much better definition of the public interest, which I believe we now have in the new legislation. The second important point in terms of the meaning of the PRA’s objectives is that it will not be the PRA’s role to ensure that no firm fails. Rather, the PRA will seek to ensure that any firm it regulates that does fail should do so in a way that avoids significant disruption to the supply of critical financial services. Nevertheless, failure is not costless and there is inherent uncertainty about whether a firm can fail without damaging the financial system and the supply of critical services. Consequently, the PRA will expect a given level of resilience to failure from all firms. There is another major public interest in the banking system, namely that by becoming too big to fail, the largest banks have developed an implicit, and in some cases explicit, dependence on public money. This is unwelcome, for the public, and for the banks, the former because of the unwanted cost, and the latter because of the intense scrutiny and oversight of the banks, which must be more intense as long as this state of affairs lasts. Now, I recognise that we have a lot to do still on resolution planning to be comfortable about our objective of avoiding a no failure regime and thus solving the Too Big To Fail problem.
4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Last year, I noted that I had had a similar conversation almost ten years ago with a nearly identical audience – in which I raised the question of whether the industry was going to finally tackle this issue and get it right. I find myself here again this year wondering the same thing. But, rather than just raising the question, I thought I’d offer a couple of areas where we – collectively – could be thinking about how to “get it right.” First, I do think this is an area that got short shrift during and following the crisis. Much of management’s attention was directed at the issues of the day, and decisions on where to invest resources were directed at the most pressing – and most obvious – areas. Thus, I think we are where we are: an area of compliance that didn’t get sufficient attention, didn’t keep up with evolving standards and now we find ourselves in a race to get it right. So, increased attention and investment is obviously needed. Many firms continue to make the mistake of treating AML compliance as a static exercise, while AML standards and best practices continue to evolve. Two critical areas where this mistake appears to keep being made are failures to update customer due diligence and transaction monitoring programs as the firms’ business model changes. Second, this is an area where the fragmentation in supervision is quite apparent.

The effects of this angst are already showing up in the investment numbers. An additional fly in the ointment, if you will, is the recently released downward revision for GDP growth covering last year and an announced estimate of a sizable downward revision to payroll employment. One implication of these revisions is that the economy’s underlying momentum was already somewhat less robust than previously thought, even before recent developments pointed to a less rosy outlook. The Path Forward So what will the response from the Fed be to all of these developments? Our role is to navigate a complex and at times ambiguous outlook to keep the economy growing and strong. As events unfold and conditions evolve, it’s critical we understand which developments are mere bumps in the road and those that will affect the outlook in a material way over the longer term. That means maintaining a data-dependent approach that takes into account the risks and uncertainty that are weighing on the economy. I will continue to consult everything from very granular data about individuals’ experiences of employment conditions, through to the macro projections for global growth. We need to consider all of the information available and be flexible in our response. Conclusion Low inflation is indeed the problem of this era. The current outlook of moderate growth, low unemployment, but stubbornly low inflation is a reflection of the broader economic picture—the July rate adjustment an appropriate response to ease financial conditions and support the economy.