samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Intrinsically Linked, One with the Force The FOMC is mandated by Congress to promote maximum employment and price stability. The goals of our dual mandate are intrinsically linked. Specifically, price stability is essential for the economy to reach its full potential and to sustain maximum employment over the long term. Since the pandemic, imbalances between demand and supply have persisted throughout the economy, leading to high inflation and a tight labor market. Although we have seen some signs of a gradual cooling in the demand for labor—as well as for some goods and commodities—overall demand continues to exceed supply. I'll first discuss what this means for employment. At the national level, job growth has been robust, with monthly job gains averaging about 220,000 over the past three months. Other indicators show that labor demand is gradually slowing, yet remains very strong. For example, job openings have come down from their peak level in March of last year. Still, the ratio of job openings to unemployed far exceeds levels prevailing before the pandemic, when the labor market was very strong. Similarly, quit rates have been gradually declining, but are above pre-pandemic levels. In addition, the unemployment rate is at a historically low level of 3.4 percent. And in April, the employment-to-population ratio for those between the ages of 25 and 54 reached the highest level since 2001. The strength of the labor market is evident in parts of the Federal Reserve's Second District. Fairfield County in Connecticut has fully recovered from the pandemic.

By continuing to usethe our site, agree to our Terms and You can learn moreour about how we use cookies by reviewing our Privacy Statement. of Use"A Privacy Statement. 1 Outside of New York City, however, New York State has faced sluggish job growth as well as ongoing labor shortages. Jaison R. Abel, Jason Bram, Richard Deitz, and  Jonathan Hastings "The Tri-State Region's Recovery from the Pandemic Recession Three Years On," Federal Reserve Bank of New York Liberty Street Economics, April 13, 2023; Jason Bram, "How Did New York City's Economy Weather the Pandemic?" Federal Reserve Bank of New York Liberty Street Economics, April 13, 2023. 2 Mary Amiti, Sebastian Heise, Giorgio Topa, and Julia Wu, "What Has Driven the Labor Force Participation Gap since February 2020?" Federal Reserve Bank of New York  Liberty Street Economics, March 30, 2023. 3 Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy, adopted effective January 24, 2012; as reaffirmed  effective January 31, 2023. 4 John C. Williams, A Steady Anchor in a Stormy Sea, remarks at SNB-FRB-BIS High-Level Conference on Global Risk, Uncertainty, and Volatility, Zurich, Switzerland,  November 9, 2022. 5 Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Short-Term Inflation Expectations Decline; Perceived and Expected Credit Conditions Mostly Unchanged, May 8, 2023. 6 Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Global Supply Chain Pressure Index. 7 Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Reserve issues FOMC statement, May 3, 2023.
Although my role has changed since then, my belief in the fundamental importance of this issue remains the same. Indeed, my conviction has been reinforced by the Banque de France’s own commitment to supporting VSEs, both at a central level and through its local presence in France’s regions. One of the main advantages of this nationwide network is that it makes it easier to listen to and support local businesses, the majority of which are clearly VSEs. Through its local branch network, the Banque de France is responsible for dealing with credit mediation applications. It provides valuable insight for economic and social actors by publishing statistics on VSEs, and is the only central bank in the Eurosystem to publish data in this level of detail. In addition, the Banque de France conducts studies into VSE finances and their positioning in the French economic landscape. Clearly, this symposium is not just a one-off event reflecting a passing interest in a subject that’s currently in the spotlight. In fact, it is part of an ongoing and enduring initiative, and will provide additional impetus to the work already being undertaken at the Bank. I shall come back to this in a few minutes. *** First of all, let me underline the importance of VSEs for growth and employment, and for the strength of our regional economic fabric.

While the debt issue does not look to be serious for now, a build-up of household debt stock could imply that private consumption would likely to become more sensitive to interest rate changes. This would have a direct implication on monetary policy because even a small change in the policy rate could now have a large impact on GDP when households are highly leveraged. It is therefore prudent for us to monitor household debt closely and ensure that the rise in household leverage is manageable. The second challenge is posed by the slow recovery of commercial bank credits. Despite some positive development, it is clear that credit expansion has not kept up with economic growth, and the intermediary process between depositors and investors is still clogged up. While it is true that many companies can now resort to other means of financing such as issuing debentures or drawing from their retained earnings, the banking sector is still by far the largest source of funds for the corporate sector and is likely to remain so for many more years. Thus, a dysfunctional banking sector can surely threaten to undermine the strength of the economic recovery. In the near term, non-performing loans (NPL) as well as non-performing assets (NPA) must be reduced more speedily, and indeed this has been one major focus of my work at the Bank of Thailand.
How the Executive Board as a collective views these issues will be made clear in the next Monetary Policy Report published later this month. Introduction A measure of productivity that is often used is production per hour or labour productivity. Unless I say otherwise, it is labour productivity that I am referring to in this speech. How has productivity developed over time? There was a considerable break in the rate of increase of productivity in the mid-1970s. From a rate of increase for the business sector of around 6 per cent a year during the 1960, the trend increase fell to around 2 per cent a year during the second half of the 1970s and in the 1980s. Since then the trend has been rising. In the long run, developments in productivity determine most of a country's GDP growth and prosperity. Another important factor is the development of the labour force and employment. It is therefore important to be able to assess how these will develop in the long run when studying growth and its driving forces. But also in the short term, productivity growth is important, particularly for monetary policy. Productivity affects a large number of other variables in our forecast work, such as employment and inflation. A good example of this is the calculations made with the aid of the Riksbank’s general equilibrium model. They show that the main reason for the low inflation in recent years is precisely the surprisingly high productivity growth.

However, the deregulation of the product markets will probably not contribute as much to productivity growth in future. The significance of productivity for monetary policy Regardless of how fast productivity grows in the future, the Riksbank must act accordingly and adjust its monetary policy to ensure that inflation remains at a low and stable level. This is what the third question concerns. One difficulty when formulating monetary policy is to assess the level of the future long-term trend in productivity growth. As I have tried to show earlier, one can use a combination of statistical analysis and analyses of the long-term effects of various structural changes. 7  Lundgren et al (2007). 8  Braunerhjelm et al (2002). 9  Swedish Competition Authority (2002)  10  See, for example, David (1990). BIS Review 61/2007  5  Another difficulty is assessing whether the current changes in productivity are due to cyclical fluctuations or to structural changes. It is only possible to gain a well-founded opinion of this after some years. The methods we use to estimate trends have the characteristic that they provide particularly uncertain results at the end of the period of time. It is therefore necessary to proceed gradually and seek our way forward. This is not something that only applies to productivity or only to monetary policy. It also applies to other forms of decision-making where decisions are taken under considerable uncertainty. A third difficulty is assessing how a change in productivity will affect inflation.
John C Williams: Building an equitable future Remarks (via videoconference) by Mr John C Williams, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at the Economic Inequality Policy Forum: The Impacts of COVID-19 on Communities of Color and Policy Insights for an Equitable Economic Recovery, 24 September 2020. * * * Hello everyone, and welcome to the New York Fed’s third Economic Inequality Policy Forum. It’s a pleasure to speak with all of you who are joining us for this conversation. For me, today’s event is about sharing research and hearing your recommendations, so I’m going to keep my opening remarks brief. Before I continue, let me give the disclaimer that the views I express are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Open Market Committee or anyone else in the Federal Reserve System. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, we’ve seen severe economic pain, unprecedented levels of unemployment, and enormous uncertainty about the future. The health and economic effects of COVID-19 have created tremendous hardship for many Americans across the country, but they have been especially painful for communities of color. We know that people of color and Black people in particular have experienced higher rates of illness and death.

5 About the New York Fed: Announcements, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, June 12, 2020. 2/2  BIS central bankers' speeches
In the long run, monetary policy can deliver price stability, and in the short run it can also mitigate the effects of shocks and reduce fluctuations in output and employment. But monetary policy cannot have a long-term impact on the real exchange rate. As such, it can do little to mitigate the crowding-out effect of strong growth in a new export sector. If it tried to, the effect would be only temporary, and it would come at the expense of sacrificing the objectives with which monetary policy has been entrusted – objectives that it can achieve. Industrial and fiscal policies can have such a real impact over the long term, however, and it is to them that concerned parties should turn. 9  But it is possible to choose from among various options on the spectrum between a rigid peg and a free-floating exchange rate. And it is possible to adopt another currency, either unilaterally or in bilateral or multilateral cooperation. These were the options explored in the Central Bank’s 2012 report. 4 The conclusion was that a unilateral peg with unrestricted capital flows could run aground, as it did in so many economies after capital movements were liberalised further in the 1980s and 1990s. A firmer peg such as a currency board could pose risks to financial stability, and the same was considered true of unilateral adoption of another currency. It was deemed highly uncertain – and actually unlikely – that bilateral adoption of another currency would be on offer anywhere.

In this critical period, we were convinced of the need to build a solid, robust and clearly defined foundation for our actions. In particular: •  We have always acted and will continue to act within the framework of the mandate assigned to us by the Treaty: our priority objective is to maintain price stability, defined as an inflation rate below, but close to 2% over the medium term. Fears concerning the possible inflationary effects of our policies are therefore completely unfounded. •  Moreover, we have always acted, and will continue to act, totally independently from the political authorities. It has always been perfectly clear that the responses to the real roots of the crisis can only be provided by the governments themselves and that monetary policy can never durably mitigate political shortcomings. Thus fears regarding the financing of euro area States are also groundless. Focus on OMTs I would like to conclude by presenting in greater detail the most recent ECB measure, known as Outright Monetary Transactions (OMTs). To understand the logic and power of this instrument, we need to make a brief excursion into monetary policy theory (before lunch… sorry! But it’s not that complicated). As you know, central bank monetary policy impulses are transmitted to the real economy via several different channels. In the euro area, with bank loans accounting for three quarters of the economy’s total financing, the “credit channel” is by far the most significant vector.
When it’s above the 2% target, our two-year forecast is said to indicate that interest rates will rise faster than the market expects; a sub-2% forecast is said to mean the opposite. Recently, given the intense focus on the prospective date of the next rate change, this simple inference has been refined even further: as long as the forecast is close to 2%, this must mean the MPC is “endorsing” not just the general shape of the market path of interest rates but the particular “lift-off” point it seems to imply. Broad inferences of this sort may well be reasonable. But you shouldn’t push them too far. This morning I want to explain why. The most important problem is that, even if a particular path of interest rates results uniquely in only one central inflation forecast, given all our other assumptions, the opposite does not hold true: you can get to the same two-year forecast with lots of other paths as well. That’s because changes in interest rates have at least some impact on inflation strictly within the twoyear horizon. And although the MPC’s primary focus is obviously the rate of inflation, it has other objectives too. Recognising these, the “planning horizon” for returning inflation to target can vary according to the various trade-offs involved. After significant cost shocks, for example, it wouldn’t make sense to return inflation very rapidly to target, given the volatility in output, and in interest rates themselves, that can induce.

The project of Borika AD for immediate payments in BGN, based on the requirements of the SEPA scheme for immediate credit transfers, is in an advanced stage of development. As an operator of the real-time gross settlement payment system (RINGS), the BNB assists in the implementation of the project. The company’s ambition is in 2021 for payment service providers in Bulgaria to start providing their customers with immediate credit transfers in BGN. In order to develop innovative, affordable, secure and convenient payment solutions both in the online environment and in physical stores, it is important to provide an interoperable infrastructure that allows the smooth execution of cross-border immediate payments within the EU, as well as the achievement of additional standardization to ensure compatibility between final payment solutions offered to payment service users (eg common standard for QR codes, provision of access to NFC chips in mobile phones, etc.). These, as well as other aspects related to technological changes in the field of payments, including the risks arising from unregulated services, especially technical ones, which are ancillary to the provision of regulated payment services, I wish interesting and fruitful work to the participants in the videoconference. 1 Opinion of the European Banking Authority on obstacles under Article 32 (3) of the RTS on SCA and CSC  2/2  BIS central bankers' speeches
Indeed, one criticism we could perhaps make of Optimal Currency Area theory is that is does not take account of the financial instability that may arise when capital reallocates across regions, both in terms of inflows and outflows. Banking Union goes some way towards redressing this, which is why it is essential for the longer term stability of the euro area. In terms of improving incentives, the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) should in principle be better placed to prevent credit misallocation as supervision will be decoupled from national economic conditions. The shift towards bail-in ability under the new EU resolution framework should also, over time, increase the quality of scrutiny over allocation decisions by shareholders and creditors. And by removing supervisory barriers to retail banking integration, the SSM should provide the pre-conditions for greater foreign entry into national banking markets, which research suggests could improve capital allocation by increasing the distance between the main shareholders and management of a bank and the vested interests in the country where the bank operates.21 These same factors also provide stronger channels for risk-sharing within the euro area. A more integrated retail banking market would imply that losses from local banking crises would be shared across multiple jurisdictions, thus acting as a shock absorber as we see, for example, in the United States.

26  See for example Bean, C. et al (2011) “Monetary Policy after the Fall”, in Macroeconomic Challenges: The Decade Ahead, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. BIS central bankers’ speeches  9  if there was collateral damage, it could be justified for a period of time to offset the danger of a much larger risk to price, financial and economic stability in the future. When imbalances are regional or sectoral in nature, however, interest rate policy would seem too blunt a tool. We need more surgical instruments, namely an effective macro-prudential policy framework. For example, tools such as loan-to-value ratios or debt-to-income ratios could be used to limit credit misallocation to non-productive sectors, without at the same time harming sectors where capital needs to flow. Conclusion Let me conclude. Real economic convergence supports the cohesion and smooth functioning of monetary union. What I have tried to illustrate today, however, is that there are no shortcuts to achieve it – and least of all by riding the upswing of the financial cycle. As Hyman Minsky demonstrated, what goes up must sadly come down. One way to begin a more sustainable convergence process, in the near term, is through reallocating resources where they are most productive. But the challenge for euro area countries does not stop there. Raising productivity is a complex process that reaches across the economy and into many different policy domains, be they education, judicial systems or administrative capacity.
Let us as “good europeans” do battle with this danger of dangers with the sort of courage that does not shirk even the endless battle”. He was right then. And today, Europe seems a tired and aged continent. Declining demography, under the heading of “no children, no immigrants” is historically a sign of a declining civilisation. In these grim years of crisis, our nations, ever more interdependent, have been bound mostly in a community of fear. We now need that European leaders return it into a community of hope. Thank you for your attention. 18  Antonio Fatás blog “The UK makes the Euro Area look good” May 8, 2014. 19  Nauro Campos, F Coricelli, L. Moretti “How much do countries benefit from membership in the European Union?” VoxEu, 9 April 2014. 20  Edmund Husserl “Philosophy and the crisis of European Man” in “Phenomenology and the crisis of Philosophy”, Harper Torchbooks, 1965, also available in www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/husserl_philcris.html. BIS central bankers’ speeches  11

With great respect for the 6/8  BIS central bankers' speeches  principle of subsidiarity, the finance minister would need to be: first, institutionally strong, by being both the Economic Commissioner and the President of the Eurogroup; second, democratically legitimate, by being accountable to the European Parliament in an adequate format; third, technically supported, by relying on a European Treasury – which would be largely based on the expertise of European Commission staff – and on an independent advisory Economic Policy Council, and coordinating the European Stability Mechanism and the crisis management framework; and finally, internationally recognised as the economic spokesperson of the euro area, alongside the ECB President for monetary policy. In the longer term, as mutual trust between euro area countries increases, a last step will have to be considered to complete our common investment capacity: a genuine euro area budget, led by the finance minister. This would be a powerful tool. However in no way is this euro area budget to be confused with a one-way “transfer union” – and here I understand the German fears. It should potentially benefit all – not only the weaker – euro area countries, and would be rooted in increased economic convergence. The euro area budget would be used to finance certain “European public goods” such as digital technology, the energy transition or the integration of refugees. It could also include a European-wide unemployment insurance scheme.