samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
In two decades, the total assets of the Islamic banking industry have increased from USD97 million at the outset to USD20 billion as at end-June 2003. Similar expansion also took place in the takaful industry whereby the assets have increased significantly from less than USD30 million in 1993 to USD1 billion in June 2003. The Islamic capital market in Malaysia also recorded significant growth whereby the outstanding Islamic private debt securities accounted for USD17.8 billion, or 65% of the total outstanding private debt market while the new issuance of Islamic private debt securities in the first eight months of 2003 amounted to USD1.7 billion. What is more encouraging is that more than one third of the new issuance of Islamic debt securities were issued by companies owned by non-Muslims, some of which includes multinational companies. The evolution of an appropriate financial structure would need to take into account the role of the financial system in the economy and the objectives that need to be achieved. In the context of an emerging market economy, the financial system is a means to an end. The appropriate financial structure, particularly in emerging market economies, need to be designed to meet the requirements of the economy. The financial system needs to be in a position to support the real sector, changing and evolving with the changing needs of the economy. The strategy adopted in Malaysia is to develop a comprehensive Islamic financial system that is able to operate in parallel with the conventional financial system.

The takaful industry represents an important component in the overall Islamic financial system given its role in the mobilisation of long-term funds, its role in providing risk protection, its role in the development of the Islamic capital market and as an important institutional investor, as well as its role in supporting the overall economic growth and development. Our challenge is thus to evolve a dynamic and vibrant takaful industry within the Islamic financial system. Of importance is the development of an Islamic financial system that is dynamic, responsive and sustainable. The development of an Islamic financial system needs to include the respective components comprising the Islamic banking industry, the takaful industry, the Islamic capital and money markets, given the strong linkages, interdependence and synergies among these components in the system. The spectrum of participants and the diversity of instruments are among the key attributes in creating the enabling environment for a dynamic Islamic financial system. This has been the approach adopted by Malaysia at the very onset of our journey in the development of a comprehensive Islamic financial system that is progressive and sustainable. In the initial stage during the early years of the development of the Islamic financial system, our focus of attention was on the development of the Islamic banking system and to expand the number of players and volume of activity. Following the introduction of the dual banking system, the pace of expansion increased significantly.
The company suffers an escalation of legal and advisory costs and can hardly operate normally while its survival is being negotiated. 3  BIS Review 45/1999  Let me turn to what the HKMA can do to assist in easing some of these difficulties. I should stress first of all that the HKMA is a strong supporter of the workout concept and of the HKAB Guidelines. As set out in the Guidelines, we have indicated that we are prepared to help to resolve differences of views that would threaten a workout and to achieve an acceptable compromise. To this end, we are ready to listen to any involved party, irrespective of size or national affiliation. In taking on this role, we are following the example of the Bank of England in offering to act as an “honest broker” or impartial mediator to help to bring negotiations to a satisfactory conclusion. I should emphasize however that we do not get involved in the detailed negotiations on the workout. That is the job of the lead bank, the steering committee and the company and its advisers. Similarly, it should be the task of these parties to make every effort to resolve disagreements before they are brought to the attention of the HKMA. In other words, the HKMA should only become involved as a last resort. Some people have suggested that the HKMA should become involved earlier and play a more visible role in workouts.

Obviously this can delay the whole process - a point to which I will return later. This is only a very short description of the mechanics of a workout and hardly does justice to what can be an enormously complicated exercise involving banks with widely different levels of security as  BIS Review 45/1999  2  well as non-bank creditors whose interests also need to be taken into account. But I hope that I have given you enough to illustrate the central principles of the process: a willingness by the debtor to recognize that there is a problem and to approach the banks to seek assistance, matched by support and forbearance by the banks and a willingness to work together to reach a solution by consensus. That solution may not be the optimum one for every individual bank but the objective should be that each bank is at least better off than it would be in a liquidation and is treated fairly vis-à-vis others. In the course of preparing this speech I have had the benefit of talking to a number of market participants about how effectively the workout process in Hong Kong and the HKAB Guidelines are working. It is fair to say that there are varying shades of opinion on this point, but there is general agreement that the Guidelines have made an important contribution in codifying what is expected of banks in Hong Kong. It is equally true that there may be room for improvement in the workout process.
Going forward, we will seek to better understand: how the scoring methodologies of these climate indices fare as indicators of actual company actions; how company actions in turn translate into climate risk reduction and financial market pricing; and how active managers calibrate their investment process when their performance is measured against a climate index instead of a conventional market capitalisation-weighted index. MAS has integrated ESG considerations into its evaluation process for choosing external fund managers. The aim is to improve ESG standards among our key external fund managers, and uplift standards in the broader asset management industry. MAS has in-depth discussions with our external fund managers on how they can encourage their portfolio companies to improve their ESG disclosures and make real progress in the climate transition. We are heartened that our external fund managers have ramped up their stewardship capabilities in recent years. Some external fund managers have established dedicated stewardship teams to drive voting and engagement efforts. Voting has increased by 25% and engagements by 63% over the last three years. 15/16  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  Bolstering the climate resilience of MAS' investment portfolio is work-inprogress. The initiatives we have taken to-date have put us in a reasonably good position. But there is much more work ahead. With that, I will conclude my remarks and we can move to questions.

To this should be added the support from institutional changes in budget work and the legal status of the Riksbank. The natural conclusion is completely different. In the years ahead it will be a matter of cultivating our achievements. This means not losing the grip on fiscal policy, even though in simple book-keeping terms there may be some room for expansion. The target of a 2% surplus over the business cycle will not be credible; neither will it provide any room to manoeuvre when activity slackens, if the surplus when activity is strong is not considerably larger. Everything must be done, moreover, to make the labour market function properly. Now that activity is rising and new jobs are being created, it is particularly important to make every effort to ensure that the vacancies are filled without delay. It is also crucially important that wage formation functions satisfactorily and that wage costs stay well in line with the growth of productivity. It is only by conducting policy along these lines that Sweden’s options on the EMU issue will remain open as the Riksdag has ordained. Fortunately enough, if we remain outside the monetary union it is BIS Review 96/1999  4  also such a policy that we should implement in order to create good conditions for increased prosperity and attain the high goals the Government and the Riksbank have set up for employment. 5  BIS Review 96/1999
If a policy is not very effective on its primary objective, one of the consequences could be unnecessarily large policy changes. •  The authorities need to be able to co-ordinate or communicate in some way about what they are doing and why. Otherwise one can show that there is a risk in some circumstances of a dynamic being created which is destabilising (eg where one authority tries to offset the effects of another in turn). •  And perhaps most importantly, the targets need to be achievable & coherent as a set. Let me explore this last point briefly by taking an extreme case. If the MPC were to be set a target of absolute zero unemployment, that would be physically impossible and however hard they tried, it would not be achieved. If they did try hard nevertheless, it would probably lead to an over-expansion of the economy that threatened both financial stability and prudential safety and soundness. In a less extreme case one could imagine an MPC target for money supply growth which, given time-varying shocks to the velocity of money, might not be consistent with the other objectives. Applying these conditions to the UK authorities So the first question I want to ask is whether the MPC, FPC and PRA Board have been set an achievable and coherent set of targets? Is it possible to achieve CPI inflation at 2%, financial stability, and safety and soundness of firms simultaneously 7?

Paul Fisher: Microprudential, macroprudential and monetary policy – conflict, compromise or co-ordination? Speech by Mr Paul Fisher, Executive Director for Supervisory Risk Specialists & Regulatory Operations and for Insurance Supervision of the Bank of England, at Richmond University, London, 1 October 2014. *  *  *  The author is also chair of the ifs School of Finance. Any views aired in this speech are personal and should not be taken as a policy statement by the Bank of England. Nevertheless, the speaker is grateful to colleagues at the Bank for helpful comments, and to Andrew Hughes Hallett for his advice on policy coordination issues over many years, including comments on the content of this speech. Thank you for inviting me once again to speak at Richmond University. In the last year I have moved within the Bank of England from the Markets Directorate to the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and from the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) to the PRA Board. The PRA Board is one of our three formal policy committees, and makes the highest level supervisory decisions for those firms authorised by the PRA. That includes insurance companies, banks, building societies, credit unions and major investment firms. I have been attending meetings since June and will become a voting member in due course.
The share of world GDP devoted to resourcing the IMF would grow rapidly over time. In fact, as private capital markets came to understand this, the scale of private capital flows could increase to an even greater extent. Private creditors and debtors would accumulate ever larger bilateral debts, safe in the knowledge of a multilateral insurance mechanism. The logical end point of this game is that the international community would be locked into providing ever increasing sums of money to countries in difficulty – in short, an international lender of last resort would be created by stealth. There is no evidence that anyone wishes to go down this route. To guard against this, it is crucial that there be some clearer presumption about the scale of "normal" access. That scale may well be higher than was the case in a world of current account crises. And the approach of defining limits in terms of multiples of quota may be unsatisfactory because the size of quotas in some cases needs to be revisited. But that is not an argument against the principle of presumptive limits; it is a case either for reconsidering quotas or, in a more practical vein, relating access to finance to some other metric. The key to limiting lending is not strict rules but stronger presumptions. These presumptions then provide the backstop for debtor-creditor negotiations and help condition expectations in financial markets.

I wrote mine on the European Monetary system, then in its first phase; it was my first exposure to analysing an active policy tool. I recall that it turned out to be rather heavy on institutional detail about the EMS and rather light on the economics and efficacy of exchange rate regimes. At the end of my presentation Peter, first, went out of his way, as he always did in response to any presentation, to compliment me on all the efforts I had put in. Only after that, did he then, in his characteristically gentle but incisive way, set out several avenues I might follow in developing my analysis of nominal versus real adjustment. In doing so Peter drew on a whole host of references and models that he could call on from memory, some of which I’m sure found their way into Modern International Economics, the textbook Peter wrote with Shelagh Heffernan, his first wife, who died in 2010. 1  The IEO’s report is available on the Bank of England website, as is the Bank’s response. 2  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  2  Peter seemed to be focused on the most important and relevant policy issues of the time – he always wanted to learn more about the world and to suggest ways that economics and economists could improve it. And he conveyed that enthusiasm and ambition to each student intake and to his colleagues.
This figure, more than any other, underlines the gravity of the shock the UK economy has faced this year. The better news is that the economy began its recovery from this dramatic fall earlier, and has since recovered far-faster, than anyone expected. The speed and scale of the UK’s recovery has surprised to the upside, persistently and significantly, for at least the past four months. Back in May, the Bank expected GDP to be around 18% below its pre-Covid level on average during the third quarter. Consensus forecasts by professional economists were, at the time, weaker still. Four months on, we now expect GDP to be around 3-4% below its pre-Covid level by the end of the third quarter. In other words, the economy has already recovered just under 90% of its earlier losses. Having fallen precipitously by 20% in the second quarter, we expect UK GDP to have risen by a vertiginous 20% in the third quarter – by some margin its largest-ever rise. Put differently, since May UK GDP has been rising, on average, by around 1.5% per week. The pace of recovery has varied, starting slowly in May, picking up pace rapidly during June and July and is then expected to have slowed a little during August and September. Even if our GDP nowcasts for August and September come to pass, there remains an average recession-sized gap between output and its pre-Covid level.

Table 6 Sectoral short-termism estimates for the US and UK Full Sample 1985–2004 Industry  1985–1994  1995–2004  x  Significant? x  Significant? x  Significant? Consumer  0.939  Yes  1.007  No  0.94  Yes  Energy and Utilities  0.939  Yes  1.05  No  0.934  Yes  Financials  0.965  Yes  1.087  No  0.963  Yes  Health  0.940  Yes  0.857  No  0.940  Yes  IT  0.902  Yes  0.957  No  0.892  Yes  Industrials  0.926  Yes  1.018  No  0.925  Yes  Materials  0.875  Yes  0.871  Yes  0.874  Yes  Notes: The significance columns refer to a test of x<1 at the 5% confidence level. 5. Short-termism and public policy  These tests of short-termism point to two key conclusions. First, there is statistically significant evidence of short-termism in the pricing of companies’ equities. This is true across all industrial sectors. Moreover, there is evidence of short-termism having increased over the recent past. Myopia is mounting. Second, estimates of short-termism are economically as well as statistically significant. Empirical evidence points to excess discounting of between 5% and 10% per year.
Because of the profound implication of new technology, we require a re-think of the regulatory framework in addressing consumer protection and market conduct issues as well as the technological impact on the orderly functioning of financial markets. We expect that the framework would enable fintech firms to provide regulated financial services directly to the public, or in partnership with financial institutions, and to operate under more flexible regulatory arrangements. We take cognisance that some innovations cannot be achieved within existing regulatory parameters. Nonetheless, to protect the interests of consumers, this will be subject to certain safeguards. The innovation must provide a clear benefit to the general public or financial industry. A firm that operates within the framework must also commit to observe reasonable standards of service, transparency to customers, appropriate funding and reporting requirements. These are not meant to stifle the creative process at play, but rather facilitating an orderly process while protecting consumers interests and maintaining market confidence. The Bank also expects the framework to deliver a number of key benefits. It will provide regulatory clarity for fintech start-ups, and for banks and consumers that use their services. It will also lower barriers to entry and accelerate the time-to-market for productive innovations. Our aim is therefore to support fintech firms that go on to upscale their activities, and aid fintech firms to better anticipate and adjust to appropriate regulatory expectations. Strengthening the systemic focus of regulation Bank Negara Malaysia’s regulatory and supervisory framework will continue to reflect the increasing focus on systemic risks.

The highest respect – coupled with a fair dose of nervousness – is also what I felt while sitting in the waiting room outside Ben’s office, having just arrived at Harvard as a young post-doc. I will never forget the moment when I first entered Ben’s office, with its traditional furniture and its walls packed with majestic books staring down at me. I could truly feel the vast amount of knowledge present in that room. Fortunately, Ben welcomed me warmly and my anxiety quickly dissipated. Indeed, I could not have hoped for a better mentor for my stay at Harvard. I have learned a great deal from Ben, not only as an economist, but also as a person. Benjamin Friedman is an unusual scholar in many respects. His research is extraordinarily broad and deep, as demonstrated by the topic of today’s lecture, namely the influence of religious thinking on economic thinking. Some of you may ask what this has to do with the Swiss National Bank. While people’s faith in the currency is an essential precondition for successful monetary policy, organising public lectures on religion may seem a little farfetched. However, allow me to reassure you that Ben has also published over 150 academic articles on monetary policy, macroeconomics and financial markets. He is therefore a most logical candidate to give the Karl Brunner Distinguished Lecture, even on a topic that may seem unusual at first sight.
Future challenges Finally, before I close, I would also like to stress that many challenges will remain for the Basel Committee even after it has completed its current review of the Capital Accord. I have referred at various points to bank provisioning policies. This has traditionally been an area where internationally there has been little attempt at harmonisation (except at the level of very broad principles). But the systematic use of internal ratings by possibly quite a large part of the banking population will arm supervisors with valuable information about expected losses, and ought to focus attention on the adequacy of provisions to cover such losses. Indeed, more generally, the whole question of the appropriate accounting valuation framework for the banking book may have to be re-examined in the light of any recommendations that come from the Joint Working Group of accounting standard setters that is currently looking at accounting for financial instruments. Also looking to the future, the issue of recognising full scale portfolio credit risk modelling will inevitably resurface. The resulting recognition of diversification effects could result in quite a large reduction of capital for well-diversified banks - who are also of course in many cases the largest, most systemically significant banks. At this point we will have to think very hard about what level of capital we really feel comfortable with in our systemic organisations, and in particular whether an individual firm’s capital requirement ought to reflect the systemic externalities it poses.

Also, the Bank of Albania’s Annual International Conference on “Building our Future through Financial Literacy”, attended by senior representatives of public and private authorities at home and abroad, contributed to enhancing the awareness of financial education importance and drawing the attention of respective authorities and institutions. *** Honourable Members of the Committee, Both current and previous year were filled with challenges posed from the external environment and the internal structure of the economy. I listed above only some of the main accomplishments of the Bank of Albania and issues the Bank was faced with in 2011, while the Annual Report contains more detailed information. The Bank of Albania will continue to work to rigorously fulfil its legal mandate and render maximum contribution to growth of welfare in Albania. Concluding my introduction on the Report, I would like to share with you some reflections on Albania’s economic outlook. Recent years, have brought to the fore certain fragilities of the Albanian economy. Against this backdrop, economic policies should intensify their efforts to ensure a stable economic growth. In particular, increased productivity, ongoing restructuring and strong economic growth require the compilation and implementation of structural reforms to support domestic production and enhance its competitiveness in the national and international markets. Also, economic policies should aim at further improving the free-market terms and conditions, in order to strengthen the structure of the market economy and enhance efficiency in our economy.