samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
But when capacity utilisation increases, the interest rate will have to be raised gradually towards a more normal level. Even though price inflation has deviated from the target for a period, there are no indications that economic agents have changed their view of future inflation. Expectations are stable. When households and businesses make their saving and investment decisions and set prices, they can safely ignore the possibility of sustained, marked increases or decreases in the general price level. The business sector can base their decisions on the assumption that wage and cost inflation will not revert to the level seen in the 1970s and 1980s. Employees also know that their pay increases will not be eroded by inflation. Low and stable inflation is a credible objective. 4. Are we equipped for the future? Norwegian enterprises have access to new markets and are encountering increasing competition. New businesses are emerging while others are scaling back and closing down. We have behind us 15-20 years of fairly sound macroeconomic management, which provides a good basis for growth in the Norwegian economy. The banking system and securities markets are highly developed. Generally, only unprofitable projects lack financing and capital. In a take-over, new owners completely re-haul poorly run operations. In Norway, as in other industrialised countries, private ownership is firmly protected. This is a competitive advantage and a fundamental precondition for a market economy to function over time. We like to believe that we have a highly educated labour force, and find some support for this in OECD surveys.

Production is being transferred to China or other emerging economies. There are many examples showing that competition in selling highly skilled services is also intensifying. Myopia surgery is offered in Turkey. Dental care and other medical services are also offered, at prices that are substantially lower than in Norway. Norsk Hydro reports that almost 300 000 hours of engineering services for the Ormen Lange project were supplied by Indian engineers, located in India. 1  Michael Meyer: Henrik Ibsen: the Making of a Dramatist 1828-1864, London 1967, p. 168  2  Meyer, op.cit. p. 217: Excerpt from The Judge’s Daughters, by the 19th century author Camilla Collett. BIS Review 10/2006  1  Trade in services flows both ways. Norwegian architects are designing landmark buildings all around the world. Det Norske Veritas sells its services worldwide. A company – Vik-Sandvik – that designs ships that are built in Europe, Asia and the US has its head office in the rural community of Fitjar. An ICT firm located in Ølen municipality – Omega – is developing and installing software for customers in Baku and Dubai. New markets in Asia are creating opportunities for industrialised countries. Resources are transferred to enterprises producing goods and services that require specialised skills. Businesses that have been sheltered and protected by national regulations are in a weak position when new technology or new agreements expose them to external competition.
The significant improvements in the institutional frameworks of EMEs are being offset by the deepening fundamental asymmetry in the international monetary financial system, the continued shrinking of the GFSN, and the rapid rise of market-based finance. Now there can be innocent bystanders: but there should be no disinterested observers. We are all responsible for addressing the fault lines in the global financial system and its safety net. The IIF with its diverse and global membership can make a major contribution. In doing so we will reduce the volatility of capital flows, increase the sustainability of cross-border investment, and meet the great challenges of our age. 31  Since 1980 a maximum of 30% of EMs have concurrently been in an IMF programme, and since 1970 a maximum of 38% of EMs have experienced a crisis concurrently. 32 This is based on projections of emerging market economies’ external balance sheets – see footnote 21. 33 To date three countries, Colombia, Mexico, and Poland, have used the IMFs Flexible Credit Line. While none of the three countries have so far drawn down on these lines, the FCL has provided a valuable backstop for these countries and helped boost market confidence during the period of heightened risks. 22  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  22  Annex: Capital flows-at-risk The Bank’s capital flows-at-risk (KF@R) framework is based on the use of quantile regression methodology.

It is available on our website along with data and information useful to policymakers, business people and the public. We use our website to share what we learn about our diverse District, and you will find extensive detailed information about the region at the site. I invite you to visit newyorkfed.org to explore our highly localized maps and information on small business, credit and housing conditions, and even the latest job openings at the New York Fed. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Finally, and crucially, in the aftermath of the financial crisis, we are working with our colleagues in Washington, D.C., and at other agencies to help put the nation’s financial system on a firmer footing. Our supervisors are working hard to ensure that our District’s banks are operating safely and soundly. Although much has been done, we are not finished and are determined to keep at it. I recognize fully that there can be no return to pre-crisis business as usual – whether on the part of the financial sector or on the part of regulators like ourselves. All in all, there is a lot to keep myself and my colleagues busy. National economic conditions Now I’d like to turn to the national and regional economy. The incoming data on the U.S. economy generally has been a bit more upbeat over the past few months, suggesting that the recovery may be finally establishing a somewhat firmer footing.
On a different yet related note, international cross-border payment arrangements are another compelling case study on how to bring this specific domain into the 21st century. Despite not yet being overwhelmingly disrupted by digital innovations, their flaws have recently come under the spotlight thanks to initiatives such as Libra which have clearly targeted this market segment with the promise to overcome its present weaknesses. Indeed, as attested by the recent Financial Stability Board (FSB)7 and Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI)8 reports to the G20, cross-border payments still suffer from a number of long-standing frictions which hamper global trade, development and economic growth. These include, in particular, legacy technology platforms, limited operating hours and onerous compliance checks, alongside other relevant aspects such as high funding costs, weak competition or an insufficient degree of standardisation. In this light it comes as no surprise that this issue is one of the top priorities on the G20 strategic agenda for 2020. Accordingly, since last December, the FSB and the CPMI, with the support of other international organisations, have been working together on defining the necessary building blocks to deliver a global roadmap that can help achieve the required structural improvements.9 Interestingly, this reform programme, a combination of practical steps and indicative time frames, does not hinge only on technological developments.

The education and training sector will play a critical role both in developing entrepreneurial mindsets and in equipping future entrepreneurs with the skills necessary to successfully position new enterprises and manage their development and growth. Ladies and Gentlemen, it is a fact that a thriving entrepreneurial culture has the potential to make a substantial contribution to our economic and social development and to achieving a balanced economic growth. The key therefore, is for businesses to be innovative and competitive at all times. To achieve this we need to develop outstanding young men and women who can be leaders in their fields and who are ambitious with a mindset to be successful and to compete at the highest level. Mr Chairman, I have no doubt that awards like yours can be hugely influential in fuelling the entrepreneurial urge and in inspiring youths to emulate the achievements of those whose enterprising dreams will be rewarded this evening. The award will also be key in raising public awareness on the need for continuous innovation among our youths. As you are aware, the engine of the fast growing economies such as China and India is the innovation and creativity of the young entrepreneurs in those economies. It is incumbent upon us therefore to also encourage our youths to take up their rightful place and contribute to the country’s development.
As scholars in Norway begin to respond to these incentives, they in turn will help to set expectations for their peers and students, leading to a virtuous cycle. Today, I am very proud to announce the first of two such bonuses for articles that have been accepted for publication in the best journals after this NFI program was established. The first is for Øyvind Norli, professor at the Norwegian Business School – BI. In 2007, Norli authored a much cited paper: “Sports Sentiment and Stock Returns”, published in the Journal of Finance. Here, Norli documents the effect of mood swings: Stock markets tend to take a serious hit the day after losing what is perceived as an important football match. Interesting as that is, this is not why we have decided to pay him this bonus now. Recently, the Journal of Financial Economics accepted another of his papers: “Geographic Dispersion and Stock Returns”. Norli and his co-author Diego García show that companies which are truly local outperform more geographically dispersed companies by eight percentage points a year – a remarkable effect. The other winner I am equally happy to announce is Richard Priestley, also professor at BI. Priestley has published several papers on exchange rate regimes, many on the relationship between the establishment of the euro and equity pricing across the region. The scope of his bonus-winning paper is even more global.

To develop a robust rebalancing strategy, we must understand why there are other, also highly competitive investors, who take the other side of these trades. We also need to understand our own edge, the comparative advantage – or disadvantage – of the size, time horizon, and governance structure of the fund. These issues are all intimately linked to questions on the research frontier of financial economics. So far, the rebalancing strategy has served the fund well. From 1998 to 2011, around 0.5 percentage point – a considerable portion – of the total annual return can be attributed to rebalancing. We believe rebalancing will also be important going forward, but we need to further deepen our understanding of time-varying expected returns and risks. The other main topic of today’s conference – well-functioning markets – is also of particular interest to us. Without well-functioning markets, the massive reallocation of wealth from oil in the ground to a claim on a small share of future global output would not have been feasible. Well-functioning financial markets are also, through the allocation of real resources, important for sustained growth at a global level. The financial crisis displayed great challenges related to how the markets function. We saw mispricing of risk, and the difficulties of managing financial imbalances. Other problems were related to liquidity. Trading of fixed income instruments take place at the desks of the large investment banks. The problems of these banks in September 2008 implied a literally closing of the main fixed income markets.
A new 2020 update, Maddison-Project Working Paper WP-15. 4  businesses. Working at the grassroots level, through consumer-oriented programmes, we managed over 110,000 overindebtedness cases in 2022, finding solutions to help households get out of challenging financial situations. We further ensure that all consumers can exercise their right to open a bank account and have access to associated means of payment. In 2022, we set up a one-stop consumer helpline, which can be reached by dialling 3414, to make it easier to access our services. For companies, we offer support to help very small, small and medium-sized enterprises get set up and run their business. In 2022, around 9,000 entrepreneurs benefited from this service. We support companies through credit mediation, which helped to save around 8,000 jobs in 2022. We also provide a rating system that scores businesses according to their financial health, on top of digital diagnostic tools for business leaders, designed to support the digital transformation of our economy. Finally, the war in Ukraine was a stark reminder of the urgent need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and therefore make a successful energy transition. To support the economy in this transformation, we are developing a climate indicator to measure the progress made by companies in the climate transition. Our work to support the regions extends to high schools and post-secondary institutions, as we execute France’s national economic and financial literacy strategy.

We aim to offer young people a useful decision-making framework, ensuring that they have access to reliable, unbiased economic and financial information. We also provide services for local decision makers, notably by providing research analysing cyclical and structural conditions in the regional economies. **** Let me now turn to the current economic situation and explain how monetary policy helps to improve it.10 The fact is, it is not enough to merely set up a framework within which households and economic agents can operate and regions can grow. Serving the economy and society also means guaranteeing monetary stability. Today, inflation is having a severe and unequal impact on many French people, generating costs that they are unable to pay, which is why the Eurosystem’s primary goal is to bring inflation down towards 2%. 10  For a more in-depth presentation of the causes and symptoms of inflation and how it can and will be tamed, see the Letter from the Governor of the Banque de France to the President of the Republic published on 24/04/23. 5  Since resurfacing in 2021, inflation has accelerated at a pace not seen since the 1980s. In March, as measured by the European harmonised index, annual inflation stood at 6.7% in France and 6.9% in the euro area. The initial causes of the inflationary resurgence are well known.
I also think that in this context it is useful to look at the international debate. Although the general view is that macroprudential instruments are normally preferable for counteracting this type of imbalance, there is also a lively debate on what role the policy rate should play.15 In this debate, it is not assumed that the policy rate is entirely ineffective and insignificant, and "the jury is still out". A dubious counterfactual experiment I would like to give an example from the Swedish debate, where I believe one has taken the potential of monetary policy to influence expectations too lightly. As I mentioned earlier, it has been claimed that up to 60,000 more people would have had jobs if the Riksbank had conducted a different monetary policy after the crisis and kept the repo rate at the level of 0.25 per cent to which it was cut in July 2009.16 When the Riksbank began to raise the repo rate in the middle of 2010, the situation was such that the Swedish economy had recovered surprisingly quickly from the crisis. Growth was record high, about 6 per cent in annualised terms in the first quarter, and basically all leading indicators of economic activity were pointing upwards. Household lending, which had increased at double figures in terms of annual changes prior to the crisis, had begun to slow down, but the increase in credit was still 9 per cent, far above the increase in disposable income.

Inflation and the transitory effects The CPI is used by the Riksbank to target inflation mainly because it is familiar, published monthly with a short time lag and seldom has to be revised. However, using the CPI as a target variable is liable to face monetary policy with explanatory problems. The past year is a case in point. The low rate of inflation stemmed mainly from transitory effects; the consolidation of government finance and increased confidence in economic policy helped to strengthen the exchange rate. During 1996 it proved possible to lower the instrumental rates almost 5 percentage points. Altogether, in 1996 decreased interest costs and the stronger exchange rate had a downward effect on the CPI of around 1 percentage point. In some countries the inflation target is assessed in terms of the CPI with various components excluded, for example indirect taxes and subsidies or mortgage interest costs. It may then be asked whether the CPI is the most appropriate target variable and whether some measurement of underlying inflation might be preferable. An advantage of focusing on a single underlying indicator is that it might help the Riksbank in its contacts with the general public and make monetary policy more transparent. Analysis and debate would be concentrated on factors that monetary policy influences. BIS Review 32/1997  -2-  This, however, presupposes the existence of an underlying yardstick that can take every conceivable transitory effect into account. Such measurements are difficult to construct.
Goh Chok Tong: Challenges and opportunities for Singapore’s insurance industry Speech by Mr Goh Chok Tong, Senior Minister and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) INCOME 40th anniversary gala dinner, Singapore, 22 October 2010. *  *  *  1. In 1990 and 2000, I had the pleasure of celebrating with you INCOME’s 20th and 30th anniversaries. I am very happy to see that INCOME has grown from strength to strength as it celebrates its 40th anniversary. Naturally, I am anxiously looking forward to your 50th anniversary. Formation of INCOME and adhering to sound principles 2. INCOME was another of the many initiatives of the late Dr Goh Keng Swee. At the “Modernisation of the Labour Movement” seminar in 1969, he mooted the idea of setting up a life insurance co-operative (“co-op”). A year after, INCOME was formed. 3. Dr Goh believed that a life insurance co-op would advance the cause of the labour movement. Such a co-op would be fulfilling a genuine social need. By getting members of the working class to take out life insurance policies at a cost they can afford, the co-op will help them alleviate hardship at times of unexpected events and build up valuable savings for old age. Besides, the labour movement is an inclusive one, bridging different communities, languages and even to some extent, status.

While we don't believe that resource utilisation will exert any pressure on prices and wages so soon, increasing demands for restraint will be placed on labour market organisations as economic activity gains impetus. Concluding remarks The main problem that I have discussed has been the implications of an ageing population for the Nordic countries and the resultant imbalance between the supporters and the supported. The problem is aggravated further by the fact that it will become difficult to maintain high taxes as a result of globalisation. So the great challenge facing the Nordic welfare states in the future is a combination of two processes that are both important and difficult to influence. BIS Review 46/2003  5  The demographic changes will entail a loss in tax receipts due to fewer people in work while expenditure on pensions and healthcare will rise. At the same time, globalisation and openness has made it easier to transfer money abroad or to live and work in other countries. Our tax bases have in other words become more mobile, which reduces the scope for high-tax policies. In Sweden we have taken certain preparatory measures, including a reformed pension system to enable the public finances to bear the costs of an increasing number of retirers. In this respect, Sweden has been a leading country from a European perspective. We have also consolidated our public finances thanks to our surplus target. This has laid firmer foundations to meet future demands. The question is whether it is enough.
Many of the countries that now have problems due to their weak public finances have weak economic-policy institutions and are  BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  ranked at a relatively low level in various measures of institutional strength, for example the degree of efficiency or corruption in the public sector. Figure 5 shows examples of this.5 Weak institutions in themselves undermine the potential for growth.6 By implementing structural reforms, the countries can improve their public finances and increase their potential for growth in the period ahead. However, despite the fact that there have been and still are processes in the EU that aim to improve the workings of the economies and improve competitiveness, for example the Lisbon Strategy or Europe 2020, it has proved to be easier said than done to implement these reforms. A robust plan should therefore be based on both structural reforms and consolidation. Figure 5. Structural reforms are important World Bank’s governance indicators 100  Government Effectiveness Regulatory quality Control of Corruption  100  90  90  80  80  70  70  60  60  50  50 Sweden  Portugal  Ireland  Spain  Greece  Note. The bars show indicators of institutional quality in which 100 is the best possible value and 0 the worst.

Four years later, employment in the United States has still not recovered more than approximately one third of the fall that occurred during the crisis. To refer back to what I said earlier, one could say that Europe’s debt crisis is a variation on the theme of excessive indebtedness, although primarily for the public sector in this case. Figure 10 shows how much unemployment has increased in several other countries that have suffered a downturn on the housing market. I have included Sweden and the OECD as a whole for the purposes of comparison. Figure 10. Large increase in unemployment in countries affected by a downturn on the housing market Unemployment, index 2007=100 350  350  OECD Ireland (-30.8 per cent) Spain (-14.8 per cent)  300  300  Denmark (-19.4 per cent) UK (-13 per cent) USA (-17.5 per cent)  250  250  Sweden (-0 per cent)  200  200  150  150  100  100  50  50  0  0 00  01  02  03  04  05  06  07  08  09  10  11  12  13  Note. The figures in brackets present the fall in real housing prices from the peak to the trough. The broken lines represent OECD forecasts.