samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Since then, the process of European integration has continued to develop. Throughout this process national policymakers, economic actors and the general public have each had to undergo a learning process whereby the previous, narrowly defined, national perspectives have been replaced by an increasingly European vision. This was and is not always easy. Today, the European Union stands for a highly integrated single market with about 380 million people, which combines the economies of 15 European countries and accounts, like the United States, for around 20% of world GDP. Moreover, it stands for a Monetary Union with a common currency, the euro, which, at present, has been introduced by 11 countries. Finally, the European Union, even though it lacks international personality, is characterised by a substantial and growing degree of political cooperation and coordination. This applies to justice and home affairs as well as to foreign and security policies. 1  BIS Review 4/2000  *** The dynamics of the integration process and, with it, the increasingly European outlook of both politicians and citizens was essential for creating an environment in which Europe’s leaders could take the bold decision to adopt a single European currency. But there were also a number of more specific factors that facilitated this decision, some of which I should briefly mention. The first of these was the signing of the Single European Act, in 1986, which committed the then European Community of 12 to adopt the measures necessary to complete the “single market project” by the end of 1992.

From the position of the BNB and in view of the goals for controlling inflation, it is very important that the country does not assume significant additional permanent expenditures, which are not backed by permanent revenues. There are two groups of risks associated with such an approach: (i) the risk of an inflationary spiral and (ii) the need for painful fiscal adjustments in the near future, whether in terms of revenue, i.e. by increasing taxes, or by cutting costs. Along with external factors, this would lead to a significantly more complicated macroeconomic environment for the Bulgarian banks. In terms of the external factors and their further complication and deterioration because of the war in Ukraine, most important will be the decisions of the big leading central banks, primarily the ECB in our case. There are already clear statements about three things that will happen during the third quarter of this year: (i) the ECB will effectively end net asset purchases from the beginning of July; (ii) subsequently the ECB intends to raise its key interest rates; and (iii) will do it again in September so that by the end of the quarter we will move away from negative interest rates. Obviously, in the following months and at least a year ahead we will be facing the challenge to find the very difficult balance between the measures to control inflation and the measures to prevent recession. How is our banking sector meeting the new challenges? Our starting position remains very good.
Stefan Ingves: Financial crises and financial regulation – thoughts after five turbulent years Speech by Mr Stefan Ingves, Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank and Chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, to the Swedish Economics Association, Stockholm, 13 June 2012. *  *  *  Palmstruch and the Bank of the Estates of the Realm In 1656, Johan Palmstruch founded Sweden’s first bank, Stockholms Banco. In 1661, to facilitate the handling of money, Palmstruch launched the first banknotes. They were initially successful. But it all ended in a bank failure after Palmstruch became tempted to issue too many banknotes in relation to the underlying value that was deposited in the bank. In response to this failure, the Riksdag resolved to form the Bank of the Estates of the Realm in 1668. This bank was later renamed the Riksbank and is today the world’s oldest central bank. Palmstruch’s story illustrates the importance of price stability – and also the risks of financial instability. Today, I would like to discuss financial crises and financial regulation from the perspective of the national economy. I want to explain the value of orderly and well-reasoned financial regulations for the prevention of financial crises. Banks are not normal companies. For one thing, banks in crisis can result in very large costs for the entire economy. The public sector thus has an obligation towards the citizens to attempt to prevent and manage financial crises to the best of its ability.

Meanwhile, the ecosystem continues to develop and we will probably need a MiCA 2. First, to deal with concerns over "crypto conglomerates", involving  Page 3 of 6 multiple subsidiaries with diverse activities and geographical locations: the FTX collapse has demonstrated that it is not enough to regulate a single sub-entity in a single jurisdiction. In my view, these conglomerates could be subject to transparency obligations – particularly the preparation of consolidated financial statements – while the sharing of information between jurisdictions will be essential to understanding their overall organisation as well as interdependencies between entities. The second deficiency concerns the ecosystem of what is often erroneously referred to as "decentralised" finance (DeFi) – what we prefer to call "disintermediated” finance. The ACPR is pioneering thinking in this area with the publication in April of a document that outlines possible regulatory frameworks for DeFi. The very successful public consultation process ended at the beginning of June. It was widely reported upon and generated almost 40 responses of high technical quality from both French and international players, including "established" players and new entrants. We will be publishing a summary of these responses in the autumn. Overall, these contributions confirm our understanding of this topic and the regulatory avenues taking shape on each of the three DeFi 'floors': (1) ensuring the resilience of the blockchain infrastructure – albeit a public one – through security standards (2) certifying smart contracts, even if this raises a number of operational issues, and (3) regulating DeFi entry points to protect users.
High inflation is often variable, making economic planning difficult. The real economic costs of bringing high and rising inflation under control have also proved to be substantial. But inflation should not be too low either. Some degree of inflation can oil the wheels of the economy and at the same time increase the monetary policy room for manoeuvre. The lower inflation is, the shorter the distance is between the nominal interest rate and its effective lower bound in a normal situation. If inflation moves into negative territory, the costs can be considerable. Deflation – a persistent fall in prices – can amplify a downturn. In the early years of inflation targeting, policymakers had high ambitions of micromanaging inflation to meet the target and of achieving this goal within a clearly defined time horizon. But with experience, useful lessons were learned and these ambitions were gradually toned down. In the face of various kinds of shocks, small open economies in particular found that bringing inflation rapidly back to target could have undesirable consequences for the real economy. It was essential to practise flexibility in inflation targeting to address these shocks. The horizon for achieving the target was lengthened. This has also been the case in Norway. In Norway, inflation has over time been close to, albeit somewhat below, the target. Inflation has at times deviated from 2.5 percent, undershooting or overshooting the target.

In most central bank legislation, the central bank’s primary purpose is limited to the responsibility for maintaining price stability and for performing tasks relating to financial stability, in some cases supplemented by a more general objective, such as underpinning the government’s economic policy. In some central bank acts, however, high employment is included as one of the central bank’s primary objectives, as is the case in the US. A so-called dual mandate was established for the Federal Reserve, where the objectives of full employment and price stability are put on an equal footing. In practice, monetary policy conducted by a central bank with a dual mandate will not necessarily differ from that of a central bank operating a flexible inflation-targeting regime. A central bank with a flexible inflation-targeting regime will also be concerned with the level of employment. In the draft of the new central bank act, maintaining monetary stability is the primary objective. The proposal does not provide for a dual mandate for monetary policy. This is a wise choice. Even though the difference between inflation targeting and a dual mandate is probably small in practice, there are good arguments for keeping price stability as the primary objective of monetary policy. This will clearly define the main role of monetary policy. In the practical conduct of monetary policy, the central bank will always be faced with a trade-off between different considerations.
The Norwegian State Finance Fund and the Norwegian State Bond Fund were established to bolster the supply of bank equity capital and loans to enterprises. In addition, the Storting allocated funds to central and local government authorities for maintenance and investment in order to support activity. 4  BIS Review 69/2010  Economic growth in Norway came to a halt in autumn 2008, and output fell in both the fourth quarter and the first quarter of 2009. Growth resumed from the second quarter. The substantial decrease in the key policy rate, combined with increased public spending and high oil investment has contributed to supporting activity. Capacity utilisation is nonetheless still lower than normal, although the downturn appears to have been mild so far. Without low key rates, inflation would have fallen too far. Unemployment rose less than we projected last year. Firms retained employees despite the fall in activity and many young people exited the labour force in favour of education. The mild downturn in Norway is also reflected in the wage settlements, which have provided for appreciably higher pay increases than among our trading partners. BIS Review 69/2010  5  In late spring last year, liquidity premiums in money and bond markets started to fall in Norway. As these markets began to normalise, the extraordinary measures could be phased out. Long-term loans were no longer provided after February 2009. After May, foreign exchange swap agreements were no longer provided. Spring 2009 saw the first signs that the covered bond market was beginning to function.

In general, innovations in monetary frameworks and instruments go hand in hand with innovations in statistics. The non-standard measures underline a need to devise a specific dataset, produced on a regular basis, for monitoring the effectiveness of the measures undertaken. The financial crisis has underpinned the importance of the financial stability, which forced many central banks to place much higher priority to the financial stability concerns. The focus has shifted from the stability and risks pertaining to individual financial institution to the systemic risk concept. In other words, what matters evenly is the potential instability of the financial system as a whole, and the risk of adverse loops with the real sector. More importantly, the crisis has stressed the time dimension of the systemic risk that is the procyclicality of the financial behavior and the structural dimension, which arises from the interconnectedness among the financial institutions and the possible contagion effects. Hence, the macro prudential analysis and measures are gaining more and more weight, and so are the new datasets requirements for pursuing the macro prudential role. I think that even prior to global crisis, central banks were well equipped with a wide range of macroeconomic, monetary and financial data. What was probably missing was a wellestablished platform for pursuing strong macro-financial analysis, higher frequency of some of the indicators, and uniformity in the way indicators were calculated.
An important feature of a comprehensive and welldeveloped financial infrastructure is the diversity of the players and institutions in the system that have been developed based on their distinctive capabilities and competitive advantage thus raising their performance level, valued added and contribution to overall growth and development. In addition, as part of the strategy to enhance our integration with the international financial system and to strengthen our inter-linkages with other economies, the liberalization of the Islamic banking industry has been brought forward to take place in 2004. The issuance of new Islamic banking licences to qualified foreign financial institutions will allow for the presence of foreign Islamic banking players to act as a bridge between Malaysia and other global Islamic financial markets and increase the potential to tap new markets and growth opportunities. It will also contribute to spur financial innovation as well as facilitate international trade and investment flows between Malaysia and the rest of the world. An important dimension of the financial infrastructure is a comprehensive and effective legal infrastructure for legal redress arising from Islamic financial transactions. The legal infrastructure needs to comprise both effective regulatory and substantive laws as well as appropriate adjudicative fora for parties to resolve disputes relating to Islamic financial transactions. This will instill confidence and promote the sound expansion of the Islamic financial industry.

This will assist the Islamic banking institutions in mitigating part of the risks emanating from asset and liability mismatches. The Islamic capital market, in particular, the Islamic debt market, has also experienced rapid growth since its emergence in the 1990s. The issuance of Islamic bonds has expanded steadily at an average growth rate of 33.7% since 1995. In 2003, the total funds raised via the issuance of Islamic bonds amounted to RM8.1 billion, constituting 19% of the total funds raised in the bond market. New innovative Islamic financial instruments such as Islamic asset-backed securities have also emerged and the financial structures underlying Islamic securities have become more diversified. The number of Shariah-based unit trust funds has also grown consistently over the years to reach 55 in 2003 with a net asset value of RM4.75 billion, constituting a market share of 6.8%. The rapid growth of Islamic unit trusts comprising a variety of bond funds, equity funds and balanced funds increases the efficiency and potential of the Islamic financial system as an intermediation channel by providing investors access to professional asset management that is based on their distinct risk tolerance levels. The development of a vibrant, efficient and effective Islamic capital market requires the creation of a broad spectrum of innovative Islamic financial instruments and the infrastructure to promote active trading so as to enhance the breadth and depth of the market.
32000 4800 1255 3892 2220 3262 1648 1485 25465 6188 9445 16494 15220 52805 333 100  34,630 1,270 18,340 19,510 13,440 18,000 22,010 25,880 2,410 19,300 25,580 23,420 2,650  Log data Staff/pop staff 38 38 55 67 76 83 93 96 98 161 165 202 263 357  8.48 7.13 8.27 7.71 8.09 7.41 7.30 10.15 8.73 9.15 9.71 9.63 10.87  popln staff/pop  18.64 16.94 17.88 17.19 17.48 16.69 16.55 19.38 17.47 17.86 18.22 17.87 18.81  -10.17 -9.80 -9.62 -9.48 -9.39 -9.29 -9.25 -9.23 -8.74 -8.71 -8.51 -8.24 -7.94  gdp  #NUM! #NUM! 1.31 1.11 #NUM! 1.65 1.69 1.07 #NUM! 2.93 2.29 2.58 #NUM!

In contrast, Hungary and Poland have tried to prevent the inevitable real appreciation of their currencies by continually depreciating their nominal exchange rates in reflection of their higher rates of inflation. Polish policy became less accommodating last year, and Hungary may be set to follow. Of course, an exchange rate peg is far more credible if a country has sizeable foreign exchange reserves. The Baltic states were fortunate in this respect as they regained access to the gold held by their central banks in London and Paris before the War; and Estonia and Lithuania have gone as far as to fix their exchange rates rigidly in a currency board system which removes discretion from monetary policy. (Note that these countries too are experiencing real appreciation: annual inflation is nearly 15% despite their fixed exchange rates.) The IMF is now encouraging Bulgaria to follow suit and adopt a currency board as the central bank there has not been able to impose a sufficiently tight monetary policy in the face of lack of progress on other aspects of reform. But the currency board can only succeed as part of a comprehensive package of fiscal and structural measures. The strict monetary policy rules of a currency board can work well if fiscal policy is highly responsible - or will become so as a result of the currency board; if not, it may put severe strains on the banking system, as has been the case in the Baltic states.
However, that rate is now heading upwards, rising from around 1.5% in mid-2022 to 3.6%12 in February this year. At some point, however, the fall in energy prices, the improvement in supply chains and the moderating demand, owing to tighter financial conditions should begin to gradually produce reverse effects on inflation. Thus, at the current juncture, we could well be nearing some sort of crossroads, where the lagged effects of the past increases in commodity prices and exchange rate depreciation are still present, but diminishing, while the first effects of the most recent decreases and appreciation may be emerging and on the rise. However, when this crossroads is reached, and how strongly it will support a decline in inflation, will depend on the extent of the symmetry between the impact of higher and lower costs on prices. In this regard, the impact of cost decreases on inflation may not be fully symmetrical to the impact of cost  10  These items were more directly affected by the increase in the cost of energy, food prices or supply bottlenecks, together with the strong demand for specific goods during the pandemic (especially in the case of durable goods) and the reopening phase (notably in the case of services). 11  A breakdown of core inflation by destination of expenditure shows that the components related to transport recorded an annual price increase at 7,1% in February, 7,3% in December. Prices in the housing equipment and maintenance sub-index increased 9% February, down from 9,3% in December.

30  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  30  Table 1: Wage growth models (1)  (2)  (3)  (4)  (5)  (6)  Variables  AWE  AWE  AWE  AWE  AWE  AWE  Inflation expectations (lagged one quarter)  0.718**  0.361  0.680**  0.323*  0.464**  (0.270)  (0.237)  (0.255)  (0.143)  (0.161)  Inflation  0.417** (0.023)  Unemployment gap  -0.847**  -0.709*  -0.857**  -0.038  (0.198)  (0.289)  (0.313)  (0.055)  Involuntary part-time employment share  Trend productivity growth  -0.602*  -0.237  (0.297)  (0.364)  0.834**  0.763*  0.708*  0.888**  0.735**  (0.166)  (0.340)  (0.275)  (0.199)  (0.160)  2.646**  0.896  (0.739)  (0.843)  Voluntary job-to-job transition rate  Unionisation rate  0.027** (0.010)  Constant  0.299  2.876*  1.239  -1.249  0.432  -0.125  (0.794)  (1.347)  (1.459)  (0.676)  (0.800)  (0.288)  Observations  105  105  105  94  94  122  Adjusted R-squared  0.603  0.566  0.604  0.617  0.644  0.856  Newey-West robust standard errors in parentheses ** p<0.01, * p<0.05 Sources: ONS, Barclays and Bank calculations. Notes: Estimation period is 1992Q2-2018Q2 for specifications 1, 2 & 3. For specifications 4 & 5 the sample begins in 1995Q1 due to data limitations.
The Rt Hon Sir Edward George GBE: Towards a safer banking system  Speech by The Rt Hon Sir Edward George GBE, Governor of the Bank of England, to the Association of Professional Bankers Sri Lanka 12th Anniversary Convention, on 27 August 2000. *  *  *  Mr Governor, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is an immense pleasure, and a very great honour, to have been invited to address this Annual Convention. The theme of the convention is “Towards a safer banking system”. It is a theme which gladdens my heart. The safety of the banking system is fundamental to financial stability in a broader sense. It is vitally important, of course, to you - as professional commercial bankers. But it is vitally important, too, to us, central bankers, because you simply cannot have monetary or broader economic stability, which is a key part of our responsibilities, without stability of the financial system - they go together like love and marriage! And monetary and financial stability are vitally important, too, to our societies at large and to the individuals that make up our societies - they are absolutely necessary, if not in themselves sufficient, conditions for the economic prosperity to which we all aspire. The question is what can we do - working together - to improve the safety of our banking systems.

While it may be possible for the authorities in many instances to bring about stabilisation by catalysing action within the private sector - and the way in which the Federal Reserve handled the problems in Long Term Capital Management a couple of years ago is an outstanding example of that - the monetary authorities’ ultimate instrument is their capacity, typically exercised by the central bank, to intervene directly - within limits agreed by government since public money is involved - themselves. As in the case of IMF lending to member countries in difficulties, this “safety net” or Lender of Last Resort (LOLR) capacity needs to be used with great discretion if it is not to give rise to a similar kind of moral hazard - encouraging banks and their creditors to take excessive risks. It is only to be used where there is a genuine risk of systemic financial disturbance - where other banks are liable to be affected by contagion either as a result of their direct exposure to a failing institution or because they are likely to be seen themselves to be exposed to the same sort of pressures that affected the failing 3  BIS Review 66/2000  institution, and therefore likely to be similarly vulnerable and subject to loss of confidence. It is only in those circumstances - which I agree are difficult to recognise with total confidence - that official intervention can be justified.