samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
•  In addition to the 83 million people that live in the river basin, Danube is home to 47 cities and 10 countries, passing through 4 national capitals (Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest and Belgrade) and 20 cities only in Romania,  •  There are 120 tributaries that drain 805,000 square kilometers of basin into the Danube river, the most prominent and fully navigable being Inn, Drava, Morava, Tisa, Sava and Prut rivers. •  Danube played a vital role in the settlement and political evolution of central and southeastern Europe. Its banks, lined with castles and fortresses, formed the boundary between great empires, and its waters served as a vital commercial highway between nations. •  The river’s majesty has long been celebrated in music, poetry, painting and other forms of art. It inspired famous artists such as the Strauss family, the Danube School of painters, Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt, etc. The Danube Delta includes exceptional habitats and globally important species of flora and fauna (including the white pelican and the Beluga sturgeon). It has been explored by many scientists. Perhaps, the most complete survey of the river was carried out by Captain Jacques Cousteau and a team of forty European researchers and experts, from 1990 to 1992. They investigated the problems linked to energy, pollution, navigation and the protection of natural areas. The outcome was a large amount of conclusions that were distributed to over a thousand scientists, decision-makers and journalists. It had specific recommendations for each country involved.

The ceiling, being the average in the last decade of our 22 competitor countries, reflects our determination to be internationally competitive with them for the years to come. Our inflation targeting model, although linear-quadratic, shows the zone or banding features by exhibiting a fan-shaped prediction both for the GDP and inflation. The Inflation Report that we issue at the end of each quarter shows an advanced feature in that it gives a sensitivity analysis around a band of exchange rate and a range of oil prices, something countries more advanced than us have hitherto been unwilling to enter into. But as I have said, we are trying to be transparent and trying to get our people and investors to be able to act as accurately as possible and to form a view as to what the future of the economy might look like. We believe entirely that the better the estimates, the lower will be the costs one puts or has to put for taking the risk of investing in the economy and that, in the long run, the country will be more competitive using less resources to produce the same goods other countries are producing. For this reason, we are constantly trying to improve our techniques.
Zdeněk Tůma: The exchange rate forecast Speech by Mr Zdeněk Tůma, Governor of the Czech National Bank, at the Forecasting Dinner 2007, Czech National Bank, Prague, 22 February 2007. *  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues, Over the last few years when I had the opportunity to open the Forecasting Dinner I tried to discuss several issues connected with forecasting at central banks. Three years ago I discussed the forecasting process at the Czech National Bank in general. A year later I went through uncertainty and the role market forecasts can play as an information source in central bank decision making. And finally, last year I talked in more detail about the inevitable uncertainty surrounding any attempt to forecast and about the observation that this specific feature of any forecast quite often seems to be forgotten. Following this nice tradition, tonight I shall talk in more detail about one of the critical issues in forecasting: the exchange rate forecast. There is little doubt that the exchange rate plays a critical role in any attempt to forecast the business cycle in a small open economy. Consequently, an exchange rate block is of primary importance in any tool the central bank may use for forecasting. If you look at central banks’ models, however, you will find that the exchange rate equation is in fact always governed by a very simple relationship called – in economic jargon – the “uncovered interest rate parity”.

It is also true that the movements of the exchange rate observed recently have surprised us to a certain extent. These surprises, however, should be taken as economic shocks that no economic relationship could have predicted. We central bankers are not very interested in short-term volatilities, but we should not miss breaks in the business cycle. For this task we need a relationship that has an economic grounding in the profitmaximising behaviour of the financial markets. And this is what the uncovered interest rate parity certainly has, and what the statistical models lack. Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to wish to all of us fewer exchange rate surprises and the best possible forecasts! 2  BIS Review 17/2007
Mario Draghi: Monetary policy in the euro area Speech by Mr Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank, at the conference "The ECB and its watchers XX", Frankfurt am Main, 27 March 2019. * * * The last year has seen a loss of growth momentum in the euro area, which has extended into 2019. This has been predominantly driven by pervasive uncertainty in the global economy that has spilled over into the external sector. So far, the domestic economy has remained relatively resilient and the drivers of the current expansion remain in place. However, the risks to the outlook remain tilted to the downside. The monetary policy measures we took at the last Governing Council meeting reflect this assessment. In the face of a weaker growth outlook, they help maintain the accommodative policy stance that we managed to preserve last year as we rotated our instruments from net asset purchases to forward guidance. Our policy thereby continues to accompany the economy on its path towards our inflation objective. The outlook for the euro area economy We expected the expansion to slow in 2018 as the business cycle matured and growth retreated towards potential. But as the economy weakened in the second part of last year, it was not yet certain whether we were witnessing a temporary departure from this scenario, or a more lasting deterioration in the growth outlook.

Thomas Jordan: Monetary policy and government debt – different perspectives Summary of a speech by Mr Thomas Jordan, Member of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the 13th Zermatter Symposium, Zermatt, 28 August 2007. The complete speech can be found in German on the Swiss National Bank’s website (www.snb.ch). *  *  *  The effects of fiscal and monetary policy overlap. Fiscal policy can have a cyclical effect, while monetary policy can also generate income for the government. However, theory and practise have shown that, first and foremost, monetary policy must be used to ensure price stability and – to a limited extent – to dampen economic fluctuations. The principal aim of fiscal policy, however, must be to ensure that the national budget is financed as efficiently as possible. When government debt levels are high and budget deficits get out of hand, they pose a significant threat to a monetary policy that is geared to stability. Misusing monetary policy as an instrument of fiscal policy inevitably leads to a loss of purchasing power. Many episodes of high inflation have come about, ultimately, as the result of funding requirements on the part of the state. Nowadays, the independence of many central banks shields them – to a large extent – from the fiscal greed of politicians. Nevertheless, time and time again, when government finances have fallen into disarray, central banks have been seen to come under political pressure. From a monetary viewpoint, however, government debt is not entirely unwelcome.
As always, these views are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the New York Fed or the Federal Reserve System. My comments today are, in part, a condensed version of “Domestic Open Market Operations During 2016,” a report prepared by the Markets Group of the New York Fed for the FOMC. This annual report provides extensive and illuminating detail on the Federal Reserve’s operations and balance sheet. It is published as part of our mission to make monetary policy transparent and accessible to the public. The report will be published tomorrow on the New York Fed’s website and I encourage you to read it. Our new policy framework: a review 1 / 13  BIS central bankers' speeches  Let me start out by reviewing two basic questions: what is our framework for implementing monetary policy, and why has it changed so much? Before the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve followed a well-worn playbook for monetary policy implementation that was based on keeping reserve balances scarce.2 Even though the Federal Reserve paid zero percent interest on reserves, banks still needed to hold small amounts of them, mainly to satisfy their reserve requirement but also for operational liquidity. The demand for reserves by banks was downward sloping (and steep).

Greater and more elastic supply of ultralow-risk assets through these channels likely helped smooth out the effects of the expansion of government money market funds that I noted earlier. Evidence of the efficacy of policy transmission: views from Duffie and Krishnamurthy Recently, numerous academic papers have explored the functioning of money markets in the post-crisis environment, and have sought to investigate—both theoretically and empirically—how structural shifts like those I have discussed will affect the Federal Reserve’s approach to policy implementation. Darrell Duffie and Arvind Krishnamurthy presented a particularly notable empirical and theoretical study at last year’s Jackson Hole conference.26 Darrell and Arvind’s central empirical observation was that money rates have become more dispersed. (Figure 9), which shows a selection of overnight money market rates, illustrates some of this dispersion. Darrell and Arvind use a broad selection of market rates, assembled from various sources and adjusted in a number of ways to make them comparable to each other, to construct what they call a “dispersion index” of money market rates, shown in (Figure 10). This series is calculated as a weighted mean absolute deviation across these rates. This metric shows that, according to their measure, dispersion across money markets has risen since late 2015, around the time the FOMC began the process of policy normalization and money market funds started to change their business models in anticipation of the new SEC rules. Based on these data and on theoretical modeling, Darrell and Arvind conclude that monetary transmission may be less efficient than it was before the crisis.
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.

And while the actual tasks performed by the Bank’s branches have changed since the network began expanding in the 1830s, the end goal remains unchanged: to support and serve local economies in order to back local initiatives and provide assistance in coping with economic and financial risks. From the time of its creation until the First World War, operating in an economy with relatively few banks and in which few people had bank accounts, the branch network of the Banque de France aimed at facilitating payments and supporting the regions during economic shocks by offering discount refinancing solutions. France’s economy has changed enormously since the 19th century. GDP per capita has grown by a factor of more than 20 since 1800 and by more than seven since 1914.9 Our banking and financial system has also been greatly modernised and now offers payment and credit solutions that are much faster and less costly than in the past. Reflecting these dual economic and financial transformations, the way in which the Bank performs its task of serving the regional economies has evolved. Our service to support local economies have expanded and now extend to households, especially the most vulnerable people, and companies, particularly the smallest  8  Leclercq, Yves, 1999, La formation d'une banque centrale: la Banque de France (années 1830 - années 1850), Revue économique Vol. 50, pp. 151-174 9 Source: Our world in data, Maddison Project Database 2020, see Jutta Bolt and Jan Luitten van Zanden, Maddison style estimates of the evolution of the world economy.
So I do not want today to offer a blueprint – and indeed that is for others to do. In the UK we are fortunate. The Independent Commission on Banking was set up earlier this year. It has outstanding members. I am sure they will lead us to the right solution, and I look forward to their findings. 8. Conclusions  There is no simple answer to the to important to fail nature of banks. Maturity transformation brings economic benefits but it creates real economic costs. The problem is that the costs do not fall on those who enjoy the benefits. The damaging externalities created by excessive maturity transformation and risk-taking must be internalised. A market economy has proved to be the most reliable means for a society to expand its standard of living. But ever since the Industrial Revolution we have not cracked the problem of how to ensure a more stable banking system. We know that there will always be sharp and unpredictable movements in expectations, sentiment and hence valuations of financial  BIS Review 140/2010  9  assets. They represent our best guess as to what the future holds, and views about the future can change radically and unpredictably. It is a phenomenon that we must learn to live with. But changes in expectations can create havoc with the banking system because it relies so heavily on transforming short-term debt into long-term risky assets. For a society to base its financial system on alchemy is a poor advertisement for its rationality.

Second, how can central banks more broadly balance between supporting financial innovation whilst ensuring financial system safety and soundness? Third, what can central banks collectively do to this end? In 1963, John F Kennedy famously said “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” On that note, let me thank you again for being here and I wish you productive discussions in the Forum. 3/3  BIS central bankers' speeches
The uncertainty bands are based on the Riksbank’s historical forecasting errors for these variables.6 The uncertainty increases as the forecast horizon lengthens. When one evaluates forecasts, one usually compares the current forecasts with a naïve forecast. Here I shall use the average of the series as a naive forecast. The forecasting error is measured as the standard deviation between outcomes and forecasts and the forecasting error for the naïve forecast is measured as the standard deviation for the outcomes themselves. The forecasting performance can then be expressed as how much smaller the actual forecasting error is than the forecasting error of the naive forecast. This measure of the forecasting performance is 1.0 if our forecasts are perfect and 0.0 if our forecasts are no better than the historical average. Figure 6 shows the forecasting performance for GDP growth and CPI inflation at 1–12 quarters ahead.7 As the figure refers to annual percentage changes, the first quarters are mixtures of known outcomes and forecasts. It is only four quarters after the most recent known outcome that we have pure forecasts. The figure shows that the forecasting error with regard to forecasts one year ahead is just over 20 per cent less than the forecasting error for the intended naïve forecast and not at all less two and three years ahead.

Heng Swee Keat: The next stage – policy challenges in Asia Keynote address by Mr Heng Swee Keat, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Paris Europlace International Financial Forum, Singapore, 26 October 2009. *  *  *  Governor Noyer, Your Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen, Good morning It gives me great pleasure to join you today at this Paris Europlace International Financial Forum. Let me warmly welcome Governor Noyer and our overseas visitors to Singapore, and welcome Mr Bresson and your team for holding this Forum in Singapore. Policy challenges ahead A year ago, the global financial community was grappling with a severe crisis that hit every part of the globe and every sector. We were on the edge of an abyss. The timely and forceful action by authorities, including the use of unconventional monetary policy tools, helped avert the worst. In recent months, the global economy and financial markets are showing signs of stabilization. Though we are yet to see a firm or sustainable rebound in final demand, there is a sense of relief, even optimism. Now, what’s next? What will be the shape of the recovery, and what policy actions are appropriate? It is difficult enough to make policy judgments in normal cyclical downturns. It is even harder now that this downturn is not a garden variety recession.
BIS Review 66/1998  -3Notwithstanding the prospect of further good economic growth in the coming years, the Riksbank judged that the rate of inflation would remain low and even be less than we had expected earlier. The strong demand was certainly assumed to give some increase in inflationary pressure in the forecast period but not so much as to be a cause for concern. One reason lay in the good productivity growth that was also foreseen, indicating that full capacity utilisation in the economy would not be reached in the coming twenty-four months. Although capacity utilisation was high in certain sectors, the Riksbank envisaged that in the economy as a whole there would be a capacity surplus. External inflationary pressure was expected to be low in view of subdued international inflation, low raw materials prices and a somewhat stronger exchange rate. Expectations of future inflation among households, financial agents and manufacturing indicated a belief that future inflation would be low. Thus, confidence in economic policy’s focus on price stability seemed to have been firmly established. The Riksbank noted that the uncertainty in the assessment of future inflation was mainly whether it would be even lower than we foresaw in the main scenario. One of the main factors here was the crisis in Asia and its conceivable effects on international economic developments and prices.

In recent years monetary policy has been assisted in the first place in that the consolidation of government finances has restored a stable foundation for economic policy; in addition, there has been the more direct restraint—in a cyclical perspective—on demand and price impulses. In recent decades that was by no means invariably the case. On the contrary, there were periods when fiscal policy accentuated the cyclical movements. I find it important to issue a warning about repeating mistakes of this type. In the middle of an economic upswing we are now hearing calls for expansionary fiscal policies in the form of increased public spending as well as unfinanced tax cuts. There are strong long-term grounds for using the upswing in activity to build up government surpluses as a buffer for harder times. That will increase our future freedom of action in economic policy. It will be easier to cope both with future economic downturns and with structural challenges such as an ageing population. A tighter fiscal policy also eases the burden on monetary policy and increases the probability in the years ahead of being able to continue to have low interest rates and a stable economic development, with good growth of production and employment. BIS Review 66/1998
It also goes quite some way towards accounting for the UK’s two productivity gaps. It is, arithmetically at least, the reason why the UK has a productivity gap with France and Germany. The positive effect of the UK’s larger upper tail of high-performing companies is being comfortably offset by the negative effects of its much longer, lower tail. The UK’s international productivity gap is, to a large degree, a long tail problem. This long tail long pre-dates the crisis and thus cannot by itself explain all of the UK’s poor productivity performance since the crisis. But as my colleague Patrick Schneider has shown, a striking feature of the past few years has been how previously high-performing companies have seen their productivity laid-low. 16  These are companies which, previously, were nestled just inside the technological frontier. The crisis has caused these companies to stand still, productivity-wise, while frontier companies have forged ahead. Companies previously gliding in the slipstream are now floundering in the wake of frontier firms. That has widened the distance between the best and the rest; it has lengthened the lower tail. And that lengthening helps explain the UK’s productivity slowdown over the past decade. There is an active debate underway, in academic and policy circles, about the forces shaping future productivity and growth. Often, this debate centres on whether the forces of secular innovation, brought about by the dawning of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, will win out over the forces of secular stagnation, arising from adverse trends in demography, inequality and the like.

Another window on the UK’s productivity gaps is provided, not by looking at the stock of human capital (such as in management or boards), but at the flow of these skills between companies as workers move jobs. So 38  Watts (2003), Haldane (2009), Ferguson (2018). 12  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  12  the theory goes, the larger those worker flows – so-called labour market “churn” – the greater ought to be the transfer of knowledge and skills and the faster the pace of technological diffusion. Chart 20 plots a measure of labour market churn in the UK, with the US as a point of comparison. Two points stand out. Labour market churn rates are systematically higher in the US than in the UK, by a factor of around 2. 39  This is likely to have contributed to slower rates of technological diffusion in the UK than US. It is also consistent with the UK’s significant productivity gap with the US. A second observation is that turnover in the UK labour market has been running well below its historic levels for much of the past decade. This probably reflects the impact of heightened job insecurity on people’s willingness to move firm in the aftermath of the crisis. One of the adverse side-effects has been a slowing in the flow of knowledge and ideas between firms, potentially gumming up the technology-transfer process.