samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The document I am presenting today is the result of six months of review, updating and consolidation work of many studies carried out at the Central Bank, combined with incoming new empirical evidence that enrich our knowledge of the Chilean economy. It provides an in depth analysis of the medium-term trend growth of Chile in the horizon spanning from the years 2017 to 2050, with a special focus on the GDP growth projection for the next ten years. This document projects the evolution of the productive factors (labor and capital) and total factor productivity (TFP) for sectors other than natural resources, while for the latter, the projection of its expected evolution is updated in the light of diverse sectoral background. It includes both the study of the history of the variables and a cross-country comparison, which allows us to look at the Chilean experience in the context of other 8  countries that experienced our current levels of development before us, showing us what we can expect in the future. It also stresses the major importance of productivity, both in explaining current differences in income levels with the developed world, and in projecting future growth. Therefore, special care is given to analyzing the evolution of TFP, providing new evidence on the importance of generating the proper conditions for an efficient allocation of resources. Primarily, we estimate that a range around 3% to 3.5% is reasonable to place trend GDP growth for the ten years ahead of us.

(2) The Norges Bank announced in May 2017 that it will increase the frequency of its meetings from six to eight per year beginning in 2018. Source: Central Bank of Chile based on information from the respective central banks. Table 4 Adjustments to monetary policy process Current Official MPM* communication Brief summary of economic scenario  Official MPM communication  (end of each MPM)  (end of each MPM)  Monetary policy decision  New Main economic background developments Monetary policy decision and explanation Voting outcome  Background minutes (1 day before MPM)  MPM charts (1 day after MPM)  Review of evolution of local and world economy MPM minutes based on public information known since previous MPM (11 bank working days later)  Main charts presented by the staff to the Board at MPM  MPM minutes  Voting outcome  (11 bank working days later)  Options presented by Research Division Summary of discussion  MPM transcript  Detail of opinions of each Board member and the MPM transcript Finance Minister (10 years later)  (reserved)  Main charts presented by the staff to the Board at MPM Review of evolution of local and world economy based on public information known since previous MPM Options examined by the Board Arguments for and against monetary policy options considered  Detail of opinions of each Board member and the Finance Minister  *MPM = monetary policy meeting. Source: Central Bank of Chile. 21
The challenge now is to extend this activism to groups that have suffered during the crisis, in particular younger people and the low skilled. Key measures here include reducing labour market duality and shifting from passive labour market policies, such as unemployment benefits de-linked from incentives to find a job, to active ones, such as job search assistance and training. Improving the conditions for cross-border labour mobility will also be key, especially in those countries that are ageing more rapidly. For example, the OECD projects German potential growth to decline to below 1% soon after 2020 on account of skill shortages.8 In addition, higher immigration may imply stronger private demand dynamics, including higher demand for investment spending. Third, total factor productivity is unlikely to reverse its downward trend without structural reforms to improve resource allocation. By fostering competition and reducing economic rents, such reforms ensure that resources – and rewards – flow to high productivity sectors, which in turn supports innovation and technological progress. A recent study found that increasing competition in tradable and non-tradable sectors in Italy could increase output by 4.0% in 5 years and 7.7% in the long run.9 Moreover, one explanation for the low TFP growth before the crisis was that structural barriers were slowing down the adoption and diffusion of information and communication technology (ICT), in particular in the services sector.10 Reforms to deepen market integration between euro area countries – such as implementing the Service Directive in full – could therefore provide a boost to productivity through this channel.

In the vast majority of cases, sovereign risk is overestimated or underestimated over a long period. This is because sovereign risk does not depend only on debt sustainability, but also on the political will to implement adjustment programmes, including privatisations and structural reforms. Second, at times markets have perverse incentives. In particular, large investors who have bought insurance against sovereign default, often without holding the underlying asset, stand to benefit greatly from the default and lobby in favour of it. They tend to encourage naïve governments to believe that debt restructuring can be done in an “orderly way”, distracting them from implementing the appropriate policy adjustment. Third, default or debt restructuring is a dramatic economic and social event for the country which experiences it – I would call it political “suicide” – which leads many into poverty, as experience has shown. It is thus rather peculiar for policy-makers to design policies mainly with the aim of punishing (or rewarding) certain categories of investors, rather than considering the ultimate consequences for the people. Finally, if the euro area were to go down the path of leaving it entirely up to the markets to decide which countries are solvent and which are not, it would put the euro at a disadvantage compared with all other major currencies.
It is 2% as measured by the Consumer Prices Index or CPI, formerly known as the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices. What is this new inflation measure, and how will it affect monetary policy? On the RPIX measure, inflation was at or above target for the whole of last year. In contrast, the CPI measure of inflation was below 2% throughout the same period. Indeed, CPI inflation has been below 2% for all bar three months since May 1997, and it is almost six years since it was last above 2%. How can it be possible for inflation to move from above to below target - just like that? To answer that question, we need to examine how inflation is calculated. Inflation is measured as the increase in the price of a particular basket of goods and services over the previous twelve months. So there are as many measures of inflation as there are baskets. Since no two people in this room spend their income on exactly the same items, in principle each of you could construct your own measure of inflation. The Office for National Statistics calculates an average inflation measure by weighting together the inflation rates of over 650 different goods and services, using as weights the estimated expenditure on each item for a representative household. But where  1  Unpublished writings of J.M.Keynes, copyright of the Provost and Scholars of King’s College, Cambridge to whom I am grateful for permission to publish this extract.

Of greater significance than the average difference between the two measures in the long run is the observation that the gap between them varies over time, often quite widely, in line with changes in the temperature of the economy in general and house prices in particular. At present the difference between the two measures is unusually large. It peaked at 1.7 percentage points in June, since when it has narrowed to 1.3 percentage points, but remains well above the 0.5% change in the inflation target. So the change in target gives the impression that inflation has moved from above to below target. Does this mean that monetary policy in the coming months will need to be looser under the new target than it was with the old target? The answer is no. The large difference between the two measures of inflation at present can mostly be explained by house price inflation. It is unlikely that house prices will continue to rise at their recent pace for much longer. We have already seen some slowing since the peak in 2002, and the Monetary Policy Committee judges that a reasonable central view is that house price inflation is likely to subside over the next two years or so. The gap between RPIX and CPI inflation is, therefore, likely to narrow to around half a percentage point over that period. So the change in the target is unlikely to have any material impact on the decisions of the Monetary Policy Committee in the near future.
But the frictions perform an amplifying role only; the initial impetus comes from an exogenous shock over which the behaviour of agents exerts no influence, directly or indirectly. That is because agents – firms and households, as normal people call them – do not make any ex ante mistakes. Shleifer describes a different kind of world altogether. It is a set up in which the myopia of the agents – investors, bankers, intermediaries –leads them, and the economy more widely,  1  A short summary of the first two volumes is in Jonathan Israel, Revolution of the Mind, Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  towards trouble, sometimes disaster. Because they are effectively blind to certain lowish probability risks, they generate and invest too heavily in securities that carry precisely those risks. The effects of innovation get out of hand. This is a nice complement to papers by academics and policymakers attributing the ballooning of ABS issuance in the West to a combination of (i) an ex ante excess of savings from the East in the hands of investors with a preference for low risk fixed-income assets, and (ii) a shortage of precisely those highly rated fixed-income instruments.

Prasarn Trairatvorakul: Thailand in the new regional and global financial landscape Speech by Dr Prasarn Trairatvorakul, Governor of the Bank of Thailand, at the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) Thailand General Council and Networking Dinner, Bangkok, 30 September 2014. *  *  *  Good evening distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. I am delighted to be here today, to address honorable members of Thailand International Chamber of Commerce. Thailand International Chamber of Commerce has made an important contribution to our nation in two main ways. At home, the organization helps develop awareness among members on future trends of business. In the international arena, the International Chamber of Commerce ensures member’s participation in the formulation of trade and investment policies. On this occasion, I would like to express my appreciation for the hard work that you have done throughout the past fifteen years and the strategic function that your organization will continue to serve in a more dynamic environment going forward. Today, I would like to share with you my perspective on how Thailand could prosper in the new regional and global financial landscape. Let me offer an analogy. Imagine yourself embarking on an important challenge, perhaps a new job with demanding responsibilities. Naturally you may feel a little nervous, since there is no guarantee that the new venture will be a successful one. A transition to a successful career consists of three stages.
It is not optimal to pre-commit to any specific interest rate path, much less so in the current highly uncertain context. We will act with total flexibility and adopt the measures needed to fulfil our mandate and contribute to safeguarding financial stability. Along the path to a more neutral interest rate configuration, flexibility is particularly important to preventing the emergence of threats to the correct transmission of monetary policy throughout the euro area. The pandemic has shown that, under stressed conditions, flexibility in asset purchases helps to effectively counter these threats. Within our mandate, this flexibility will remain a key element of our monetary policy. In step with the communication of this process of monetary policy normalisation, market expectations of policy rate hikes have been brought forward since December. The prospect of a normalisation of the monetary policy stance has likewise been reflected in an upturn in short and long-term interest rates in the euro area. Specifically, the 10-year OIS rate, which proxies the euro area risk-free interest rate, has risen by about 133 basis points (bp) since the beginning of the year, while the 12-month EURIBOR has increased by 85 bp. Meanwhile, the risk premium on Spanish government debt increased by 34 bp in this period. European policies European policies are playing an increasingly important role in contending with common shocks to the European Union (EU) economies as a whole. This was thrown into relief when the pandemic broke out and NGEU was launched, among other measures.

Overall, lending capacity recovered, to 1.9% of GDP in 2021, although the net debtor position vis-à-vis the rest of the world remains high (70% of GDP at end-2021). As regards the labour market, the recovery in employment was particularly vigorous. Thus, in March 2022 effective social security registrations stood 2.1% above their pre-pandemic  1  Thus, the level in 2022 Q1 was still 9.7% off the 2019 Q4 level. 2  In December 2020, tourist arrivals and expenditure were down to 15.1% and 13.9%, respectively, of their December 2019 levels. However, by March 2022 those figures had climbed to 71.4% and 84%, respectively. In April, the number of overnight hotel stays by foreign tourists reached 89.4% of their pre-pandemic levels. 3  Only exporters with sales abroad exceeding € are considered, given the particularities of firms whose exports fall below this threshold. In any event, the latter account for a negligible share of total exports. 2  level, albeit with notable cross-sector differences.4 In the public sector, employment was around 10 pp higher than the pre-pandemic level, while in the private sector the difference stands at approximately 1.5 pp.5 Nevertheless, total hours worked performed somewhat less favourably, leading to a 4 pp gap at end-2021, although this gap narrowed significantly in 2022 Q1, to 0.5 pp. One discernible characteristic since the crisis began has been employment, measured in numbers of persons, performing markedly better than GDP.6 Various explanations for this have been offered, none of which are easily verifiable. These include the pandemic restrictions (e.g.
As always, I stand ready to change my views should the economic outlook change sufficiently to warrant it. BIS central bankers’ speeches  9

Average annual inflation was 3.1% in the first quarter of the year, dropping by 0.4 percentage points from its average level of the third quarter and getting closer to Bank of Albania’s target. During 2010, inflation was influenced by increased administered prices, rising trend of basic goods prices, food products and oil prices in international markets, and underestimating tendencies of the exchange rate. Annual inflation increase to 3.4% in December was due to increased agricultural products prices, reflecting this increase in global markets. Yet, anchored expectations on price stability and disinflation pressures by the real economy balanced the action of the above-mentioned factors of demand on inflation, halting their transition to second round effects and stable inflation pressures. The Bank of Albania considers that the inflation rate is expected to range within our target of 3 per cent, during the entire year. The increasing effect on the inflation of supply factors is balanced by the negative output gap and existence of non-utilised capacities in the economy. Controlled inflation pressures and fiscal policy created space for a gradual increase of the monetary stimulus in the economy during 2010. The Supervisory Council of the Bank of Albania decided to reduce the key interest rate by 00.25 percentage points in July, taking it to the lowest historical level of 5.0%. In parallel with this move, the Bank of Albania supplied the interbank market with the necessary liquidity for a proper functioning of financial markets.
Policy implications What does all of this mean for policy? While the water has not become as warm as two years ago I thought it would, I do not yet see enough evidence that we have missed some shift to a permanently colder environment. My central expectation remains that as the effects of the crisis continue to heal and as the deflationary effects of past sterling strength and oil price falls wane, domestic cost pressures will gradually push inflation back to target. I will be looking to see that consumer confidence remains robust and business intentions remain strong. I will be watching to see if pay growth picks up as disinflationary pressures fade and if productivity growth accelerates as a result of the pick-up in investment and of the tightness of the labour market. And I will be looking very carefully at the risks of another unfortunate event for the UK economy from a hard landing elsewhere in the world. If economic growth falters and pay and productivity remain stuck at current levels then the healing story will become increasingly less convincing. There are of course other possible stories one can tell about the economy and other risks. I want to mention three. The first is the possibility, much in the news two years ago, that monetary policy will not react in time to the build-up of inflationary pressure. Monetary policy typically has its peak impact on inflation somewhere between 18 and 24 months ahead.

Bank of England  Page 1  The Challenges and Opportunities Ahead for the Mutual Sector − speech by David Bailey Given at The Building Societies Association Conference 04 May 2023  Bank of England  Page 2  Speech Introduction Good morning everyone and I’d like to thank Robin, Mark, Rob and their colleagues at the Building Societies Association for inviting me to speak today. I’m delighted to be able to join the BSA conference in person for the first time and meet members face to face. It’s an added bonus that we are meeting in Liverpool where there is a building sense of excitement and anticipation, not just about this conference but also about the Eurovision song contest next week. In recognition of Eurovision, I did think about peppering my speech with references to famous songs from over the years, but my team told me to “Refrain1” as they said ’David, you’ll have trouble “Making your mind up2”’ so I reluctantly agreed to take a “Better the Devil you know3” approach and stuck with a more traditional format instead. This year's Eurovision theme is "united by music". Whilst the audience today is possibly dressed ‘slightly’ differently to next week’s, it does bring together a wide range of building societies and credit unions who are united by their mutual ownership model and the provision of financial services to a diverse set of members and customers right across the UK. At the PRA we recognise the vital role mutuals play in the UK financial sector.
CDS spreads among  2  BIS Review 25/2008  Icelandic banks are much wider than among foreign banks with comparable credit ratings, and much wider than many – including respected financial analysis institutions abroad – consider appropriate and consistent with the banks’ financial strength and performance. 1 It is worth remembering that Iceland’s financial system has grown by leaps and bounds recently, and the operations of Icelandic commercial banks extend to a large number of foreign locations. Iceland’s three largest commercial banks now generate more than half of their income through their operations in other countries. Those operations are distributed over a wide geographical area. While they are most prominent in the Nordic region and the UK, they are also visible in Continental Europe and farther afield, though to a lesser extent. Through these operations, Iceland’s banks have fortified their foundations and distributed their risk. They are international banks with headquarters in Iceland, and they are much less dependent on economic developments in Iceland than they were previously. At the end of January, the banks published their annual accounts for the year 2007. These reflected both the success of the past several years and last year’s changes in the global capital markets. For the year as a whole, the banks demonstrated excellent performance. Profits were good, and core operations yielded strong returns. As can be expected, profits dropped in the fourth quarter, as was the case with banks all over the globe.

To a considerable degree, the banks’ high CDS spreads could be a consequence of their enormous borrowings on the global markets, together with the unusual circumstances currently reigning in the financial markets. The Icelandic banks’ CDS spreads now range from 4% to over 6%. Well-known international banks must also tolerate high premia, even though they are lower than those in Iceland. For example, the American investment bank Bear Stearns has paid a premium of 3½% and over on five-year CDS agreements, and Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch have been charged 2% and over – not far from the premia charged to Landsbanki until very recently. The CDS spreads of many large, well-known international banks have risen by 0.4 – 0.8% so far this year. It may be mentioned that the proptional increase of the CDS spreads of the Icelandic banks over the last two years has not been greater than of many other and better known banks. This fact does not, however, improve their position in the captial markets. The CDS spreads charged to Icelandic banks mean that they do not currently have access to international funding on acceptable terms. The pricing of international loans is based on CDS spreads, especially if liquidity is limited in underlying bonds. This is the case even though the CDS market is imperfect and non-transparent and quotes differ significantly in the market. It is nonetheless used as a reference.