samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
A key impetus behind these centers is to bring together a group of individuals with different skills, interests, and experiences in an environment that encourages independent and innovative thinking. These individuals bring their unique questions and knowledge to the task of finding new ways of using the enormous amount of electronic data that exists today, as we did with the CCP. In addition, they can collaborate to identify efficient ways of creating new data, as we did with the SCE. A second lesson is that it is important to offer clear incentives for data innovation. Giving researchers the flexibility and the resources to use new unique data in their research and policy analyses is a strong motivating factor. In fact, we have found the availability of unique data to be an important recruitment and retention tool for talent in research. A final lesson is that data innovation can be costly, both in terms of required staff hours and effort and in direct cost, especially when it involves data purchased from vendors or data collected through surveys. The gains should therefore be carefully weighed against the overall costs. Data stewardship Data innovation as I’ve described it here comes with some costs. In an environment with rapidly growing numbers of large and complex datasets, efficient data utilization requires an ability to easily find, trust, use, and share the data.

Ardian Fullani: Overview of Albania’s latest economic and financial developments Speech by Mr Ardian Fullani, Governor of the Bank of Albania, at the joint press conference of the IMF mission, Albanian Ministry of Finance and Bank of Albania, Tirana, 2 October 2012. *  *  *  Dear journalists, During the last two weeks, intensive discussions have taken place between the IMF mission and Albanian authorities. As a key player in drafting and implementing macroeconomic policies, the Bank of Albania has been active in these discussions, sharing its vision on current and expected developments in the Albanian economy and concerns surrounding it, as well as optimum measures to address them. The Albanian economy is increasingly facing the economic growth challenge. While the Albanian economy enjoys consolidated macroeconomic stability and sound financial foundations, aggregate demand has been weak during the first nine months of 2012. Both domestic demand and foreign one suffer from high uncertainty, relatively tight lending standards, and limited space for discretionary and stimulating policies. In the global context, the Albanian economy encountered a difficult setting, characterised by economic growth problems, high risk premiums in financial markets and decreased appetite of these markets to invest in emerging economies. In the domestic context, the economy continues to face relatively low consumption and private investments, as well as an absent stimulus by the public sector as a result of the increasing orientation of the fiscal policy towards maintaining long-term stability of the public debt.
Ladies and Gentlemen, this event, also marks a new chapter for one of Zambia ’s oldest banks. Barclays Bank Zambia has been in the country for over a century having opened its first branch in June 1918. Today, the bank has a widespread presence across the country with 41 branches, 103 ATMs, and other digital service delivery channels. It employs in excess of 800 staff. Distinguished Guests, Barclays Bank Zambia is one of the biggest banks in the Zambian banking industry and plays a significant role in the market through the various products and services as just indicated. It is our expectation that Absa Group Limited, the parent company of Barclays Bank Zambia Plc, will continue to build on the foundation and heritage that has been established over the last century. The bank is expected to remain a committed partner in driving financial sector development and supporting the country’s economic development. Distinguished Guests, with the risks to economic growth projected to remain elevated, allow me, to take this opportunity, to urge Barclays Bank Zambia and Absa Group Limited to explore ways in which the bank can assist in addressing some of the challenges facing the country, such as, load shedding, as this has potential to further negatively impact the country’s economic growth. It is our expectation that Barclays Bank Zambia will come up with products and services that will contribute to the enhancement of alternative energy sources to mitigate the threat on economic growth and indeed financial stability arising from load shedding.

From mid April onwards, the national central banks of the Acceding Countries will participate - as an observer - in meeting of ESCB Committees (in extended composition) and meetings of the General Council. Enlargement involves a number of technical efforts from the side of the ECB and the national central bank, in terms of adaptations to the infrastructure, but also creates a new dimension to economic convergence and monetary stability in the European Union. I am, however, convinced that the Eurosystem will also master this challenge, as it has done before, on occasions, which demanded even more breath-taking efforts. Ladies and gentlemen, I should now like to conclude. Again, my gratitude goes to His Excellency Carlo Ciampi and Governor Antonio Fazio. I am deeply convinced that this meeting of the Governing Council will contribute to the team-sprit of the Eurosystem and hence will be one more step in the direction of a united Europe.
It is especially so considering that the shareholders who elect the board are generally a diffuse group with little economic incentive or capability to monitor the corporation closely - until, of course, something goes terribly wrong. Added to these challenges is the difficulty of finding qualified directors who have the time to devote to the affairs of the company and who are willing to face the risk of shareholder lawsuits. Some qualified directors may be reluctant to serve for fear that the potential bad performance of the firm will damage their reputations. The irony is that directors who are most qualified may be the least willing to serve because of the opportunity costs of the time they must spend and the potential threat to their reputations. Given what has transpired over this past year, there may in fact be a need to reconceive the role of directors. Some firms reportedly are already moving away from the tradition of choosing the CEO of another company as a director to choosing people who are equipped with more specialized and technical knowledge. Still open, however, are questions concerning how much time directors should devote to their duties and what the appropriate remuneration should be. 2. Executive Compensation  I have already publicly expressed my views on the trend toward excessive executive compensation. As I argued earlier this month, I can find nothing in economic theory to justify the levels of executive compensation that are widely prevalent today.

It is well known that the process of transition will entail two types of risks to the financial system: (i) on the one hand, the physical risks caused by the direct effects of climate change, as a result of the gradual increase in temperature, or more frequent or more severe climate events such as storms, flooding or natural disasters; (ii) on the other, the transition risks, which refer to the potential effect on specific bank borrowers of the regulatory measures aimed at sustainably transforming the economy, technological changes, and changes in customer behaviour and preferences driven by greater environmental awareness. This leads me to the second element: the contribution of banks to the transition of the economy. Of course, if banks incorporate climate-related risks into costs and capital, they indirectly become “facilitators” of change, by reducing the cost of financing of activities that 3/5  contribute most to the sustainable transformation of the economy, while at the same time discouraging more polluting activities. At the same time, we should stress that the change of production model will also entail opportunities for economic agents, which banks and companies should seize. By way of example, to achieve the EU's 2030 targets agreed in Paris, it is estimated that, for the EU as a whole, there is a need to fill an investment gap estimated at 260 billion EUR per year.
That makes it unlike normal downturns, in which the economy usually experiences a period of above-average output growth during the recovery period, thus making up much of the lost ground. The tendency for economies to suffer substantial persistent losses relative to a continuation of their pre-crisis trajectory is a common feature of downturns after banking crises. That is illustrated in Chart 6, which shows the spread of outcomes for the shortfall of output relative to a continuation of its pre-crisis trajectory across 88 past banking crises in different countries3; the blue swathe covers the central 50% of cases, while the grey swathes take in the central 80% of cases. There is a considerable diversity of experience, but the average outcome – given by the purple line in the middle of the swathe – shows a persistent output shortfall of about 10%, even seven years after start of the crisis. In other words, the typical banking crisis results in a substantial persistent depression in activity relative to what might otherwise have taken place. The red line shows the central path for the level of output, relative to a continuation of its pre-crisis trend, from our most recent projections (the dash denotes the forecast period up to and including 2013). As you can see, that path lies quite close to the average experience from this sample of past banking crises. There are a number of reasons why output losses after banking crises have tended to be much more persistent than after normal economic downturns.

The strong trend is mainly due to the expansion of domestic sectors, not least in retailing. The development is not dramatic but Statistics Sweden does report a 12-month increase in retail sales of 3.3% in November. According to the Wholesale & Retail Research Institute, this was followed by a good Christmas season. The contribution to growth from investment also seems to have been favourable. As a result of all this, employment is rising more markedly than in recent years and this in turn led to a drop in unemployment during 1998. Current inflationary pressure is still low. The rate of CPI inflation remains negative and the December out-turn was lower than expected: the level of consumer prices dropped 0.6% from December 1997, as against the fall of 0.3% that had been foreseen in the Riksbank’s latest Inflation Report. However, this is partly a consequence of the Riksbank’s repo rate cuts, which have brought house mortgage rates down. So while we lowered the repo rate in the light of favourable inflation prospects, the cuts have had the initial effect of depressing CPI inflation even more. This has been accompanied by a further decline in commodity prices. But underlying domestic inflation (UNDINHX) in December was unchanged from the preceding month at 1.6%, though this was still somewhat below our forecast. US equity prices a possible risk The global financial unrest subsided towards the end of 1998. Interest rate differentials between different market segments narrowed again and stock markets stopped falling.
Housing transactions and mortgage approvals have started to show signs of life. House prices have picked up. A healthy housing market is good for our economy and will help to support the recovery. Most importantly, it will underpin further increases in house building, which has played an important role in driving the economic growth we’ve enjoyed this year and which, as a nation, we need to see. It will foster greater labour mobility by allowing people to move more easily to where new jobs are being created. It will help to support consumer confidence. But let’s not be naive. Anyone with more than a passing interest in British economic history is aware that the UK housing market has a sort of microwave type quality to it, with a tendency to turn from lukewarm to scalding hot in a matter of a few economic seconds. The Bank is fully aware of this risk. The good news, however, is that it’s far better equipped to respond to these types of risks than in the past. In particular, the new Financial Policy Committee (FPC) – the sister Committee to the MPC – has explicit responsibility for maintaining the resilience of the financial system. And, together with the other regulatory bodies, the FPC has the policy instruments which can address potential excesses in the housing market – and in other markets – which pose a threat to the stability of the financial system.

To repeat, inflation has been above the 2% target for most of the past five years. There are good reasons why policy wasn’t tightened in order to bring inflation back to target more quickly. But ultimately, the MPC will be judged by the success of our actions, not the elegance of our arguments. We need to demonstrate our commitment to bring inflation back to target and to keep it there. But we have also needed to trade off the speed with which we bring inflation back to target against the support that monetary policy can provide to the recovery. The MPC’s forward guidance gives greater clarity about our view of the appropriate trade-off. More important for us today, our guidance is rooted in the recognition that it’s a long way back to the economy being fully recovered. The damage and losses associated with the financial crisis and the years of frustration and disappointment that followed won’t be reversed simply by one or two quarters of strong growth. Our guidance makes clear that we intend to maintain the current exceptionally stimulative stance of monetary policy until we’ve  BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  seen a sustained period of strong growth and the margin of slack in the economy has narrowed significantly, as long as this does not pose risks to either price or financial stability. As you may know, our guidance was framed in terms of so-called thresholds and knockouts.
The sustainability of nominal convergence itself presumes that sufficient preliminary progress has been made towards real and structural convergence (and namely having set a fully-fledged market economy, catching-up in income and productivity levels, as well as economic and social infrastructures, upgrading of the legal system…). Conversely, a sustainable catching-up process requires macroeconomic stability. Therefore, nominal and real convergence should be pursued in parallel, and are not antagonistic. –  Secondly, I noted that several accession countries have already expressed their intention to join ERM II rapidly after EU entry. This intention is to be welcomed, although it should be clear that ERM II membership needs neither to happen immediately after EU accession in all cases, nor to be limited to only two years, which is the minimum before adopting the euro. It would be totally misleading to consider ERM II as a mere “waiting room” before the euro. On the very contrary, ERM II membership allows countries to retain some limited exchange rate flexibility during the catching-up process and offers a meaningful, flexible and credible framework for increasing nominal and real convergence with the euro area, and for helping determine the appropriate level for the eventual irrevocable fixation of parities, in the best interest of candidate countries themselves. To enter the Eurozone is a very important, very grave and irrevocable act. Neither the accession country concerned nor the Eurozone could afford the risks associated with a mistaken decision. –  Thirdly, accession countries must strengthen their fiscal and external positions.

The amendments made in the Law of the Central Bank of Turkey in 2001 have been a turning point and instrumental for the efforts to maintain macroeconomic stability. With these amendments, achieving and maintaining price stability is stated as the primary objective of the Central Bank and the Bank acquired its instrumental independence. In fact, the independency has given the Bank the opportunity to set its policies for longer terms, free of political cycles and pressures. As an assurance given to the public to ensure the long term price stability objective, the independence of the Central Bank of Turkey together with its transparent and effective communication policy have increased the credibility of the monetary policy. Besides, the new monetary policy framework implemented first as implicit and then as full-fledged inflation targeting regime together with the floating exchange rate regime have contributed a lot to the decline in dollarization since 2002, as the literature 10 suggests. In this respect, we can observe the findings of the portfolio approach in Turkey very clearly. To be more specific, the volatility of exchange rates has increased due to floating exchange rate regime on the one hand and inflation and its volatility have declined significantly on the other.
This conflict has not been talked about much, if at all, even in central banking forums; but it is, I am quite sure, one important contributing factor to the making of financial crises. Financial intermediaries are often, and rightly so, rewarded handsomely for their innovative efforts, which, it is claimed, bring a higher rate of return for those with surplus money and a lower cost for those in need of money; in other words, a narrowing of the intermediation spread, or greater financial efficiency. But there is an internal contradiction in this phenomenon. Greater profits for financial institutions and larger bonuses for those employed in them mean, to me at least,  BIS Review 106/2009  1  a widening, rather than a narrowing, of the intermediation spread; in other words, lower financial efficiency. Yet we do observe greater profits and larger bonuses in the financial system along side (probably apparent) improvements in financial efficiency. For example, the innovative effort variously described as "securitisation", "originate-and-distribute", and "credit risk transfer" did raise the rate of investment return and lower the cost of credit. The explanation for this, if I may venture a guess, is in the time dimension. The observed narrowing of the intermediation spread comes at the expense of, or presages, a future, possibly sharp widening that often occurs in the context of a financial crisis.

Henrique Meirelles: Challenges for monetary policy – Brazil and the international context Speech by Mr Henrique Meirelles, Governor of the Central Bank of Brazil, at the Conference “The Impact of Brazil on the Global Scenario”, São Paulo, 10 July 2008. *  *  *  In mature economies, the years from the beginning of the 1990s to mid-2007 were characterized by low GDP volatility and low inflation, circumstances that led prominent economists to name the period as the era of the “great moderation”. That environment resulted from better monetary policy, a fact that translated into credibility gains for central banks, globalization and advances in productivity linked to information technology developments. At the time there was a substantial consensus that the emergence of Asia, particularly of China and India, would contribute to keep global inflation permanently under control. Thanks to cheap labor and the intensive use of new technologies on the production process, China – and to a lesser extent India – exported deflation (or at least disinflation) to the world economy through a consistent decrease in their export prices. There is now growing evidence that this era might have came to an end with the unbalances between the expansion of global demand and supply. Moreover, there are also signs of increasing labor costs in China, due to both changes in labor legislation and increasing shortages of specialized workforce. In the benign environment that prevailed through mid-2007, central banks of mature economies engaged in neutral or even expansionary monetary policies for relatively long periods.
The time to push ahead on tackling climate change Speech given by Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England Corporation of London Green Horizon Summit, Mansion House 9 November 2020  1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  It is a great pleasure at least to have the opportunity to meet virtually. Today, I want to focus on how we ensure that we get back to the vital subject of tackling climate change and the role of the financial system. First, I want to say what a pleasure it is to be sharing a platform today – so to speak – with Mark Carney. As I have told Mark quite a few times, timing is everything, and midnight on March 15th was an interesting choice of date to hand over as Governor. But let me also say that in everything that has happened since at the Bank we have benefitted from the many things that Mark did during his term, and for that we owe him great thanks. Mark has gone on to push forward his deep commitment to tackling climate change, and the role of the financial system in doing that. There have been times since March when we have faced very stark decisions in the face of the Covid crisis. We decided in the spring to prioritise preserving people’s jobs and livelihoods in this emergency, and as far as possible the businesses that provide employment and the life blood of the economy.

Lars Heikensten: Monetary policy and wage formation in Sweden  Speech by Mr Lars Heikensten, First Deputy Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, at the Office of Labour Market Policy Evaluation (IFAU), in Stockholm, on 5 May 2000. *  *  *  Let me start by thanking you for inviting me to this seminar. Few things are more important for the Swedish economy today than to ensure that we have a well-functioning wage formation system and labour market. In my introductory speech today I will discuss four issues. First, I will present the argument for adopting price stability as the Riksbank’s chief objective and say some words about the Swedish debate on this matter. Then I will comment on developments during the last decade, when we abandoned the high-inflation policy of the 1970s and 1980s. My third subject will be the current monetary policy situation and the choices that we now have to make. Lastly, I will comment briefly on wage formation and the labour market in the light of this situation. Discussion of the price stability objective In the early 1990s, there was a shift in Sweden’s economic policy towards establishment of a low-inflation regime. A few years later, price stability was established as the objective of monetary policy. This change was the result of a realization among policymakers that the policy of high inflation and recurring devaluations that had been pursued in recent decades had failed.