samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
6 The projected reduction in the workingage population will translate into slower economic growth and will, therefore, negatively impact tax revenues, at the same time as the fiscal burden of a larger population of elderly people increases. The Commission calculates that by 2015 the share of age-related spending in GDP is expected to reach 20.1 per cent, two percentage points up from 2007, mainly due to the increased cost of pensions and healthcare, and will continue to rise thereafter. The fiscal correction required to bridge the implied sustainability gap clearly cannot be achieved without a culture change regarding the welfare state. Put simply, it needs to be understood that you cannot give away what you do not have. We must, therefore, adopt a more cost-efficient approach to the provision of public goods and services, whereby only those demonstrably in need would benefit. Access to social benefits, healthcare and subsidies should be streamlined through a combination of means testing and market-based mechanisms. In addition, the benefits structure could be further refined beyond the recent Budget measures with a view to making work pay and reducing the disincentives to enter the labour market. Conclusion The Maltese economy is experiencing its first major test since it adopted the euro. While membership of the euro area has provided a degree of protection during the crisis, in particular exchange rate stability, the road ahead is still fraught with challenges.

The Initiative includes studies on issues such as new securitised debt instruments, issuance of debt by international financial institutions, regional credit guarantees and enhancement facilities, and the establishment of local and regional credit-rating and credit-enhancement agencies. Another initiative, known as the Asian Bond Fund project, represents collective efforts of the Executives' Meeting of East Asia-Pacific Central Banks, or EMEAP, to broaden and deepen the bond markets in the region. The ABF project will bring about many benefits. First, it introduces and promotes new fixed-income products to the Asian markets. Secondly, it helps improve market infrastructure. Thirdly, the initiative has helped accelerate tax and regulatory reforms in both the regional and domestic markets. The Bank, with its mission as the region's development bank, is well positioned to assist emerging market economies in Asia to cope with the challenges of globalisation. In the past year, the Bank has contributed to the issuance of local currency-denominated bonds in India, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. The Bank is also providing valuable support to the Asian Bond Markets Initiative through the former Regional Economic Monitoring Unit, which is now known as the Office of Regional Economic Integration. Mr President, your decision to expand this Office and dedicate it to regional cooperation matters is most timely and welcome, as a well defined agenda for the Bank on regional cooperation will enhance financial stability by strengthening regional surveillance and cooperation. Despite these efforts, developments, and - dare we say it - successes, there are many challenges lying ahead of us.
A decision on participation in ERM2 and on the central rate and fluctuation bands at which the krona should join would be taken through common accord of the finance ministers in the euro area Member States, the ECB, the central bank governors and finance ministers of the applicant country and the other ERM2 countries, i.e. Denmark at present. In practice, a decision would be preceded by contacts between representatives of the ministry of finance and the Riksbank as well as with our colleagues in a number of euro area Member States and Denmark. The first official step in the negotiations would be taken within the framework of the EU’s economic and financial committee (EFC). Only if the committee should fail to reach agreement would direct negotiations between the concerned central bank governors and finance ministers take place. Then, when the irrevocable conversion rate against the euro is to be determined in connection with entry into monetary union, this would be decided unanimously by the ECOFIN Council members from the euro area Member States and Sweden. Central rate in ERM2 The central rate is the krona/euro exchange rate against which the criterion of exchange rate stability would be evaluated prior to entry into monetary union. It is natural to seek to ensure that the central rate is set at a level which also becomes the conversion rate for the Swedish krona in monetary union.

However, the stability aspect of this must be given attention. The operational risk would increase when a greater number become dependent on one big system. With regard to the Riksbank, the direct effects of participation in monetary union on the work with financial stability would not be particularly large. Even if Sweden were to join monetary union, the Riksbank, under present rules, would be responsible for making decisions on providing emergency liquidity assistance to Swedish institutions. Furthermore, the vulnerability of the banks and the payment system would not change overnight but would continue to be largely national in nature, as long as the European banks and payment systems have not become genuinely integrated. The oversight and management of crises would therefore have to be carried out by national authorities. The big difference is that international cooperation would become even more important. In the long term, as banks and securities markets become increasingly more integrated, new and interesting issues would arise on how best to carry out international supervision and oversight. In this discussion, if Sweden were to join monetary union, our voice would carry greater weight as a member of the ECB Governing Council and in the cooperation of finance ministers. This is also important for our ability to influence how integration in general proceeds and thereby also for the financial sector’s conditions in Sweden. The role of the Riksbank If Sweden were to join monetary union, the Riksbank would become part of a bigger whole, the Eurosystem.
I am convinced, however, that the exchange market will not behave irrationally. Following the pattern of the DM/SF relationship of the past, it will not depart substantially from what fundamentals would suggest. 3.2  Political uncertainties  What about the political factors influencing the exchange rate? I would like to mention here two major themes that could possibly affect the relation between the Swiss franc and the euro. The first factor is the uncertainty about Switzerland’s future policy towards Europe. As you may know, the Swiss people rejected Switzerland’s membership in the European Economic Area (EEA) in December 1992. This vote was regarded as an anti-EU signal by the government, which has since then shelved its plans for adhesion to the EU. As an alternative, Switzerland has negotiated Bilateral 3  BIS Review 17/2000  Agreements with the EU in order to gain free access to the EU internal market for goods and services. The agreements need to pass a popular vote next May. The prospects for an adoption of the Agreements are good. Sooner or later, however, the question of Switzerland’s accession to the EU will be considered again. Should the Swiss people still favor a Switzerland outside of the EU, then room for monetary independence will remain. The second political factor is the uncertainty about the EU enlargement. There is a long list of Eastern European and Mediterranean countries pushing into the EU. Of course, EU enlargement will be a progressive step-by-step process.

The extreme stability in the exchange rate has surprised many observers, including the Swiss National Bank itself. It has led to the notion of “sister currencies”, the euro being the big sister and the Swiss franc following her everywhere like a shadow. But is the Swiss franc really the euro’s little sister? Let me discuss this question in detail. If one examines the reasons for the extraordinary stability in the exchange rate, one quickly finds that convergence in fundamentals has played a central role. Both Europe and Switzerland have suffered from slow growth in the 1990s and from deflation fears in the aftermath of the international financial crisis of 1998. Rising unemployment and weak economic activity led the ECB and the SNB to adopt an expansive monetary stance and to cut interest rates. Broad similitude in business cycle and monetary stance has created conditions leading to an almost fixed exchange rate between the euro and the Swiss franc. At the same time, converging fundamentals explain why both currencies have been equally weak against the US dollar: the American business cycle is well in advance of the European and Swiss business cycles, requiring a different policy response from the Fed. While fundamentals play a key role in explaining long run exchange rate developments, political factors can also be of some importance in the short run. By political factors I mean, for example, elections, government crises, political conflicts or new legislation, but also the relation between the government and the central bank, and the credibility of both.
Moreover, the techniques normally used, such as a stay on payments, are ill adapted to banks. To supplement financial supervision and the deposit guarantee with a special insolvency regime, would not be adding an additional safety net to the benefit of depositors. It is quite simply a way of ensuring that the safety net protects those it was intended to protect but no others, and at a reasonable cost to the deposit guarantee system and society as a whole. But it should also be recognised that in situations where there is a threat to the financial system in its entirety, it may be needed to take partly different measures than in an ordinary bank failure. In these situations, the key focus must be on maintaining the vital functions in the interest of society as a whole. Perhaps the idea to have a partly different framework in these situations seems odd to you? After all, we normally expect the same legislative acts to apply regardless of the state of the economy or the situation in the financial system. But the situation is not unique. A similar situation exists in the health sector, where society has set up a framework to deal with our usual flus, broken bones and heart attacks. There  BIS Review 62/2008  5  are doctors and hospitals to deal with our problems. And there may be guidelines on how long sick leaves will be needed for a certain diagnosis.

If the loops don’t communicate, we fall short of the network opportunities that checks, debit and credit cards, and ATM cards offer. The tremendous potential in mobile lies in the eventual speed and quality of the end-to-end experience and in the security of any information on the device or in transit, tough challenges simultaneously to engineer. And beyond mobile payments, achieving the speed and general availability of faster payments seen or planned for in the United Kingdom, Australia and other countries requires tremendous coordination across the payments industry. So, how does the Federal Reserve fit into this period of extraordinary change and challenge? BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  The Federal Reserve has long championed access, including nationwide connection, coordination, as well as the security, efficiency and resiliency of the nation’s principal payments mechanisms. In light of the tremendous increase in payments innovation, last fall the Federal Reserve Banks launched a new strategic plan for Federal Reserve Financial Services. We’re asking how our services may need to change to facilitate the direction of the payments market and how we could enable existing and future innovation by the payments industry. The Federal Reserve Banks are actively engaged in adjusting our planning, our product development and our resources to address innovation in the marketplace. To do that, however, we need to build consensus within the industry around a broad direction, around the benefits of access and connectivity across the nation, and about understanding and managing the risks of new technologies and new business models that emerge.
Despite the importance of inflation expectations for forecasting future inflation and economic activity and as a key link in the monetary transmission mechanism, surprisingly little is known to directly answer these questions. This was partly because back in 2006 when we started out, macroeconomists had enjoyed around 20 years of success with models where these questions were answered in a simple and unambiguous manner. As we have learned painfully from the financial crisis, the success of these models was much more due to luck than deep insight. Our relative ignorance was also partly because economists do not receive detailed training in the design of survey questions. One of the issues that sparked our initial interest was the wording of questions. We found most questions on inflation expectations did not directly ask about inflation but instead asked about prices. For example, the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Survey (the Michigan Survey from now on) asks about the change in “prices in general” or the Bank of England/GfK NOP survey asks about the expected “change in prices in shops generally.” Not being experts in survey design, we decided that we needed a wide collaboration to understand the implications of asking about prices in general and whether it was possible to ask directly about the rate of inflation. We formed a cross-disciplinary team among Federal Reserve research staff, academic economists, and psychologists at Carnegie Mellon University who specialize in behavioral decision-making, as well as risk perception and communication. The initial part of the project was structured in three stages.

Before turning to the focus of this talk – the measurement of household inflation expectations – I want to provide a quick summary of market-based and professional surveys. The difference in yields between nominal and real government debt can be used to derive a measure of market inflation expectations for the price index used to protect the holders of real government debt from inflation. In the United States, that price index is the consumer price index (CPI). Thus, if the nominal 10-year yield is 3.5 percent and the real 10-year yield is 1 percent, one crude measure of average CPI inflation expected over the next 10 years would be 2.5 percent. Further, if the nominal 5-year yield is 3 percent and the real 5-year yield is 0.2 percent, then a crude measure of average CPI inflation expected over the next 5 years would be 2.8 percent and a crude estimate of the 5- to 10-year forward average CPI inflation would be 2.2 percent. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  I say crude because such calculations ignore any difference in liquidity between and within the two types of debt, any compensation investors require for the uncertainty of the real value of nominal coupon securities and a variety of other issues, such as the fact that Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) are indexed to the CPI with a time varying lag. There are numerous ways to measure inflation expectations that take into account liquidity differences.
First, when I read commentaries which go something like: “You wouldn’t believe how low Bank X’s modelled risk weights on, say, mortgages are”. I do note that the commentator can only observe the Pillar 1 capital requirement. They are not observing the judgmental overlay in in Pillar 2 which, as you can tell from the numbers I quoted, has gone up. The trouble is, this tends to suggest that Pillar 3 transparency is not working as it should do. This is all I am going to say today on models and RWAs, I will save that for another day. The second point on Pillar 2 is that, having built it up, we think that we can allow a relatively small part to be used to support the second objective of the FPC. Now, in terms of how we justify this, given the hierarchy of objectives that I described earlier, I believe that it is important to look at the interaction of resilience and lending as I set out. I think it is reasonable to conclude, and the FPC supported this action, that a reduction in the risk arising from this new lending caused by an improvement in credit conditions should help to offset the risk from lower capital buffers. In other words, if such extra lending boosts economic growth, it will enhance resilience in the financial system.

But it can certainly help, and is in fact the best contribution that monetary policy can make to the sustained growth of output, high levels of employment, and rising living standards. It helps particularly where there is supply-side flexibility and sectoral diversification. Birmingham, and the West Midlands more generally, have made – and are making – considerable strides in those directions, building on existing strengths certainly but also developing new skills and new activities. Birmingham City 2000 has, I know, played an important role in this forward-looking approach. I congratulate you and encourage you to persist in your endeavours – in conjunction with the West Midlands Regional Development Agency – well into the next millennium, despite your apparently non–Y2K–compliant title. 5  BIS Review 56/1999
In Australia, for example, the 1998 Payment Systems (Regulation) Act gives the RBA powers to regulate the payments system and purchased payment facilities (such as travellers’ cheques and stored value cards). It also allows the RBA to obtain information from payment system participants and to set access regimes and determine risk control and efficiency standards for designated payment systems. The RBA’s responsibilities in this regard are discharged by a Payments System Board. The adoption of Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) has been another key risk reduction initiative on the part of many central banks in the past decade and a half. These systems eliminate the build up of settlement exposure and Herstatt risk between financial institutions as a result of the exchange of high-value payments and debt securities settlements. Instead, individual transactions are settled in real time across accounts at the central bank. The availability of RTGS is also an important step in dealing effectively with foreign exchange settlement risk. Finally, no discussion of payments system oversight would be complete without some mention of AntiMoney Laundering initiatives. AML is important for the integrity of payments systems, and thus also has important macroprudential implications. The publication of a Financial Stability Report is the second way in which central banks have given more prominence to their macro prudential responsibilities. The Bank of England was among the first movers and its Financial Stability Report is now a decade old. The report recently underwent a revamp reflecting how rapidly this type of analysis has evolved in that time.

BIS Review 38/2003  1  At its monetary policy meeting in August, the Federal Open Market Committee decided to keep its target for the federal funds rate unchanged at 1 per cent. The Committee perceived that the upside and downside risks to the attainment of sustainable growth for the next few quarters were roughly equal. The Committee judged that, on balance, the risk of inflation becoming undesirably low is likely to be the predominant concern for the foreseeable future. In these circumstances, the Committee believed that policy accommodation can be maintained for a considerable period. Asia is showing signs of recovery. China is leading the field with economic growth approaching 10 per cent and Thailand is showing strong growth. But the picture is not all positive. South Korea has experienced slower growth this year. South Korea is one of the countries that is particularly affected by the competition from China. In Japan, where growth has been low for a long period, there are indications that growth is picking up, although it is still too early to say whether it is sustainable. The key rate in the euro area has been reduced to 2 per cent. Forward rates imply that interest rates are expected to remain at 2 per cent to the end of 2003, before rising slightly next year. GDP growth in major European countries is low or negative. In the Netherlands, GDP has dropped for three consecutive quarters, and Germany has recorded a decline over the past two quarters.
The proposals were also grouped into measures to create stability, measures to increase efficiency in resource utilisation and measures to increase growth in the economy. Price and budget stability has been attained If one reads this report today, one is struck by how many of these proposals have actually been implemented. When it comes to measures for attaining macroeconomic stability, most of them have been implemented and Sweden has for several years enjoyed low inflation and sound public finances. Progress has also been made in the field of wage formation. With regard to measures to increase efficiency and potential growth, the result of a survey of which proposals have been implemented gains more mixed results. Important changes have been made in some areas; while in others very little has happened. If we look at developments during the eight years that have passed since 1993, the results are heartening. The average growth rate during this period has amounted to 3.1 per cent. This is very different from the average growth rate of 1.8 per cent that prevailed during the previous ten years. If developments since 1993 had been limited to this 1.8 per cent, we would currently have a GDP level around SEK 174 billion lower than now, i.e. more than eight per cent lower, and the situation would have looked radically different in most areas. Open unemployment would be twice as high if one 1  "New terms for economics and politics", proposals from the Economics Commission, SOU 1993:16.

Lim Hng Kiang: Singapore – pursuing broader and deeper economic integration with major economies Opening keynote speech by Mr Lim Hng Kiang, Minister for Trade and Industry and Deputy Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at Deutsche Bank Access Asia Conference 2013, Singapore, 20 May 2013. *  *  *  Distinguished guests, Ladies and gentlemen, A very good morning to all of you. It is my pleasure to join you at Deutsche Bank’s Access Asia Conference 2013. Let me first thank Deutsche Bank for the invitation to speak at your conference. This is the largest event hosted by Deutsche Bank each year globally, and a huge turnout is a clear indicator of the strong corporate and investor interest in Asia. In the last 10 years, the centre of gravity of the world economy has been moving away from the US and Europe to Asia. Asia is expected to continue to prosper in the decades ahead as the middle class expands in line with strong economic growth. China is set to be the largest economy in the world by 2030 and is already creating megacities of over 10 million at an average rate of one per year. Besides China, India’s middle class is expected to grow to almost 600 million people by 2025. In Indonesia, almost 60 per cent of Indonesian households, in a country of 240 million people, are expected to reach middle-class status by 2020. Being a very small state, Singapore has and will continue to maintain an open economy.