samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Therefore I would strongly agree with any initiative that encourages FDI’s in these sectors through attractive laws and other measures. I believe FDI’s are very important for providing long term stability of the foreign sector. Moreover the productivity growth that usually follows FDI’s inflows will play e significant role in reducing current account deficit. Our economy needs more foreign direct investments hence Country Credit Ratings constitute a chief priority for our economy. It is my belief that FDI’s represent a regional rather than an individual challenge for the South East Europe. Countries in the region must coordinate their efforts toward creating a regional market. Regional infrastructure projects will significantly increase attractiveness and competitiveness as well as international financial market awareness toward our region. It will improve confidence and provide necessary economic incentives to enter in the region leading to higher FDI’s inflows for each economy. BIS Review 85/2006  1  Inflation Our economy has experienced a relatively long period of stable prices. Annual inflation figure as measured by the consumer price index, for the last 12 months is reported at 2.4 percent. Both monetary and fiscal policies have been important factors in keeping inflation low. However, recently inflation pressures have accelerated. The fast growth of credit to economy, the steep increase of oil prices, administrative increase of energy prices, as well as other risks have the potential to create inflationary pressures and pose risk to elevate inflation expectations.

Many approaches were tried, some proved their worth, while others were abandoned. The establishment of these monetary institutions was not a constant reinvention of the wheel; rather, progress was evident. The sound institutions that have grown in this way represent valuable capital for our country and have made a significant contribution to Switzerland’s prosperity. I feel that it behoves us to become familiar with the history of our monetary and currency institutions. This is true not just for the employees of the SNB, but in particular for them. In fact, this was the original idea behind Professor Baltensperger’s book, namely to improve employees’ knowledge of Switzerland’s economic history. Or, expressed in a different way: To encourage them to “become familiar with the ground on which we lay our foundations”. On the initiative of the former Chairman of the Board, Jean-Pierre Roth, an internal seminar on the history of the Swiss currency in the 19th and 20th centuries was organised in the autumn of 2008 and in the spring of 2009. It became clear that no work yet existed which covered the entire period of the history of the Swiss franc. It was this realisation that laid the foundation for this book. The book was ultimately written by expanding on the material derived from the internal seminar. As you will be able to conclude for yourself after reading the work, the result can certainly be considered a resounding success. The book by Professor Baltensperger is a beautifully illustrated work with fascinating contents.
Third, a currency union requires a common fiscal backstop for its central bank. Central banks must be able to act as Lender of Last Resort, both to financial institutions that are solvent but experiencing an unwarranted loss of confidence and to provide bridging finance to institutions that are being recapitalised using new resolution regimes. Under the current governance arrangements in the UK, these operations require an indemnity from, and the approval of, the Chancellor, because they would put substantial public funds at risk. The existing banking union between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom has proved durable and efficient. Its foundations include a single prudential supervisor maintaining consistent standards of resilience, a single deposit guarantee scheme backed by the central government, and a common central bank, able to act as Lender of Last Resort across the union, and also backed by the central government. These arrangements help ensure that Scotland can sustain a banking system whose collective balance sheet is substantially larger than its GDP. The euro area has shown the dangers of not having such arrangements, as well as the difficulties of the necessary pooling of sovereignty to build them. An independent Scotland would need to consider carefully how to develop arrangements with the continuing United Kingdom that are both consistent with its sovereignty and sufficient to maintain financial stability. 20  That in turn contributed to the divergence in output growth between core and periphery (chart 8).

That reduces the likelihood of a shock affecting one part of the currency union, and hence reduces the need for the exchange rate to adjust. Kenen (1969) argued that more diversified economies were better candidates to join currency unions because industry-specific shocks were less likely to have macroeconomic effects, reducing the need for exchange rate adjustment. 8  See Carney (2013). 9  Moreover unit labour costs in Scotland and the UK as a whole have moved closely together (chart 2), whereas large relative movements in the Eurozone imply divergences in competitiveness (chart 3). 10  The five tests focused on the degree of convergence between the UK and the rest of Europe, the degree of flexibility to adjust without moves in the exchange rate, and on whether joining would promote investment, financial services, and growth, stability and employment (HM Treasury 2003). BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  the benefits of a shared currency but can also mitigate the cost of losing exchange rate flexibility.11 Mundell originally argued that currency areas should coincide with regions which had high internal factor mobility.12 The idea was that by moving from areas where demand has fallen to those where it has risen, workers help moderate changes in wages and unemployment.13 There are clear practical impediments to labour mobility within the euro area including language and culture.
News conference  Berne, 12 December 2019 Andréa M. Maechler  Introductory remarks by Andréa M. Maechler  I would like to begin by reviewing developments on the global financial markets, paying special attention to the situation on the Swiss franc money market. I will also brief you on how preparations to replace Libor are progressing. After this, I will address the importance of climate risks for the SNB’s investment policy. I will close with a few remarks about the SNB’s involvement in the new Innovation Hub being set up by the Bank for International Settlements. Situation on the financial markets  Economic concerns and political uncertainty have shaped developments on the global financial and foreign exchange markets in recent months. For instance, the tug of war in the US-China trade dispute weighed on investors’ risk sentiment, especially in the third quarter. Interest rates declined significantly around the world during this phase. Yield curves flattened markedly. In some countries, long-term interest rates even dropped below the level of shortterm rates. The yield on ten-year Confederation bonds fell to a historic low of −1.1% in August (cf. chart 1). Investor sentiment picked up again from September against a backdrop of monetary policy easing by the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank and somewhat more favourable economic data. The equity markets benefited in particular from reduced trade tensions in October, with some of the major share indices reaching new highs in November.

This darker view was given less credence, in part because the magnitude of the fall in U.S. nominal house prices necessary to produce a situation where the losses could not be easily absorbed was viewed by many as implausibly large. At that time, the conventional view was that by standard regulatory and accounting measures, most U.S. financial institutions had more than ample capital against the risks they faced. Furthermore, institutions were raising new capital to fill the reduction in accounting capital being produced by the write-downs associated with subprime related assets. Phase 2: Unusual and exigent On Tuesday March 11, 2008, the Federal Reserve announced an expansion of its standard securities lending program for primary dealers 3 to a facility that accepted a wider range of collateral and lent at a term longer than overnight. This new facility, known as the Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF), was designed to help ease the ongoing erosion of liquidity conditions in funding markets that was occurring despite the two large cuts in the fed funds target in January 2008. Two days later after the Federal Reserve announced the TSLF, Bear Stearns Co., the fifth largest investment bank in the U.S., ran out of cash to meet its obligations for the next day. Over the ensuing three days, the Federal Reserve, working with the Securities and Exchange Commission and U.S. Treasury, facilitated the takeover of Bear Stearns by JPMorgan Chase.
There are tougher rules for fiscal policies, stronger oversight of macroeconomic imbalances, a lender of last resort for sovereigns in the form of the European Stability Mechanism, and there will soon be a sounder and more integrated banking sector thanks to the creation of the Single Supervisory Mechanism. The euro area has gone through its difficult initial learning phase, and new members will reap the benefits, which certainly outweigh the costs associated with the existence of these institutions. Joining a stronger euro area will increase the long-term prosperity of its members and their resilience to adverse shocks. But there are also other concrete benefits stemming from trade and foreign direct investment, which will be bolstered, especially given Lithuania’s strong trade ties with its two Baltic neighbours in the euro area, Estonia and Latvia. Moreover, Lithuania will be an equal partner at the Governing Council table and will fully participate in deciding monetary policy for the whole monetary union. Do you share the view that being a member of the euro area is an additional safeguard for countries such as the Baltic states or Finland against the spillover effects of geopolitical tensions in Europe (or even an insurance policy against Russian aggression), such as those that we have recently witnessed in Ukraine? Does the euro make us safer and, if so, how? While we currently consider geopolitical developments as a downside risk to growth, I will refrain from commenting on the political aspects of these tensions, as these issues fall outside the mandate of the ECB.

The robust recovery momentum on the global scale has resulted in a strong expansion of Thai exports across product categories and export destinations. In addition, the Thai tourism sector has grown consistently with steady increases in the number and quality of tourists. Therefore, it is not surprising to see businesses associated with exports of goods and services enjoying the benefits from the improved external demand. Domestic demand growth, however, is still proceeding at a gradual pace. Despite a continuous recovery, private consumption growth remains well below that of GDP, registering within the 3 percent range. And until recently, private investment growth had concentrated mainly in the export sector. Overall, the large current account surplus of 10.5 percent to GDP last year summarizes the pattern of economic recovery and reflects the imbalance between the external and domestic demand. Second, the rural economy has been exposed to more adverse shocks than its urban counterpart. Specifically, several populist measures including the controversial rice pledging scheme were withdrawn, together with adverse weather conditions such as severe droughts in 2016 and floods in 2017 as well as declines in global prices of key export crops especially rubber and rice, all constituted negative income shocks to farmers. In addition, rural entrepreneurs, which are mostly SMEs, tend to be less 2/10  productive and might not be able to compete with larger firms who are better equipped with capital and technologies.
I will now be happy to answer some questions. 6  BIS central bankers’ speeches

The floating exchange rate system has served well in the conduct of monetary policy. As in the past, the Central Bank interventions in the foreign exchange market would be limited to building up the international reserve position and to stabilise any undue fluctuations in the foreign exchange market due to excess or shortage of international currencies. As per available international data, the global economy is projected to grow at around 5 per cent in 2006 and is expected to moderate to around 4.7 per cent in 2007. Sri Lanka’s major export markets such as the United States of America (USA) and the Euro area and other trading partners are also expected to grow at healthy rates. It is therefore likely that the continuation of favourable global economic conditions will generate healthy external demand for Sri Lanka’s goods and services. Based on the external and internal factors, the Sri Lankan economy is expected to grow by 7.5 per cent in 2007. Growth is also expected to be broad-based, with all three sectors, Agriculture, Industry  1  Broad Money (M2b) is complied consolidating the operations of the Central Bank and operations of domestic banking units and off shore banking units (OBUs) of commercial banks. 2  The money multiplier is the amount of money created by an additional unit of reserve money. BIS Review8/2007  7  and Services, poised to grow at healthy rates.
To make best use of the informational role of money, however, we have to face numerous and increasing challenges One major difficulty is to identify in real time the nature of monetary developments and their implications for future price developments. The challenge of monetary analysis is to see through the noise in monetary data to recover those underlying trends which are relevant for monetary policy decisions. Meeting this challenge has not been straightforward in recent years as the euro area economy was hit by several shocks: financial instability in the aftermath of the stock market collapse in 2000, exceptionally high economic and geopolitical uncertainty between 2001 and 2003, just to name a few. First of all, short-run monetary developments are often affected by transitory shocks. We need to identify and account for such temporary “special factors” or “distortions” that may affect monetary developments and blur their information content. To some extent it is the aim of the methodology developed at the ECB which allows for periodic adjustments to measured monetary aggregates in order to account for portfolio shifts which impact the demand for money without any incidence on future inflation. This approach has met with great success in the period 2000-2004. Second, and more permanently, it is necessary to disentangle, in monetary and credit evolutions, those which reflect structural and permanent changes from those which simply result from moves in the level of interest rates and the position in the economic cycle. Here, no mechanistic or ad hoc approach would do the trick.

Although the central bank is acting in an apparently natural manner, in accordance with an inflation targeting policy, it may unintentionally contribute to a future crisis. The risk-taking channel can thus be said to form a link between monetary policy and financial stability. …that consists of different sub-channels The risk-taking channel actually consists of several sub-channels. One channel is that low interest rates can create incentives for investors to seek higher risk investments with a higher expected rate of return – what is known as a “search for yield”. This could involve, for instance, abandoning government bonds in favour of more risky, but higher-yield commercial paper during periods when the interest rate is particularly low. One reason may be the hope of attaining the same nominal yield as in earlier periods with higher interest rates. Another, more indirect channel is linked to low interest rates contributing to raising, for instance, the value of assets and collateral, as well as income and profits. This can in turn affect the banks’ assessments of, and tolerance to, risk. 4 Low interest rates could mean, for  1  Paul Krugman and Robin Wells, “The Slump Goes On: Why?” The New York Review of Books, September 2010. 2  See, for instance, John B. Taylor, “The Financial Crisis and the Policy Responses: An Empirical Analysis of What Went Wrong”, NBER Working Paper Series No. 14631, 2009.
The present report therefore does not discuss those options in as much detail. In Chapter 3, however, is an in-depth discussion of Icelanders’ experience with independent monetary policy and a floating exchange rate. The strategy formulated in coming months must take into account this material if all options are to be considered. It is also necessary to examine which prudential rules would be applied in order to reduce the risks related to domestic financial institutions’ foreign assets and liabilities and the risks related to unrestricted capital flows. These rules are discussed in a newly published Central Bank report entitled Prudential rules following capital controls. That report discusses the limitations on liquidity and foreign exchange risk and the restrictions on domestic financial firms’ international operations that must be in place if movement of capital  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  is unrestricted in other respects, particularly if Iceland retains its own currency. The discussion below also takes account of these two publications. 1 1.2  Iceland’s experience with its own currency  Iceland has had its own currency since 1885, maintaining parity with the Danish krone until June 1922, when it was devalued by 23%, followed by a temporary float (see Chapter 12). It can be said that the króna came into existence as an independent currency at that time. The experience with it has been mixed, and efforts to preserve the value of the currency have been largely unsuccessful.

Let me be very clear, substituting “duty” for “presumption” changes the mechanism of enforcement not the substance of the requirement on senior managers, and I would not support changing the latter. There has been a lot of noise around the new regime in recent months, and I have asked people involved whether their problem was with the “presumption”, or with the regime more broadly. The universal answer has been that the difficulty was with the “presumption” not the regime which appears to have broad support. So, if Parliament is in agreement, and I do not presume to take that for granted, I expect that the new regime will be put into effect in the spirit with which it is intended, and that the focus  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  will shift to that spirit and away from finding ways to circumvent the “presumption”. To be blunt, I hope that those within firms and their advisors will respect the will of Parliament on this crucial point. The new regime matters hugely for getting the right incentives for people running firms. The important word is not “presumption” or “duty but rather “responsibility”, it’s about holding people more personally to account. If there are people who wish to argue that they should not take on the responsibilities of the job they do, then I believe they have no place in the industry, it’s that simple. We all want well-run firms where senior people lead and take responsibility.
Georgiadis, Georgios and Arnaud Mehl (2015), Trilemma, Not Dilemma: Financial Globalisation and Monetary Policy Effectiveness. Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute Working Paper No. 222. Gordon, Robert J. (2012), Is U.S. Economic Growth Over? Faltering Innovation Confronts the Six Headwinds. NBER Working Paper No. 18315. Gordon, Robert J. (2015), Secular Stagnation: A Supply-Side View. American Economic Review, 105(5), 54–59. Krugman, P. (2014), Inflation Targets Reconsidered. Essay presented at ECB Sintra Conference, May 2014. Kryvtsov, Oleksiy and Mendes, Rhys R. (2015), The Optimal Level of the Inflation Target: A Selective Review of the Literature and Outstanding Issues. Discussion Paper 2015-8, Bank of Canada. Laubach, Thomas and John C. Williams (2015), Measuring the Natural Rate of Interest Redux. Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Working Paper 2015–16. Meier, Simone (2013), Financial Globalization and Monetary Transmission. Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute Working Paper No. 145. Obstfeld, Maurice (2015), Trilemmas and Tradeoffs: Living with Financial Globalization. BIS Working Papers No. 480. Rachel, Lukasz and Thomas D. Smith (2015), Secular Drivers of the Global Real Interest Rate. Staff Working Paper No. 571, Bank of England. Rey, Hélène (2015), Dilemma not Trilemma: The Global Financial Cycle and Monetary Policy Independence. NBER Working Paper No. 21162. Rogoff, Kenneth (2015), Debt Supercycle, Not Secular Stagnation. Column VOX, http://voxeu.org/article/debt-supercycle-not-secular-stagnation. 12  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Skingsley, Cecilia (2015), Inflation-targeting policy after the financial crisis. Speech at Almega, Stockholm, 22 May. Summers, Lawrence (2013), Why Stagnation Might Prove to be the New Normal.

The reserves policy adopted by the Bank Council bears the hallmark of common sense, aiming for a gradual rise in the level of monetary reserves so that the relationship of reserves to GDP does not deteriorate over time. This approach is consistent with the fact that, at present, we only have a moderate level of reserves. Those who believe that the SNB has surplus monetary reserves overlook the fact that Switzerland's central bank constitutes a form of insurance with respect to the monetary stability of the country. Like all kinds of insurance, the National Bank – faced as it is with expanding markets and increasing risks – must be able to rely on its reserves growing in tandem with the economy. If they did not do so, its ability to operate on the markets would be weakened. In this respect, it is the country's long-term interests that must not be lost sight of. The debate on the Cosa initiative (under which SNB profits would be used for the AHV/AVS, the Swiss old age and survivors' insurance scheme) is another example of a political move that could lead to a weakening in our monetary credibility. This initiative would hinder us in fulfilling our mandate, and last year I had the opportunity of explaining to you in detail why this is so. Allow me to briefly reiterate these reasons.