samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The number of vaccine doses administered has exceeded 99 million, with 50 million people getting at least one dose. Despite the recent increase in social mobility following the reopening, the number of cases remains relatively low thanks to the performance of the vaccination rollout. The widespread vaccination of the population has a positive impact on the economic activity, employment and the current account balance. As for Turkey’s macroeconomic outlook, consistent with our projections, national income has grown by 21.7% annually in the second quarter on the back of the base effects. Looking at quarterly growth figures excluding the base effects, we see a 0.9% increase in national income compared to the first quarter, with contributions from both domestic and external demand. In the second quarter of the year, many European countries recorded high rates of growth due also to the base effects. In this period, Turkey’s growth outperformed many European countries, and the Turkish economy recorded the second-highest rate of growth after the UK. Consumption and machinery-equipment investments were the main drivers of annual growth. The positive outlook in vaccination in Europe is affecting our economy via tourism and external demand channels. In this context, net exports also continue to contribute positively to growth. Leading indicators show that domestic economic activity remains strong in the third quarter, with the help of robust external demand. Survey-based indicators point to a strong upward movement in both domestic and export orders. 5  High-frequency data show a rapid recovery in the pandemic-stricken subsectors of services amid increased mobility.

Welfare schemes had to be cut, schools closed and the pupils had to learn to swim in the cold fjords because the swimming pools were closed. The main argument used in favour of new and complex instruments is that they facilitate risk sharing across economic agents. But risks that are not understood can hardly be shared in any optimal way. It is also important to keep in mind that risk sharing can also be promoted through simpler and more conventional instruments. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  Our oil fund – managed by Norges Bank and with more than 500 billion dollars under management – set up a special instrument committee after the recent financial crisis. The committee must sanction every financial instrument before it can be used for investments. As a result, the number of instruments available to the Fund’s managers has been significantly reduced, in particular fixed-income and derivatives instruments, since the committee was established. One factor behind the financial crisis was a very important market distortion described by Hyman Minsky: The interaction between asset prices and credit volumes may create a spiral where both asset prices and credit rise to unsustainable levels. The use of financial innovations to create more credit with the result that it fuels such a spiral is clearly not a socially desirable use. Adair Turner of the British FSA1 has pointed out that credit and asset bubbles also represent a massive misallocation of capital in the real economy.
Thomas Jordan also referred to this phenomenon in his remarks on exchange rates. Replacing Libor with SARON  I would now like to update you on the work that is under way to replace Libor with SARON as a reference interest rate. Since the UK Financial Conduct Authority announced nearly a year ago that it would not guarantee the continuation of Libor beyond 2021, this topic has attracted significant public interest. Alternative reference interest rates have now been identified for all currencies in which Libor is used as a reference rate. In Switzerland, the National Working Group on Swiss franc Reference Interest Rates (NWG) is drawing up  Page 2/5  Berne, 13 December 2018 Andréa M. Maechler  News conference  recommendations to ensure a smooth transition. Many of the leading market participants sit on the NWG, which is co-chaired by the SNB and a representative from the private sector. The SNB principally acts as a facilitator and is responsible for running the secretariat. 1 It also maintains links with international bodies charged with preparing recommendations for reference interest rate reforms and ensuring a well-coordinated transition. In October 2017, the NWG recommended that the Swiss franc Libor be replaced by the Swiss Average Rate Overnight (SARON) used for overnight transactions in the secured segment. SARON has already gained in importance as a reference interest rate. In the course of 2017, an interest rate curve developed based on swap transactions referencing SARON.

In Europe, the Stoxx 600 lost around 9% over the same period. Various factors contributed to the weak performance of European stocks. Economic momentum has weakened of late and corporate earnings growth remained below expectations in the third quarter overall. Moreover, currency turmoil in Turkey and the budget dispute between Italy and the EU weighed on Europe’s stock exchanges. In Switzerland, the SMI has managed to gain around 1% since mid-year. This  Page 1/5  Berne, 13 December 2018 Andréa M. Maechler  News conference  above-average showing was predominantly due to a strong performance in July, which in turn was mainly driven by positive corporate news in the pharmaceutical sector. On the interest rate markets the picture initially remained mixed due to uneven growth momentum in the major economic regions since mid-2018 (cf. chart 3). In the US, the Federal Reserve confirmed that it intended to maintain its policy of gradual interest rate rises. Against this backdrop, yields in the US continued to rise and the yield on 10-year US Treasuries hit a multi-year high at the beginning of November. This rise in yields receded again in response to another dip in risk sentiment at the beginning of December. Most recently, the yield on 10-year US Treasuries stood at almost 2.9% – close to the level recorded at the end of June. In Europe, on the other hand, yields have been more stable. Yield differentials between US and European government bonds thus also reached a multi-year high in November.
The use of the ONS statistical data in this work does not imply the endorsement of the ONS in relation to the interpretation or analysis of the statistical data. This work uses research datasets which may not exactly reproduce National Statistics aggregates. 48 The BvD data delivers a similarly-shaped distribution. 49 Other authors finding a long tail of low-productivity companies in the UK include Bloom and Van Reenen (2007). 47  12  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  12  the key driver of the productivity slowdown. At the same time, for a large cohort of non-frontier companies secular stagnation is evident, with low and flat-lining levels of productivity. For example, around one-third of UK companies have seen no rise in productivity throughout this century. This is a long tail. A second implication of these results, consistent with the cross-country evidence, is that rates of technological diffusion from frontier to non-frontier companies appear to have slowed. It is stalling diffusion, rather than stifled innovation, that accounts for the UK’s productivity puzzle. These patterns are not unique to the UK. They are shared by a number of other countries internationally. That has led the OECD to conclude that the technological diffusion engine among companies appears to have broken. 50  A comparison of the UK with other advanced countries suggests that both the degree of dispersion in productivity performance is larger in the UK, and that this dispersion has widened more in the UK, than in other countries.

Only by doing so, we could lay the grounds for a second assessment in a three-year time, which shall not only observe the accomplishment of these recommendations, but also determine new priorities towards financial system development. Thank you! 2  BIS Review 88/2005
We have launched and will build upon our responsible lending guidelines and practices. The important next steps for us on the banking side in terms of the green initiatives would be to improve disclosure, which, under any scenario and initiatives, remains a critical and essential building block to make all the others work. Aside from that, another critical initiative is the development on a green taxonomy that is consistent across the financial sector so that we do not end up working at cross purposes and can leverage upon each other’s efforts. I am happy to say that the Bank of Thailand has been working very closely with our colleagues at the Securities Exchange Commission, the Office of the Insurance Commission, the Stock Exchange of Thailand and the Ministry of Finance to try to develop a consistent taxonomy in green that extends across the financial sector in Thailand. Also, we hope that this will eventually be a taxonomy that is consistent across the region as well as within the ASEAN region. This is particularly important because the climate challenge will be, in many ways, won or lost here in Asia. While everybody has a lot to do, we have seen clear initiatives being taken in Europe, and obviously, more needs to be done both in Europe and the United States. Given where we are in our cycle of development, a lot of climate challenges is going to take place in Asia, not particularly within ASEAN itself, but also within broader Asia.

Public finances are also perceived to be sound, where risks are relatively low and liquidity is high. Given that our external vulnerability remains low, although additional borrowing by the government will contribute to an increase in the current account deficit, risks on the external front and the implications of additional public sector borrowing will remain low and limited. Even though we have been hit hard and harder than other countries and that our recovery is likely to take longer and be more uneven, the resilient economy is there. The downside risks of seeing a sharp decline stemming from weaknesses on the balance of payment front, the banking front, or the public finance front thus remain quite limited. Page 3 of 9  Part 2: The Bank of Thailand’s Response to The Crisis Let me now turn to the second part of my remarks, which is what we, at the Bank of Thailand, have been doing. To summarize very briefly, the Bank of Thailand has taken a flexible and pragmatic approach to addressing the crisis. We are willing to do, have been willing to do, and remain willing to do what it takes to get us out of this crisis. The statement, which we have been using internally, is to say that all reasonable policy options are on the table to respond to this unmitigated crisis that we are facing now. First and foremost, we have tried to ensure that financial conditions remain accommodative to support and facilitate the recovery.
And it is key to the  1 2  www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/record/2017/financial-policy-committee-meeting-september-2017.pdf www.bankofengland.co.uk/financial-stability-report/2018/june-2018 2  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches  2  Bank’s objectives – risk free rate transition is a core part of the Bank’s strategic goal to catalyse reforms in financial markets to make them fairer and more effective. The good news is, transition is happening. There has been real progress in establishing SONIA as the successor to sterling Libor. In the past 6 months there have been a number of positive developments in the sterling cash market. From a zero base this time last year, SONIA linked floating rate note (‘FRN’) issuance now dominates sterling floating rate financials issuance and there is clear momentum towards using the compounded SONIA rate across bond markets. The first 5 months of 2019, have seen 21 different banks, sovereigns, and supranationals issue FRNs referencing compounded SONIA, with a total value of about £ We’ve also now seen the first move by a bond issuer to switch their outstanding Libor linked bond to reference compounded SONIA instead. They are currently going through a bondholder Consent Solicitation process, with the deadline next week. This is a development which is being closely watched. We have also seen the first SONIA linked securitisations issued. In other areas, we are seeing progress. One UK firm has announced it has switched the basis of its balance sheet over to SONIA.

Data from the Bank’s sterling money market data collection showed that in the first quarter of this year there were on average only 9 deposits a day underpinning 6 month sterling Libor, with a total daily value of £ million. This lack of transactions means that panel banks have to use their expert judgement to make their submissions. And this means they have become increasingly uncomfortable about doing so. And if those panel banks stop submitting, there is no Libor benchmark. Given the pervasive use of Libor historically, this creates a fragility at the heart of markets – that financial markets are reliant upon an unsustainable piece of infrastructure1. This financial stability risk is something the Financial Policy Committee has therefore been closely monitoring.2  The FCA has secured a breathing space to enable the transition, but only until end-2021. The best way to make the most of the timetable set for Libor to end is for markets to focus on transitioning away from it, to new risk free rates. For sterling markets, to the new risk free rate is SONIA, an overnight benchmark provided by the Bank and underpinned by transactions worth about 40 billion pounds a day. The need to transition is a critical one for all involved. We impressed this upon firms in our Dear CEO exercise; a key objective of which was to ensure Board level responsibility for transition.
The figure set in month t, and for the following six months (t till (t+5) inclusive), is based on the forward price for the following year (t – (t+11)) observed between three and nine months earlier. The dotted line indicates prices relevant for the cap based on current futures contracts. Sources: Ofgem, Bloomberg Finance L.P. and Bank calculations. -1 -2  2016  2017  2018  2019  2020  2021  2022  Contributions to annual CPI inflation. Figures in parentheses are basket weights in 2021 and do not sum to 100 due to rounding. The chart was shown in the November MPR and does not include the latest data, for October 2021. Sources: Bloomberg Finance L.P., Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, ONS and Bank calculations. It would be wrong to say this inflation is only about energy. It’s broader than that. What we can say, however, is that most of it – thus far, at least – has been concentrated in tradable goods in general (non-energy as well as energy), much less of it in the non-traded parts of the economy. One indication of that is Chart 2, which plots the arithmetic contribution of various broad components to the change in the aggregate CPI in the UK. Just about the entire overshoot in overall inflation, relative to the MPC’s 2% target, reflects unusually rapid inflation in prices of (largely tradable) goods.

Dec 19  Jun 20  Dec 20  80 Jun 21  Sources: OECD Quarterly National Accounts, IMF World Economic Outlook and Bank calculations. Across the advanced economies in aggregate, spending on services in first quarter of the year was 5% lower than at the end of 2019; spending on goods was 5% higher (Chart 7). Shifts in demand happen all the time and, as long as supply can shift in response, they needn’t have any impact at the macro-economic level. But this one was far larger, more widespread and occurred much faster than most. And, far from shifting in response, and meeting that extra demand, the pandemic meant the global supply of goods was actively impaired. Local lockdowns affected production in many Asian countries and effective capacity in shipping and other forms of transport was also hit. Earlier this year my own guess was that these things would visibly start to reverse by the end of it. Because they were caused by the pandemic it was reasonable to expect the shifts in demand to reverse, and the problems in supply chains to abate, as vaccinations took effect. As yet it’s clear that hasn’t happened to the degree that I, at least, expected. Shipping costs remained very high throughout the autumn; as we’ve seen, energy (and particularly gas) prices took a huge lurch upwards; at the retail level there is no sign yet of any deceleration in goods prices.
8  BIS central bankers’ speeches

To the extent this reflects improved credibility it implies less of a need for policy to respond to one-off hits to the price level. 17  Data from Bordo and Eichengreen (1999), updated from OECD and IMF sources. 18  The capacity of fixed-exchange rate systems to experience genuinely inflationary shocks – those that move wage and price inflation jointly – is also evident in Chart 2. The correlation between wage and price inflation was +0.6 during the classical Gold Standard; under inflation targeting it’s been -0.2. That may also reflect a more volatile environment for real wages shocks (i.e. to the terms of trade and productivity). Nor are floating exchange rates a guarantee of stable inflation: during the 1970s and 1980s, when there was no stable nominal target at all, this correlation rose to 0.9. But inflationary shocks appear better contained with a domestic inflation target than an exchange rate or commodity peg. 10  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Chart 13 Inflation more persistent under fixed exchange rates  Chart 14 UK inflation persistence fell after introduction of inflation targeting  1.6  Estimated coefficient in regression of UK inflation on lagged inflation, 20 year rolling window Consumption deflator  1.2  GDP deflator  0.8 0.4 0.0 1962  1972  1982  1992  2002  2012  Source: Bordo and Eichengreen (1999), IMF and OECD. Note: Blue shaded area represents +/- 2SD around diamond central estimate of a panel regression; sample 1960-2010. Source: ONS and Hills, Thomas, Dimsdale (2010).
Developing such machinery was no social service: Strong was clear that he was acting in American  1  In the preparation of these remarks, I have drawn heavily on the papers of Benjamin Strong, and in particular ‘Foreign Countries: Trip to Great Britain and France’ Parts 1 and 2, available at https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/archival/1160. 2 The Imperial Ottoman Bank also carried out certain central bank functions and had an account opened with the Bank of England in 1858. See Chapter 8 of ‘The Bank of England 1914-21 (Unpublished War History)’ by John Osborne at https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/archive/ww/boe-1914-1921-vol3-chapter8.pdf. 3 Quoted in ‘The City of London: Illusions of Gold 1914-1945’ by David Kynaston. 3  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  3  interests, to protect its economy and strengthen its financial system. But he did hope it could be done in ways that also supported the global economy. As Strong told London’s senior bankers in a speech in March 1916, even if the new order involved ‘the surrender of some part of the world’s banking to New York’, he hoped it could be done ‘upon fair terms, on fair competitions’ and with ‘those who spoke [the same] language, believed in the same institutions and had the same high ideals of honour and integrity’. Strong’s reception in France was extremely warm. He visited castles in Cannes and Napoleon’s tomb in Paris. He received silver medals at the Banque de France, and was treated to lavish lunches and dinners.

Inflation has been higher in Sweden than in Germany for long periods of time. During the 1960s we more or less kept pace with Germany. However, during the second half of the 1970s and in the 1980s, inflation in Sweden was several percentage points higher than that in Germany each year. Since the beginning of the 1990s, inflation in Sweden has once again been roughly the same as that in Germany. Sweden has become a low inflation economy. What, on the whole, has happened since the 1960s? To illustrate this, I shall talk about some of the episodes of the past 30 years that have had great significance for economic developments and for my own view of the Swedish economy. I have been able to follow the economic policy decision-making process connected with these episodes at close quarters from my various posts in public administration. I would like to emphasise that this is my personal view of developments and not the Riksbank’s official view. The episode I will talk about include the cost crisis in the 1970s and overheating in the 1980s, the change in exchange rate and monetary policy, the wage formation reform and budget consolidation of the 1990s. The cost crisis of the 1970s During the 1960s, economic growth in Sweden wad good. GDP growth was at a high level, inflation was moderate, unemployment was low, foreign trade was largely in balance and public finances were strong.
There are many sources of information on labor market conditions that I regularly consult. They range from very granular data that zero in on individuals’ experiences in the labor market, to indices of job openings, how many people are quitting their jobs, and labor market participation, to name a few. But it’s not just these hard numbers that matter. I also find surveys of households and businesses provide valuable and timely perspectives about economic conditions. For example, there’s a questionnaire that asks people whether jobs are “hard to get.” It’s helpful because it gives the perceptions of normal people (and not economists!) about whether there are a lot of open positions. This survey continues to report that it’s relatively easy to find work, which is a very good sign about the strength of the economy.2 Beyond the economic data and surveys, financial market indicators are a critical source of up-tothe minute information on how investors view the economy. In addition, stock prices and interest rates affect the spending decisions of households and businesses, and the value of the dollar affects demand for exports and imports, so these are important factors shaping the economy’s trajectory. More broadly, I look at a wealth of data on international financial market developments and banking conditions, which feed into my understanding of the global outlook. Finally, and perhaps least well known, I spend a great deal of time speaking with members of the public, at our Board and Advisory Group meetings, community and business leader forums, and events like today’s.

It’s easy to think of the Fed as just setting interest rates, and of course that’s a major part of what we do. But we do so in order to achieve two goals set by Congress: maximum employment and price stability. In Fed-speak it’s called the dual mandate. There are serious debates taking place amongst economists and policymakers about what maximum employment actually looks like, and they probably deserve another speech of their own. But I promised not to deluge you with numbers, so I’ll focus on a few highlights. The unemployment rate last year averaged just under 4 percent, the lowest such annual figure since 1969. The latest jobs numbers also showed very strong growth, with over 2.6 million jobs added last year. The ongoing strength in the labor market has led to encouraging gains in wages. No matter how you cut it, the labor market is strong, consistent with our maximum employment goal. When we say price stability, our goal is to keep inflation around 2 percent.1 Those of you who are of my generation will remember the runaway inflation of the 1970s and early 1980s. Obviously that’s something we must avoid repeating. But the challenge of more recent years actually hasn’t been too high inflation. Instead, it’s been inflation that’s persistently too low. Over the past decade, inflation has more often than not come in below our goal. But things are looking better.