samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
All in all, the new information shows some signs of strength in the recovery in advanced economies, but a rather more subdued development in emerging markets. ...but also in Sweden It was clear that international developments play an important role for the Swedish economy when the preliminary GDP figures for the second quarter were published. GDP fell by 0.2 per cent when calculated as an annual rate compared with the first quarter of this year. The negative growth was largely due to a fall in exports, but household consumption also fell somewhat. The outcome was slightly weaker than we and several other analysts had expected. But as the figures are preliminary, we probably should not draw any major conclusions from them. At the same time, new monthly statistics for the retail trade showed that sales were strong at the end of the second quarter. Indicators for the start of third quarter have given mixed signals. So far, the information is limited to the business tendency survey for July and the purchasing managers’ index for the same month. The economic tendency survey, which includes both households and companies, rose slightly in July and the upturn was on a broad front. Confidence in the household sector is now at its historical average. The purchasing managers’ index for the manufacturing industry was over 50 in July, for the third month in a row, which indicates growth in the manufacturing industry, but the most recent outcome showed a fall compared with the previous month.

Secondly, it is important that the authority that is given responsibility for macroprudential policy is also equipped with the right tools, that is, given the possibility to intervene at an early stage when risks that could lead to negative effects on the Swedish economy have been identified. Sweden’s place in the global financial system and our domestic conditions mean that we cannot delay any longer in designing a framework for financial stability and macroprudential policy; we need to get this in place as soon as possible. ...and we need an even better analytical base However, to be able to make the best possible analyses and thus design effective tools to counteract the risks of high indebtedness, we also need to have better statistics on household borrowing. This has also been pointed out by both the IMF and the European Commission in their assessments of the Swedish economy.5 As a preliminary step towards improving the analytical base we at the Riksbank have asked the Swedish banks to provide us with data on households’ loans. The data collected by the Riksbank will be used to analyse how vulnerable the Swedish households are and how potential risks are distributed among the population. Finansinspektionen already makes good  5  “Sweden – 2013 Article IV Consultation: Concluding Statement of the Mission”, IMF, 31 May, 2013. “Council Recommendation (COM(2013) 377 final)”, European Commission, 29 May, 2013. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  analyses and have on several occasions gathered random samples among newly-granted loans.
José De Gregorio: Global confidence crisis – the value of waiting and the coordination failures revisited Keynote speech by Mr José De Gregorio, Governor of the Central Bank of Chile, at the opening of the Post-Graduate Program of the School of Economics and Business Administration of Universidad de Chile, Santiago, 4 June 2009. I wish to thank Pablo García and Enrique Orellana for their helpful contributions and comments. *  *  *  “When, as today, the unknown unknowns dominate, and the economic environment is so complex as to appear nearly incomprehensible, the result is extreme prudence, if not outright paralysis, on the part of investors, consumers and firms. And this behaviour, in turn, feeds the crisis.” (Blanchard, 2009). I want to begin by thanking you for inviting me to open the academic year of the PostGraduate Program of the School of Economics and Business Administration at Universidad de Chile. Most of my presentations are for an audience that is primarily interested in learning about the Bank’s view on the economy, so my lectures tend to focus largely on the national and international junctures and their prospects. On this occasion, I will take advantage of the academic setting that brought us together, and the freedom I was given to choose the subject, to refer to a central aspect of the current global crisis, namely the confidence crisis, focusing on some key concepts that can help us understand what is going on at this global economic juncture.

If things go wrong, the benefits of investing will be very low, and the present value of the project will be negative. Hence, had the firm known that things were going to go wrong, it would have preferred not to invest. If the passing of time helps to know with more certainty whether things will go right or wrong, the firm may find it convenient to wait and see. Waiting permits it to keep the choice between investing and not investing open, which is not the case when the investment has already been made. Thus the investment can be analyzed with the theory of options. The firm must balance the cost of postponing the investment with the benefit of learning more about the situation and making a better informed decision. Then, the larger the uncertainty, the greater the benefit of waiting. This same logic can be applied to a consumer that must decide on the purchase of a durable good, but is uncertain about his future income. If the probability of losing his job increases, it may be advisable to wait before making the decision. Although this analysis is very simple intuitively, it is not easy to formalize. A consumer can sell his car or an electronic device if he loses his income, but it will be at a cost. The higher this cost, the more irreversible the decision becomes.
8  See Rawls, J., A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, 1971. 9  See Cœuré, B., “Is Eurozone governance fit for purpose?”, speech at a dinner organised by the Centre for European Reform, London, 30 January 2014. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5

[2] Given the economic and social hardship associated with this year’s reduction, such a drop is hardly feasible by simply reducing economic activity. The pandemic is therefore a stark reminder that preventing climate change from inflicting permanent harm on the global economy requires a fundamental structural change to our economy, inducing systematic changes in the way energy is generated and consumed. With brutal clarity, the current crisis has exposed two major risks to the global economy: first, the farreaching damages imposed on our society by a lack of prevention and early action, fostered by disbelief in science, in the face of a global shock that threatens not only the economy but our lives. And, second, the repercussions of a failure to act collectively in a globalised world where inaction in one part of the globe can lead to highly disruptive and long-lasting spillover effects in other parts, hitting the poorest and most vulnerable in our societies most severely. In this sense, the pandemic has been a warning shot with regard to the much greater challenge arising from climate change. In his famous speech, Mark Carney, then Governor of the Bank of England, has argued that “the catastrophic impacts of climate change will be felt beyond the traditional horizons of most actors – imposing a cost on future generations that the current generation has no direct incentive to fix”.
When activity picked up after the pandemic and inflation accelerated, it was necessary to normalise the interest rate level. Both the aim of stabilising inflation and the aim of stabilising the real economy implied a markedly higher policy rate. Chart: Monetary policy trade-offs Further out, the trade-offs between inflation and employment are likely to become clearer. In our projections, the output gap declines and turns slightly negative in the course of next year. [8] Inflation abates but remains above the target throughout the projection period. The fact that inflation remains above target in the projection reflects the fact that we also put weight on employment in the trade-offs. If our sole concern had been to rapidly return inflation to target, we would have set the policy rate higher. Chart: Cost shock - monetary policy trade-offs  The surge in energy prices since winter can be viewed as a cost shock. A cost shock is a price rise that is caused by conditions other than the level of economic activity. What does the economics literature say about how monetary policy should respond to such a shock? Let me illustrate this with the aid of a textbook model. [9] I look at a situation where the economy is initially in balance, but inflation rises due to a cost shock. Under a flexible inflation targeting regime, the central bank will weigh the rise in inflation against the aim of high and stable output and employment.

We again look at a cost shock. In the model exercises I showed earlier, expectations formation remained unchanged even when inflation surged. Both firms and households have assumed that inflation will move down relatively quickly. The effects in the standard model are represented by the dark blue lines. [14] In the scenario shown by the light blue lines, we introduce the possibility of a more persistent change in inflation expectations when inflation becomes high. [15] Here households and firms pay more attention to the inflation numbers and assume that inflation will remain persistently high. The cost shock propagates, and inflation continues to move up. A stronger and prolonged period of monetary policy tightening is then required to bring down inflation. The real economic costs associated with high inflation increase. Chart: Concluding slide  Conclusion Let me conclude. Norges Bank is charged with ensuring low and stable inflation. Inflation has surged to a high level over a short period. Our task is to bring it down again. Wage-price spirals have not been a theme in Norway or among our closest trading partners for a long time. One of the lessons learned from the Great Inflation of the 1970s and 1980s is the importance of firmly anchored inflation expectations. Many countries experienced a period of high unemployment before inflation was brought under control, and inflation expectations fell. [16] We do not believe that there is an imminent danger of a wage-price spiral in Norway.
5  I said in a talk earlier this year, I think this is because the foreign exchange market has decided that leaving the EU  Chart 5: Simple theory says the saving rate  will reduce productivity in the UK’s tradable sector or  should rise in anticipation of weaker income  raise its costs in some other way. But it’s far from clear that, as measured by their actual spending patterns, expectations among households are anything like as pessimistic. Chart 5 is an extremely stylised representation of how, in the simplest models used by economists, consumption responds to negative news about future income. In this set-up consumers are assumed to want to smooth their spending. Rather than responding to every temporary up and down, they match  3  This is also true of the supply effects I discussed earlier: if supply chains were to unwind or firms to relocate before 2019 this would be in response to their expectations of the new trading arrangements. 4 Ratio of prices to 12-month-ahead earnings forecasts. UK-focused defined as firms that generate at least 70% of their revenues here. 5 Broadbent (2017). 7  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  7  their spending to what they expect their average income to be over the future. As a result, anticipated changes in long-run income should matter more than temporary fluctuations in current income.

Svein Gjedrem: The outlook for the Norwegian economy and monetary policy assessments Speech by Mr Svein Gjedrem, Governor of Norges Bank (Central Bank of Norway), at a presentation of the Monetary Policy Report 1/09 at Goldman Sachs, London, 26 March 2009. The address is based on the assessments presented at Norges Bank’s press conference following the Executive Board’s monetary policy meeting on 25 March, Monetary Policy Report 1/09 and on previous speeches. Please note that the text below may differ slightly from the actual presentation. *  *  *  Introduction Norges Bank’s Executive Board decided yesterday to reduce its key policy rate by 0.50 percentage point to 2.00 per cent. The Monetary Policy Report, published yesterday, indicates that the key policy rate should be gradually reduced further to a level of around 1 per cent in the second half of 2009. Financial crisis but active public measures In September 2008, the turbulence in financial markets erupted into a full-blown global crisis. Global economic growth was already slowing, but the situation has deteriorated in the past few months of 2008. The turnaround hit hard, with synchronised effects on virtually all financial and goods and services markets, not only in the US but also in Europe, Asia, Latin America and Oceania. We are now in the deepest downturn in OECD countries in the postwar period. GDP in the OECD area as a whole is expected to fall in 2009 for the first time since the Second World War.
Taking my previous comments on the most likely public spending and revenue developments in 2021 together, we may conclude that there is a significant risk that the budget deficit will overshoot its reference level of 7.7% of GDP next year. As I have already said, public spending forecasts are subject to certain upside risks, basically deriving from a possible intensification of the pandemic, which we have in fact been seeing in recent weeks in Spain and in the rest of Europe. This may require some of the discretionary measures adopted to protect households, the self-employed and businesses to be extended for longer than initially envisaged. At the same time, we cannot rule out the unemployment rate, and thus spending on unemployment benefit, behaving less favourably than expected. In turn, public revenue projections face downside risks mainly linked to a relatively optimistic forecast for GDP growth and, consequently, for the increase in the tax base in 2021. As regards the fiscal policy stance, this is usually approximated by the change, from one year to the next, in the general government structural balance, a variable that is not directly observable and can only be estimated with a high degree of uncertainty. According to the information contained in the Draft Budgetary Plan, the structural balance will deteriorate from -4.1% of GDP in 2019 to -5.4% in 2020, and again in 2021 to -6.3% (see Chart 14). Accordingly, the fiscal policy stance will be expansionary in 2020 (-1.4 pp), 24  and in 2021 (-0.8 pp).

8  Lastly, in the case of consumer prices, the scenarios presented in September envisaged that, following the notable slowdown in recent months, the headline inflation rate would be negative for 2020 as a whole (-0.2% under scenario 1 and -0.3% under scenario 2). In the following two years it would only rise very gradually (to 1% and 1.2% under scenario 1 and to 0.8% and 1.1% under scenario 2), underpinned by the progressive recovery in aggregate demand and some quickening in the energy component of prices. Yet since these scenarios were released in September, various indicators have been published which enable their current validity to be assessed, albeit qualitatively. In any event, the Banco de España will update its forecasts in December, in a joint exercise with the Eurosystem. First, it is important to note that the INE’s preliminary estimate for the quarter-on-quarter GDP growth rate for Q3 a few days ago was, at 16.7%, practically in line with the rate estimated in early September in the context of scenario 1 (16.6%). However, as I pointed out earlier, a wide range of indicators would suggest that the recovery progressively lost momentum in Q3. This would essentially be related to the rapid increase in the number of COVID-19 infections observed in Spain in recent months.
Within a five-to-ten year time frame, I could see at least a portion of Fedwire large-volume transfers of funds and securities -- with real-time gross-settlement -- handled over the Internet. Please do not ask me exactly when this will come about. On the other hand, with potentially enormous, secure, bilateral netting arrangements occurring between clearing banks in real time over the Internet, volume on existing large-value transfer systems could decrease dramatically. The clearing banks could, conceivably, save themselves some real money. Jurisdictional Issues Any discussion of banking or any form of commerce over the Internet today would not be complete without at least a few words on the legal jurisdictional issues that the Internet presents. This is arguably the area of law most in flux, the most subject to change on a monthly or even daily basis, depending on the specific jurisdiction and long-arm statute under discussion. In the United States, cases have already been decided regarding court jurisdiction and the Internet over alleged trademark violations,14 contract disputes,15 and advertising disputes.16 Although I am as yet unaware of any banking organizations that have become embroiled in litigation over jurisdictional issues from being on the Internet, I cannot promise you that such a suit will never occur. If a State banking agency or a State attorney general decided one day that a Web-site or an Internet-based transaction conferred sufficient minimum contacts with a state resident so that the state’s long-arm statute applied to the bank, a suit could easily be filed.

According to one recent case, the “Internet” is “an international computer ’supernetwork’ of over 15,000 computer networks used by about 30 million individuals, corporations, organizations, and educational institutions worldwide.”1 Another case described the “Internet” as “a global communications network linked principally by modems which transmit electronic data over telephone lines [with] approximately 20 million to 30 million users.”2 “Banking” raises a host of issues in the United States. There is commercial banking and investment banking. The products offered by “banking” firms range from deposit taking (including payment services), investment advisory and management services, trading in financial instruments, brokering and underwriting financial instruments, lending, and trust services. A bank can offer all of these services on the Internet. For the purposes of this discussion, I will basically confine myself to deposit taking (including payment services) and lending. A Central Banker’s View From a United States central bank perspective, the most fundamental question of banking and the Internet is: What are the monetary-policy implications, especially were we to assume the enormous, widespread scale that some have been predicting? From this perspective, the answer appears to be: probably not much.
In Norway, we saw this following the financial crisis and after the fall in oil prices in 2014. Five years after the oil price fall, employment was still lower than before in those parts of the country that were particularly hard hit.1 Chart 4 Rising number with low education levels among long-term unemployed Long-term unemployed. Number of persons 20000  20000  February 2020 January 2021  15000  15000  10000  10000  5000  5000  0  0 Lower Upper Higher education, Higher education, secondary school secondary school up to four years over four years  Source: Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV)  1 Ellingsen and Galaasen (2021): Langvarige konsekvenser i arbeidsmarkedet [Lasting consequences in the labour market], Staff memo 1/2021, Norges Bank (Norwegian only). 5  The pandemic may result in a new round of exclusion from the labour market. Many have now been out of work for a long time, and the share of long-term unemployed is higher than in earlier crises. Many of them have low education levels (Chart 4). Long-term unemployment leads to a loss of skills. NORGES BANK ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES 18 FEBRUARY 2021  The support schemes implemented by the authorities are meant to be a bridge to more normal times. But the new normal will be shaped by adjustments in household and business behaviour over the past year. Once the economic downturn is over, the labour market may have changed.

Role of the financial system in supporting green technology The financial system has played an important role over the last few decades, in facilitating the economic transformation and growth of the real economy, by channelling investments into productive sectors. This role has been significantly fortified by a strong and well-capitalised financial system in Malaysia, that has been built through comprehensive reforms undertaken over the last decade. Our financial system today is characterised by solid financials, and strengthened risk management and governance practices. Combined with ample liquidity and improved credit infrastructures, the financial system is well-positioned to support new areas of growth that are viable and promising, including those in the green technology sector. To meet the needs of the green technology sector, I would like to highlight two points that might reduce the information asymmetry between financial institutions and businesses, a pre-requisite for building a sustainable financing ecosystem for this sector. Firstly, financial institutions must have the capacity and capabilities, to assess the viability of projects despite the complex, diverse and rapidly-changing nature of green technology. Secondly, green businesses need continuing advisory support as they may be technically strong, but lack the capabilities to develop comprehensive business plans and cash flow projections, needed to demonstrate that a project is viable to financiers.