samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The use of unconventional measures has also changed the nature of part of the liquidity created. Liquidity resulting from repos and currency swaps is temporary: it flows back automatically when the transactions are not renewed. Liquidity created by acquiring foreign exchange and Swiss franc bonds, conversely, is permanent. We expect to keep the foreign exchange and bonds we have purchased on the SNB’s balance sheet for an extended period. As part of the impending normalisation of monetary policy, SNB Bills – introduced a year ago – will therefore play a central role. Liquidity absorption will mainly be conducted through the issuance of SNB Bills. Consequently, part of the balance sheet will in future be funded with interest-bearing debt capital. Moreover, the expansion of the balance sheet will substantially increase the SNB’s credit and currency risks. Strengthening the SNB’s provisions The financial crisis has highlighted how important it is for the SNB to have a solid equity capital buffer. Without it, the SNB would be unable to carry the risks on its currency reserves internally – nor would it be in a position to take the measures to stabilise the financial system that proved essential in the financial crisis. Equity capital, furthermore, is central to the independence and credibility of the SNB. In spite of the extensive crisis measures we have taken, the SNB’s balance sheet is as robust as ever – though its financial stress resistance is heavily dependent on the distribution reserve, which is high at present.

The positive outcomes led to an increase in the current account surplus to Rls 338 billion in 2005 in comparison with a surplus of Rls 195 billion in the preceding year. In keeping with these developments, the money stock increased by 11.6 percent. These economic developments took place in an environment marked by stability in domestic prices. The cost of living index increased by less than 1 percent during 2005. It is expected that the positive results of the economy would continue at the same levels in this year, God willing. Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, These positive economic developments were achieved in spite of surrounding challenges, internal or external. The composition of the Kingdom's population represents the most prominent challenge. The Saudi youth group (male and female), younger than 30 years, exceeds 60 percent of the Saudi population which entails continued extensive efforts to build Saudi nationals in scientific, health and intellectual terms to carry out their future development role in the best manner. Your direct attention to satisfy the current and future needs of the country and citizens has been embodied by Your directives providing for using a portion of the additional revenues realized due to  BIS Review 111/2006  1  improved fiscal balance in vital areas, at the top of which is the development of human resources as being the first pivot and ultimate goal of development.
29 Hancock and Passmore (2015) estimate the impact of the purchase of a 1 percent market share of the agency  MBS and U.S. Treasury markets to be 2.0 basis points and 2.5 basis points, respectively. At current market sizes, these estimates suggest that $ billion of agency MBS purchases or $ billion in U.S. Treasury purchases would lower agency MBS yields by 1 basis point. 30 The Desk conducts small-value exercises from time to time as a matter of prudent advance planning. They do  not represent a change in the stance of monetary policy, and no inference should be drawn about the timing of any change in the stance of monetary policy in the future. These exercises include outright sales of agency MBS and coupon swaps of unsettled agency MBS holdings. The most recent coupon swap small-value exercise occurred in October 2016, and the most recent agency MBS sales small-value exercise occurred in late Mayearly June 2016. 31 One example of an agency MBS sales program is the U.S. Treasury’s decision to liquidate its $ billion  agency MBS portfolio in 2011 through a combination of about $ billion per month in sales and ongoing principal paydowns. The Treasury announced on March 21, 2011, that it would wind down this portfolio 9 / 10  BIS central bankers' speeches  and sales took place between March 22, 2011, and March 13, 2012. 32 See the “Policy Normalization Principles and Plans” section of the FOMC’s Rules and Authorizations, January  2016.

New surprise in June – but in the opposite direction Prior to the meeting in June, we received the National Accounts figures for the first quarter. These showed that productivity had developed much more weakly at the beginning of the year than we had anticipated. The labour supply was also still lagging behind the assessment we had made, which indicated that the labour market had tightened. This of course changed our assessment of how quickly cost pressures could rise and we revised up our forecast for the repo rate by an average of around one half a percentage point in relation to the February one. BIS Review 112/2007  3  The differences between our forecast and market expectations were small over the coming year, but our interest rate forecast was still lower than market expectations in the longer term. Despite this, implied forward rates rose over the entire forecast period by approximately 0.15 percentage points when we published our forecast. Market reactions were thus actually stronger than in February. But why were market reactions so strong in June? Of course, we have no interest in creating major fluctuations in the financial markets through our decisions and our communication. It is therefore important to us to understand why the market reacted the way it did. This is a natural part of the work on making communication as clear as possible. One reason for the rise in interest rates in June was that international interest rates rose on the day we published our interest rate decision.
In the past, the processes of raising interest rates in the US were surrounded by complex economic and financial developments in some economies. In the 1980s, the most critical case, there was the debt crisis in Latin America. Then in the 1990s, the most significant effects were circumscribed to some countries. In the 2000s, the emerging world was not so affected directly, but the subsequent subprime crisis in the United States and all its implications for the world resulted the Federal Reserve rate hike. Today, the conditions in which the United States and the emerging world confront the episode are different as seen from both sides. China's growth and the size of Europe make them a potential risk for the Fed, so it cannot overlook the effect of its decisions on these economies. At the same time, economic policy frameworks have changed in emerging markets and are more capable of dealing with external shocks. Anyway, it is still an element of risk. A box in this Report provides a deeper analysis of these topics. 5  Beyond the volatility of recent months, the dollar remains strong with respect to most currencies, developed and emerging. Our peso, which has depreciated a little more than 30% from its 2013 average, has behaved similarly to most of our trading partners’ currencies, so its multilateral variation has been much smaller. Accordingly, the real exchange rate index with base year 1986=100 is now near 93, some 3% above its 2013 average (figure 10).

Recent years’ relentless downward revisions to growth prospects have permeated companies’ desired level of inventories and part of what we see in the 2017 growth outlook is also related to that. For 2018, the baseline scenario assumes that the economy will perform better than this year, growing in the 2.25% to 3.25% range. This will allow the activity gap to narrow steadily throughout next year, keeping in mind that the Board still estimates our economy’s potential growth rate between 2.5% and 3%, and trend growth at 3.2%. These projections assume that, after a three-year-long fall, gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) will post a slightly positive growth in 2017 and a clearly stronger expansion in 2018. This result will be decisively influenced by higher investment in non-mining and non-housing investment (mainly machinery and equipment). This, because the former is expected to regain its positive numbers during 2018 and the latter to continue to adjust for a few more quarters, after the boom triggered by amendments to VAT payment regulations in the sector. As a percentage of GDP, in 2017 GFCF will reach 21.7% and 22.5% in real and nominal terms, respectively. On the consumption side, no major changes are expected in annual growth, and it is foreseen that it will continue to sustain domestic output and expenditure. Our baseline scenario assumes that consumption will grow at a pace of 2.5% and 3% this and next year, quite like 2016.
However, it is not necessarily a law of nature that technological advances always create at least as many jobs as they take away. The digital technology developments have made it increasingly profitable, and to an increasing degree possible, to replace human labour with machinery. It is probable that “technological unemployment” resulting from automation will become a more common phenomenon in the coming period than it has been so far, although this is of course something that remains to be seen. If this were to be the case, a lot more groups in the economy will experience downward pressure on their wages. This may, in turn, have a restraining effect on inflation. Globalisation, the acceleration of international trade and the integration of China and other developing countries into the world economy, has been an important underlying trend in the global economy and will probably remain so in the coming period. Like digitisation, globalisation affects the economy through many different channels. Perhaps the one that has been most in focus in the discussions on inflation is the downward pressure that results from industrialised nations increasingly importing cheaper goods from, for instance, China. 13 This essentially concerns cutting the price of import goods relative to prices of domesticallyproduced goods, while inflation is a change in the general price level that affects all prices.

  If the shape of the yield curve is evolving regardless of monetary policy decisions, if risk premia are uncorrelated with fundamentals, if market liquidity dries up, then the interest rate channel ceases to function.   When this affects banks’ funding, in particular via a freezing of the interbank market, the bank lending channel seizes up. In such circumstances, central banks must turn to non-standard measures such as direct aggressive interventions to ensure that their monetary policy decisions are effectively transmitted and that markets keep ticking over. Needless to say, the recent period has seen many such incidents as well as the implementation of many non-standard measures. Among the measures currently in place, some are based on “quantitative easing”, which involves the purchasing of securities primarily with a view to generating excess liquidity that in turn moves into all market segments and fosters a better refinancing of the economy; others are based on “credit easing” and aim to restore the functioning of certain particularly disrupted market segments. Seen from another angle, certain policies aim to restore the smooth functioning of the interest rate channel by directly impacting the yield curve, others aim to restore the bank lending channel by ensuring that banks can obtain funding beyond the very short-term maturities to which central banks usually confine themselves. In all events, central banks stand in for failing market participants or markets.
20  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Chart 5: Capital accumulation in the UK since 1850 Capital per head, 2006 prices £  50,000 45,000 40,000 35,000 30,000 25,000 20,000 15,000 10,000 5,000  0  5,000  10,000  15,000  0 25,000  20,000  GDP per head, 2006 prices £ Source: Hills, Thomas and Dimsdale (2010). Chart 6: Capital accumulation across countries since 1980 Capital per head, 2005 prices $ 140,000 Japan 120,000 Germany 100,000  Italy  80,000 South Korea 60,000 India  US  China  40,000  UK  Urban China  0  5,000  20,000  10,000  15,000  20,000  25,000  30,000  35,000  40,000  0 45,000  GDP per head, 2005 prices $ Source: McKinsey Global Institute (2010). BIS central bankers’ speeches  21  Chart 7: Literacy rates in Western Europe Netherlands  Great Britain  Sweden  Germany  France  Italy  Literacy rate, percent 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10  1400  1500  1600  1700  1800  1900  0  2000  Source: OurWorldinData.org, based on Buringh and Van Zanden (2009) and Broadberry and O’Rourke (2010). Chart 8: Average years of schooling of the population aged 15+ Percent  Developing economies  12  World  10  Advanced economies 8 6 4 2  1950  1960  1970  1980  1990  2000  2010  0  Source: Barro and Lee (2013).

Same as most central banks throughout the world, the National Bank, as specified by the Statistical Research Program generates three sets of macroeconomic statistics: •  Monetary statistics that includes processing and presentation of data on the money supply (monetary aggregates), banks' interest rates on approved credits and accepted deposits, and many other data on the banking sector;  •  Balance of payments statistics that includes processing and compiling data on the developments in the balance of payments in the Republic of Macedonia; and  •  External debt statistics that includes processing and presentation of data on the foreign debt of the country. The National Bank has developed all these major sets of macroeconomic statistics in line with the international recommendations and standards. The harmonization of the method of developing such statistics with the international recommendations and standards has permanently been subject to verification by international institutions and organizations, primarily by the International Monetary Fund, as an institution that creates the methodological standards and recommendations in the area of central banking statistics. I would like to take this opportunity to mention the report of the so-called IMF ROSC (Report of the Observance on Standards and Codes) Mission, where the assessments of the  BIS Review 100/2006  1  central bank statistics are particularly positive, i.e. the development of the NBRM monetary and balance of payments statistics is largely harmonized with the international recommendations and standards.
But it is clear that not all of the weakness was due to these one-time factors – and in light of this, I have revised down my expectations for the pace of recovery going forward. On the inflation front, the committee noted that inflation has moderated recently as energy and commodity prices have declined from their peaks – having picked up earlier in the year, mainly reflecting higher prices for commodities and imported goods, as well as the supply disruptions from Japan. Longer term inflation expectations remain stable, and the committee now expects inflation to settle over the coming quarters at levels at or below those consistent with our mandate to promote full employment and price stability. In light of the current outlook, the FOMC in its statement noted that we now anticipate that we are likely to keep short-term interest rates exceptionally low at least through mid-2013. We also discussed the range of policy tools available to promote a stronger economic recovery in a context of price stability. Further details on the discussion at the meeting will be available when the minutes are published later this month. I will not comment on monetary policy any further today. Following the release of the FOMC’s statement, market interest rates generally moved lower, which should help provide some additional support for economic activity and jobs. I would note, however, that conditions remain unsettled and the equity market in particular has been quite volatile recently. Regional economic conditions So how is our region doing?

Aggressive hike is not warranted as the Thai economy is still in the early phase of recovery, while it could risk derailing the recovery. A gradual approach is needed to strike a balance between facilitating a smooth take-off of the recovery and minimizing the impact from potential bumps. • Measured: Policy decision will be calibrated taking into account economic conditions and circumstances prevailing at the time. If a pause is required, we will pause. If 50 bps is necessary to meet our policy objective, we will raise 50 bps. But with the current circumstances, aggressive rate hikes or too early withdrawal of financial measures can jeopardize the economic recovery given pockets of vulnerabilities and the uneven impacts on different groups. c. We have taken first steps towards this at the Financial Institutions Policy Committee (FIPC) meeting on June 30th and the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting on August 10th. • The FIPC decided to withdraw some of the blanket-type measures including FIDF fee cut and bank dividend payment restrictions. • The MPC voted 6 to 1 to raise the policy rate by 25 bps. Part 3: What is our rationale for monetary policy normalization? [3.1 MPC decision: 10 August] Two weeks ago, the MPC has delivered the first policy rate hike after having held the policy rate at its historically low level for more than two years.
Governments worldwide are already taking steps to address this concern – but more collective effort is needed to make any significant progress – in closing the gap between the rich and the poor. The third challenge is the retreat in globalisation. Increasingly inward-looking political sentiment poses serious threat to trade liberalisation – which has formed the global economy’s growth engine since the 1980s. Two decades ago, trade liberalisation enabled developing countries such as China and India to achieve exceptional growth, and in the process, unshackling millions from deep poverty. The calls for trade protectionism that are rife in the advanced economies today is therefore a major concern. If left unaddressed, the upsurge in protectionism and insular policies may lead to a reverse in globalisation, which would be detrimental to living standards. I have painted a rather bleak picture that depicts the fragile state of today’s world. Various forces at play have led us to where we are now – finance being one of them. While finance has lifted the lives of many, some argue that it has derailed from its intended objectives, leading to many economic, environmental and social problems that we face today. They argue that the global economy is very much driven by global financial capital, with most of it managed by financial entities that are attuned to financial risk and return considerations. Beyond these considerations, the non-financial impacts of an investment or ‘externalities’, such as rain forest destruction; water and air pollution are rarely considered and often simply ignored.

So far, the ECB has consistently adopted the second approach to non-standard policies. In the early phase of the crisis, we re-absorbed the liquidity risk and the market counterparty risk that banks were facing in interbank transactions. In keeping with this second approach, the aim was to repair the functioning of the market, not to add stimulus in a situation in which the policy rate was still positive. OMTs, as their name suggests, will operate through outright transactions, not lending operations. But, in essence, they have the same purpose as the non-standard measures we adopted in 2008 and 2009: to price out a type of catastrophic risk premium that investors demand in conditions of market paralysis. It was break down risk in the early stage of the crisis, the risk that the payments system would seize up completely. It is break- up risk now. 5  The policy intervention works by reducing the supply of long-duration securities considered as risk-free and increasing the supply of zero-duration reserves. To the extent that private investors do not view these assets as perfect substitutes, in order for private investors to be willing to make those portfolio adjustments, the expected return on the long-duration securities has to fall. With less duration risk to hold in the aggregate, the market should require a lower premium to hold that risk.
The point in Figure 6 that corresponds to February 2008 is not far from origin, while the point that corresponds to February 2009 is a long way from origin and represents substantial sum of squares for the inflation-gap and output-gap forecasts. Assessing whether monetary policy has been efficient thus entails attempting to determine whether monetary policy has been on the modified Taylor curve or not. The analysis is therefore ex ante, which means that the starting point is the central bank's forecasts for inflation and resource utilisation rather than the actual outcomes. In practice it is of course difficult to perform a more precise analysis, it becomes rather a question of determining to what extent monetary policy has been clearly inefficient in the sense that it is easy to find another repo rate path that would stabilise inflation more without stabilising resource utilisation less, or that would even stabilise both more. A factor that can make the analysis even more complicated is if the central bank, apart from inflation and a measure of resource utilisation, also includes other targets or limitations in its monetary policy deliberations. On such conceivable factor is so-called interest-rate smoothing, in other words that the central bank also chooses to even out the changes in the policy rate and ensure that they are made in relatively small and regular steps, for example by 0.25 percentage points at a time. With such a restriction, monetary policy will be located at a point above and to the right of the modified Taylor curve.

5 Figures 1 and 2 show a comparison of the accuracy of the forecasts in the period 1999-2008 for CPI inflation and GDP growth for a number of analysts. The red bars show the absolute mean error adjusted for differences in publication dates. The blue bars show the mean error with positive or negative sign. The shorter the blue bars, the smaller the systematic over- or underestimation has been – and the less bias the forecasts have had. If the bar is above the zero line the mean error has been positive and the forecasts have on average been too low, and vice versa. In the case of both inflation and GDP growth, the Riksbank's accuracy has been relatively good and its bias relatively small compared to other forecasters. Was monetary policy well-balanced ex ante? Given that it has been determined that the central bank's forecasts are normally satisfactory, the next step is to analyse, ex ante, the monetary policy deliberations the central bank has conducted on the basis of the forecasts. The first question to answer is whether the monetary policy conducted has been efficient. Given the information available at the time the decision was made, would it have been possible, by selecting a different interest rate path, to have stabilised inflation or the real economy better without stabilising the other less well? Would it even have been possible to achieve a better stabilisation of both?