samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
At the same time, resources and appropriations for the supervision and control of foreign workers’ wages and working conditions have been increased. As a result, foreign suppliers of services are losing much of their competitive edge in relation to Norwegian enterprises. The latest Directorate of Labour figures show that seasonally adjusted unemployment was 3.4 per cent in September. This is in line with the developments we envisaged in the June Inflation Report (2/05). Statistics Norway’s Labour Force Survey (LFS), however, presents a somewhat less favourable picture of unemployment. Registered unemployment is on the decline in all regions. It took some time before unemployment began to decline in Central Norway, but during the last half year it has fallen substantially. The industry structure in Trøndelag is very similar to that of the country as a whole. Nord-Trøndelag is the country’s third largest agricultural county and employment in the primary industries is high. Even though the industry structure in the Trøndelag counties is not significantly different from the rest of the country, this region is nonetheless struggling with relatively high unemployment, even in periods of solid economic growth. Statistics Norway recently published a study that showed that the mobility in the labour market was lower in this region than in the country as a whole.1 Companies have, for example, not been inclined to recruit recent graduates. This is an important challenge for the regional labour market authorities. Information from Norges Bank’s regional network is important for Norges Bank’s analysis of the Norwegian economy.

Far from putting on the back burner questions concerning Basel III and its application in Europe, that is to say CRD IV and its project to create a “single rule book” for European banks, I believe, on the contrary, these developments underscore the importance of better understanding the current reform and taking time to reflect, in order to ensure that the new framework for banking regulation and the distribution of supervisory responsibilities in Europe will deliver all their expected benefits. Before leaving you to discuss in greater detail the impact and stakes of the Basel III reform, I would like to make a few remarks on this topic in relation to the current environment. 1. Basel III and CRD IV represent a quantitative and qualitative leap aimed at addressing the shortcomings highlighted by the current financial crisis  First, I believe that it would be useful to rapidly place the Basel III reform in its context, in order to fully understand its scope. Basel III is first and foremost a response to the financial crisis that started in 2007. This crisis and the subsequent wave of shocks to the banking system have not merely resulted in a temporary loss of output for the major advanced economies. They have also had a lasting impact on employment, industrial production, the confidence of investors and households, and needless to say on public finances, which make crisis exit even more difficult.
higher wage claims. Indeed, despite large increases in oil prices inflation in OECD countries oscillated around 3 percent in the past year and core inflation (CPI excluding food and fuel) drifted from 2 percent to 1.8 percent in the same period 5 . However, in my view, further prolonged increases in energy prices, especially those stemming from supply constraints or related to political risk could result in more elevated inflationary pressures in the short term and could seriously harm global growth prospects in the medium term, also because they would contribute to further worsening of global imbalances. The issue of global imbalances has attracted enormous attention, both from academics, investors, policy-makers and, of course, central-bankers. You may find a detailed description of the issue of  1  International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook, April 2006. 2  European Commission, Directorate General For Economic and Financial Affairs, Economic Forecasts, Spring 2006. 3  See endnote 1. 4  Walton D. „Has oil lost the ability to shock?”, speech to the University of Warwick Graduates’ Association Senior Directors’ Forum at the Commonwealth Club, London, 23 February 2006. 5  OECD “OECD Consumer Price Index“, various releases. BIS Review 61/2006  1  global imbalances in my earlier speeches posted on the NBP website (www.nbp.pl publications speeches/lectures). Today I will only say that never in a human history has the largest economy run such a high current account deficit reaching 6.5 percent of GDP, not to mention that this economy is a provider of the global reserve currency.

2  BIS Review 61/2006  entry into the euro area have made the Polish T-bond market, with the average daily net turnover of PLN 6 billion (the largest and the most liquid market in the region), more attractive to foreign investors. EU membership has enabled institutional investors, that are allowed to invest in instruments issued within the Community, to increase their exposure to Polish securities. In 2004, non-residents’ investments in T-bonds issued in Poland rose by about PLN 20 billion, and in 2005 - by a further PLN 7 billion. The beginning of 2006 was also marked by new records on the Warsaw Stock Exchange amid purchases made by foreign investors and domestic investment funds. In 2005, the number of IPOs amounted to 35 and the market capitalization increased by almost 50%. However, one should not take these favorable global liquidity conditions for granted. Federal Reserve has already raised the interest rate to 5 percent. The ECB is in the process of normalizing interest rates and the Bank of Japan has announced an end to quantitative easing and markets started to price in first increases of BoJ interest rate. This may expose some emerging markets, which have weak fundamentals to a change in investors’ sentiment, may lead to the depreciation of local EM currencies and a significant drop in market liquidity. 11 Some risks are also related to the changing structure of our financial markets.
Mark Carney: Enabling the FinTech transformation – revolution, restoration, or reformation? Speech by Mr Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England and Chairman of the Financial Stability Board, at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet for Bankers and Merchants of the City of London, Mansion House, London, 16 June 2016. *  *  *  Given the tragic murder of Jo Cox MP on 16 June, at the Mansion House dinner in lieu of this speech, the Governor paid tribute to Ms Cox and the highest standards of public service she represented throughout her life. 1. Introduction  My Lord Mayor, Chancellor, My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen. Let me begin by thanking Andrew Bailey for his outstanding record of public service during his 31 years at the Bank of England. Andrew is an extraordinary public servant who has devoted his entire professional life to serving the people of the United Kingdom. During his career, he has worked across all of the Bank’s policy areas, combining leadership and innovation to deliver consistently the Bank’s policy objectives. His work in helping to manage the crisis and then to develop the post-crisis regulatory framework has been exemplary. He has made the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) a highly respected and effective regulator and built a team of exceptionally dedicated colleagues. I would like to thank Andrew for his counsel and support since I joined the Bank and wish him every success in steering the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) at this vital time in its history.

So earlier this year the Bank announced we would be drawing up a blueprint to replace our current real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system, now twenty years old. 48 institutions currently have settlement accounts in RTGS. All other users of the systems that settle across RTGS access settlement via one of four agent banks. 5 These users include over 1000 non-bank PSPs serving customers’ increasingly demanding standards, and many rely on major UK payment schemes, particularly Faster Payments (FPS). As they grow, some PSPs want to reduce their reliance on the systems, service levels, risk appetite and goodwill of the very banks with whom they are competing. Re-selling services ultimately provided by banks limits these firms’ growth, potential to innovate, and competitive impact. 3  These PSPs include firms granted the status of either an e-money or payment institution in the UK. 4  Examples include From Stripe to Square, from Paypal to Ripple, from Applepay to Zapp. 5  Indirect access removes the need to build costly payments infrastructure – a potentially large fixed cost for young companies. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  That is why I am announcing this evening that the Bank intends to extend direct access to RTGS beyond the current set of firms, allowing a range of non-bank PSPs to compete on a level playing field with banks. 6 By increasing the proportion of settlement in central bank money, diversifying the number of settlement firms, and driving greater innovation in risk-reducing payments technologies, expanding access should bring financial stability benefits.
Timothy F Geithner: Implications of growth in credit derivatives for financial stability Remarks by Mr Timothy F Geithner, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at the New York University Stern School of Business Third Credit Risk Conference, New York City, 16 May 2006. *  *  *  Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today. We're in the midst of a period of rapid growth and innovation in the market for credit derivatives, and the developments in this market have important implications for broader financial market functioning and stability. A vital and efficient financial system such as ours is defined by its ability to identify new ways to allocate capital and share risk, but often the pace of innovation in the instruments themselves outstrips the pace of improvement in the risk management and control infrastructure. The credit derivatives market is no exception to this general observation. In my remarks today, I'll focus on some of the implications of these changes in the credit derivatives market for the stability of the overall financial system. As with any attempt to explore the broader implications of rapid growth in a new market, I'll say more about what we do not know than about what we do know. I'll also highlight the need for continued progress in addressing the challenges posed by the rapid growth in this market.

Philipp Hildebrand: The virtues of flexible financial markets - a central banking perspective Summary of a speech by Mr Philipp Hildebrand, Member of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the CFA Institute Annual Conference, Zurich, 22 May 2006. The complete speech can be found in German on the Swiss National Bank’s website (www.snb.ch)  *  *  *  Summary Rapid technological change and market liberalization have been the driving forces behind the remarkable evolution of global financial markets over the past three decades. The consequences of this development include a geographic rearrangement of global capital markets, a fast pace of product innovation and changes in the nature and composition of financial market participants. The benefits associated with today’s flexible financial markets are manifold. Financial markets have become much more efficient in allocating capital. New products enable a better distribution of risks and the liquefaction of previously illiquid assets. They have also increased market transparency. As a result, modern financial markets facilitated innovation and likely enhanced economic growth. Moreover, they have contributed to make economies more resilient to shocks. These extensive benefits notwithstanding, modern financial market also entails new risks. These risks tend to elicit calls for increasingly far-reaching regulation. While some regulation may indeed be required to guarantee the integrity of financial markets, the threshold for such regulation should be set high.
Overall, this will provide solutions that reduce the use of resources and increase efficiency in the payment system. Cost coverage through high interest margins and float implies hidden costs for customers and makes it difficult to choose correctly on the basis of product costs and features. Therefore, there should be as much direct pricing as possible. The customer who chooses among various payment instruments should bear the cost of this choice. The production of payment services is characterised by economies of scale. Development costs are high and the requirements as to operating reliability and back-up solutions for the computer systems are stringent, while the cost of producing one extra unit is low. This applies in particular to the electronic payment services. We then face a classic pricing problem that is described in economic theory. If the price is set equivalent to the cost of producing the last unit (marginal cost), which in a certain sense is "correct" pricing with regard to efficiency, the manufacturer will not fully cover his costs. The manufacturer must then cover the remaining costs with the profits from other services. Innovation and development of new products are important driving forces behind increased efficiency in the payment system. In order to finance development activities, banks and producers of payment services must have a certain profit. Both direct pricing of payment services and other income may generate this profit. If the profit is to come from direct pricing, the income must cover more than the production costs.

Svein Gjedrem: Uncertainty, economic models and monetary policy Address by Mr Svein Gjedrem, Governor of Norges Bank (Central Bank of Norway), at the Centre for Monetary Economics/Norwegian School of Management, Oslo, 17 September 2007. Please note that the text below may differ slightly from the actual presentation. The address is based on the assessments presented at Norges Bank’s press conference following the Executive Board’s monetary policy meeting on 15 August, Monetary Policy Report 2/07 and on previous speeches. *  *  *  I welcome the opportunity this time to discuss with you at the Centre for Monetary Economics certain themes that are not related to the most newsworthy economic policy issues. I will discuss the following three themes: •  the role of monetary policy  •  our view of economic models as a basis for interest rate setting  •  and finally, measuring inflation and uncertainty linked to the rate of inflation at a given point in time  Let me start by discussing the role of monetary policy. The primary objective of monetary policy is to ensure that inflation expectations are low and stable. Expectations of low and stable inflation provide a nominal anchor. Economic agents’ inflation expectations influence the decisions they make today. Our experience – and the experience of other countries – shows that without a nominal anchor we cannot achieve stability in employment and output.
Firms, including Italian ones, which have restructured and are exposed to international competition have become more productive, have started to regain market share, have improved their productivity and started to pay their employees higher wages. By contrast, firms which are protected from competition and benefit from having a monopoly or from national or local restrictions on trade, and perhaps even benefit from state aid tend to pass their higher costs onto consumers. I don’t need to tell you that there are some Italian firms which are flourishing without state aid, while others don’t have real growth opportunities and continue to be a burden on taxpayers because they receive support from the public sector. Finally, protection from international competition means higher prices, as quotas and tariffs are a form of taxation. This weakens consumers’ purchasing power, and particular affects the poor. There is really no need to favour price increases in these times of higher inflationary pressures. The fourth mistake that needs to be avoided is to intervene in financial markets without considering the perverse incentives that may result from these actions. Whatever measure aimed at supporting financial institutions in distress due to market turbulence should not allow those who have made mistakes to avoid paying the price for them. Should this happen, they would be tempted to do the same thing again. The measures taken in recent months by central banks, including the ECB, aimed at supporting market liquidity but, at the same time, not to relieve investors from solvency risks, go in this direction.

I will not dwell on the benefits that citizens and firms gain from having a stable currency like the euro in such a financial crisis, even though they do not often realise them. It is important not to forget it. Let me just recall how the US recession in the early 1990s affected Europe in 1992-93, leading – in the presence of uncoordinated economic policies within Europe – to serious economic and financial turbulence. The ERM crisis and the exit of the Italian lira and the British pound in the autumn of 1992 as well as the widening of the fluctuation bands of the ERM led to large changes in competitiveness, with an overall contractional impact even on the stronger economies such as Germany. It is difficult to imagine what would have happened in recent months without the euro. If the past is a good guide to understand the future, we can be sure that Italian inflation and interest rates would be higher, with negative repercussions on consumption and investment. We can only guess what our oil bill would now be if we had a weak currency instead of the euro. Likewise, just imagine the situation for households having mortgage debt who would have to pay substantially higher interest rates. Monetary stability requires a monetary policy focused on medium-term price stability. Especially in a phase of higher uncertainty such as the one we are currently experiencing there must be no doubt about the priorities of the central bank, or about its strategy and independence.
(iii)  People tend to follow the actions of others. That can be an effective strategy. For example, on the game show “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”, the “Ask the Audience” lifeline has a 91% success rate, showing that there can be wisdom in crowds. 10 But experiments also show that a substantial proportion of people choose a glaringly incorrect answer to a simple question when told it is the answer others have chosen (even though the same question is answered correctly in isolation). 11 In a sporting setting, goalkeepers facing penalties tend to dive, rather than stay in the middle of the goal, more than the direction of penalties suggests is appropriate. 12 Such types of behaviour reflect the fact that people are unwilling to  6  See the collection of articles in Kahneman, D, Slovic, P and Tversky, A (1982). 7  For example, see Palm (1995). She found that those most affected by earthquakes were most likely to take out insurance afterward. But this effect faded as time elapsed after an earthquake. 8  For example, Malmendier and Nagel (2006) report that those who experience high stock returns during their life are more likely to hold stocks and report lower risk aversion; those who have experienced high inflation are less likely to hold bonds. 9  See, for example, Gigerenzer, G and Edwards, A (2003). 10  See Surowiecki (2004). 11  See, for example, Asch (1951). 12  See Bar-Eli et al (2007).

Mervyn King: Uncertainty in macroeconomic policy making – art or science? Lecture by Mr Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, at the Royal Society conference on “Handling Uncertainty in Science”, London, 22 March 2010. Accompanying slides to this speech can be found on the Bank of England’s website. David Aikman, Philip Barrett, Sujit Kapadia, Mervyn King, James Proudman, Tim Taylor, Iain de Weymarn and Tony Yates (Bank of England) contributed to this paper. * 1. *  *  Uncertainty and public policy  Most questions of public policy relate to uncertainties. Answers depend upon an ability to understand and evaluate those uncertainties. Yet many commentators and members of the public want to believe in certainties. They want to cut through the thickets of caveats and technical difficulties to the “bottom line”. We see this in economic policy, weather forecasting and the interpretation of secret intelligence. Five years ago, the Bank of England and the Met Office held an informal seminar to exchange ideas on how to communicate measures of uncertainty to the general public. Although we failed to persuade broadcasters to explore the issues of economic and weather forecasting in more depth, the bilateral relationship which developed between the Bank and Paul Hardaker, who moved from the Met Office to take over the Royal Meteorological Society, flourished. Today’s conference is a tribute to Paul’s persistence. It could hardly be more timely.
Another example is the construction and engineering firm Odebrecht SA using its subsidiaries and shell companies in the British Virgin Islands and Belize to facilitate at least $ million in kickbacks to government officials and political parties. The schemes involved paying consulting and agency fees to shell companies who then facilitated payments to government officials. The most prominent scheme involved Petrobras, the energy company majority owned by the government of Brazil. The U.S. government worked with law enforcement in Brazil and brought criminal charges against Odebrecht and was able to recover billions from Odebrecht and related entities to help offset the theft of national resources. And the FIFA Scandal put a spotlight on corruption in sports – there was a global cabal of FIFA officials directing corrupt payments to executives around the globe controlling “futbol” clubs, or media companies with broadcasting rights to futbol events. Although these payments did not steal government funds, they did impact nonprofit schools and futbol clubs that were supposed to be the recipient of much of these funds. Multiple officials from clubs around the globe were prosecuted in the U.S. for those violations. One common theme in cases like these is that they tend to occur in countries where the powerful can easily take advantage of limited or immature internal controls. As is typical with most classic fraud triangle schemes, these people had the motivation (greed or perceived financial pressure), opportunity (powerful positions with weak internal controls), and rationalization (they deserved the kickback for years of hard work).

The result is that scarce resources are stolen in these schemes and the general population pays the price. Sadly, we have seen too many examples of this type of behavior. But banks in the United States are on notice. They are aware of their obligation to look for transactions that support corruption schemes, often involving agents and consultants receiving payments on large infrastructure projects. All too often these intermediaries are the conduit for kickbacks. 1/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  The schemes to provide the bribes can be simple or complicated: cash payments; free family vacations; payments for personal credit card bills; payments to friends, spouses or significant others for non-existent services; payments to shell companies controlled by the government official; free cars or housing, or the rental or sales of these assets at below market values. The list goes on. Some clear examples of this type of egregious behavior include: 1MDB in which billions in debt guaranteed by the government of Malaysia was illegally siphoned off by criminal actors and corrupt government officials so that the country was left without the promised infrastructure. This was a brazen scheme carried out by corrupt government officials in multiple countries and was supported by corrupt bankers. In response, the U.S. and governments across the globe took strong action against the individuals and financial institutions involved and helped recover billions of dollars to offset losses from the scheme.