samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Zeti Akhtar Aziz: Towards gaining global growth potential of Islamic finance Speech by Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz, Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia, at the Seminar on Islamic Finance "Towards Gaining Global Growth Potential of Islamic Finance", Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Hong Kong, 15 January 2008. *  *  *  It is my honour and great pleasure to be in Hong Kong today to speak at this seminar on Islamic Finance jointly organised by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Islamic Financial Services Board. Islamic finance is now at the threshold of a new dimension in which, it has now an increased potential to strengthen international financial linkages between nations. And in so doing, it would contribute towards a more optimum allocation of financial resources across borders. Hong Kong, with its sophisticated financial infrastructure and high level of expertise in the financial sector, has strong potential to be an important linkage and an engaging partner in the international Islamic financial activity. It is exactly six years ago that we were here in Hong Kong as our first destination, to promote the world's first sovereign sukuk issuance. The overwhelming response we received in Hong Kong provided the momentum effect that resulted in the successful issuance of the pioneering USD600 million Malaysian sovereign sukuk. It was more than two times over subscribed with one-third of the investors from this region.

Sources: Statistics Sweden and the Riksbank  10. GDP gap, September and in real time Per cent 6  6  4  4  September 2011 Real time  2  2  0  0  -2  -2  -4  -4  -6  -6  -8  -8 05  06  07  08  09  10  11  12  13  Note. September 2011 refers to the PF gap. Real time refers to the HP gap except from October 2010 and onwards when the PF gap is used. Sources: Statistics Sweden and the Riksbank  BIS central bankers’ speeches  13  11. Capacity utilisation Per cent, seasonally-adjusted data 100  100 Capacity utilisation in the manufacturing sector  95  95  Mean, 1996-2008  90  90  85  85  80  80  75  75  70  70 95  97  99  01  03  05  07  09  11  Source: Statistics Sweden  12.
It must be frequently adjusted in response to various changes and new information so as to enable the stability goal to be reached. Against the background of our knowledge of the monetary policy transmission process and its lag structure, it is obvious that it is hardly the level of money market rates that is decisive, but rather the interest rate path optimised over time in uncertain circumstances. The condition for success of the policy is not that the three-month Libor rate is exactly right today; rather, it must be possible to constantly optimise the interest rate path - which leads to the set goal - in a way that the deviations of the ideal line, which can only be defined ex post, will be as small as possible and easy to correct. Interest rate steering will therefore often follow a fairly gradualistic pattern. This has nothing to do with macroeconomic activism, quite the contrary. The macroeconomic fine-tuning activists have lost their case because they have assumed totally unrealistic information conditions and underestimated the uncertainty of political decision-making. With interest rate steering, the situation is exactly the opposite. Precisely where there is considerable uncertainty and false steps are liable to occur, there are good reasons for implementing a policy of small steps. The danger of slipping is smaller, and a false step is easier to correct. But there are also valid grounds for fairly substantial interest rate adjustments.

Experience has taught me that every decision-making body needs a sheltered area away from the public where things may be imperfectly stated and seemingly irrefutable truths may be called into question. If such a sheltered domain is abolished, this will, in my view, have a negative effect on negotiating practices and the quality of decisions. Optimisation of ex ante transparency is, by its very nature, more critical. A clear and open commitment to a monetary policy goal is of central importance. Thus the central bank must state explicitly what it means by price stability, and it must also communicate how it assesses the long-term development of the target figure. Both elements serve to enhance - or even facilitate - the predictability of its policy and to reduce uncertainties. Conversely, it must be accepted in monetary policy that the precise way to the goal is fraught with considerable uncertainties and that therefore too much ex ante transparency can easily become counterproductive. In the context of our concept this applies in particular to the interest rate path to be followed. If a target range for the money market rate is published at a particular point in time, this steering intention remains valid “for the time being”. It is quite understandable that market participants should wish to know more: how long the interest rate target is to remain valid, and what interest rate steps are likely to follow. What they would prefer above all else is information on the planned interest rate path for several quarters.
However, this has diminished during 2022 with the recovery of labor supply and lower demand. The peso's depreciation has also played a relevant role in the rise in inflation. The increase in the exchange rate has been caused by a combination of internal and external factors, where the former have a greater weight. In recent years, the Chilean currency has lost value vis-à-vis other comparable currencies, mainly because of greater local uncertainty and some political-legislative decisions taken in previous quarters. More recently, the peso's evolution has been more linked to the dollar's global appreciation. Data for the quarter ending in August shows that job creation is stagnant, the unemployment rate remains at 7.9% and labor participation has stabilized. On the other hand, the Internet Job Postings Index shows a decreasing trend during the year. Nominal salaries present annual increases of around 11%, and real salaries remain at negative values close to 3% annually as of August. 1  Bilateral Meetings  •  Persistence  Inflation expectations have remained above the 3% target for several quarters. Although some measures they have receded somewhat at the margin, the fact that they have remained elevated for so long increases the risk of a mores persistent inflationary process and constitutes a very relevant point of attention for the Board's decisions. In fact, the latest Financial Operators' Survey (FOS) indicates that expected inflation in one-year falls to (previous: 6.3%) 6.0% and in two years to 4.5% (previous: 5.0%).

Mr. McDonough discusses the importance of sound financial systems Remarks by the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Mr. William J. McDonough, at a presentation in Mexico City, Mexico on 22/7/98. Introduction I am delighted to be here today in my second-favorite country in the world to address you on the very timely subject of the importance of sound financial systems. Having worked closely with my friends in the public and private sectors here over the years, I know the importance of these issues to them. Judging by the attendance here today, this interest appears very broad indeed, a positive sign for the continued revitalization and strengthening of Mexico’s banking sector. My remarks today, necessarily, reflect my perspective as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which supervises the majority of domestic and foreign bank assets in the United States, and as Chairman of the Basle Committee on Banking Supervision, a position I accepted last month. These positions allow me a front-row seat on the wide range of developments taking place in international banking and banking supervision, a perspective which I hope to share with you today. To understand the importance of sound financial systems, one need only look at the impact of financial system breakdowns, of which, unfortunately, there are many recent examples. Indeed, prior to the onset of the Asian crisis, the IMF had estimated that fully three-quarters of its member countries had experienced significant banking sector problems since 1980.
The TUC estimate that as many as 1 in 9 workers may be in work which is insecure in income terms.7 This income insecurity has been a key and recurrent theme in my recent discussions with charities, faith and community groups across the UK. For some, these income insecurities have been worsened by the introduction of Universal Credit. This has added time lags in payments to claimants, caused rising concerns about benefits sanctioning and has heightened uncertainties about eligibility for work criteria.8 Recent research by the Resolution Foundation has found that pay volatility in fact affects a significant number of UK workers, not just those on low pay or the gig economy.9 Over 90% of those who remained with the same employer during 2016-17 experienced at least one month when their take-home pay varied by more than 5%. This pay volatility is more prevalent for those on lower earnings and among the young. Income volatility appears to have significant welfare costs for workers. A recent study found the average worker would be willing to sacrifice a fifth of their wage to avoid a variable work schedule set by their employer.10 In practice, gig workers tend to be paid less not more. Pay of self-employed and zero-hours contract workers lies significantly below employed and permanent contract counterparts (Chart 12). This is a malign coincidence of lower and less certain income.

16  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  16  (b) Climbing the Jobs Ladder As the economy recovered after the crisis, so did aggregate jobs growth. In response, workers began to climb the jobs ladder, with transition rates between jobs rising. We would expect this to have then boosted aggregate pay and productivity, as workers rotated into higher-paying, more productive firms. In practice, this process appears to have been sluggish for pay and to have stalled for productivity. Why? There appear to have been two effects at play in slowing the rate of climb up the jobs ladder. First, although the rate of jobs transition picked up, it did so only slowly, especially given the degree of underlying strength in the jobs market. Despite picking up, the velocity of circulation in the labour market has remained relatively subdued in the face of the biggest jobs bonanza since the Second World War. Job-to-job transition rates have only just reached their pre-crisis levels after seven years (Chart 13). And that still leaves them around 25-30% below their peaks in the 1970s and 1980s. This relatively subdued pattern is even more striking if we compare transition rates with the degree of tightness in the labour market, defined by the V/U ratio (Chart 19). This suggests job-to-job transitions have not really picked-up at all over recent years, when measured relative to the strength of the jobs market.
Annual average dynamics of unit labour costs in the second quarter of 2007 in CEE accounted to 8 per cent and in the group of Baltic and Balkan states the figure was over two times higher. This shows that sooner or later (rather sooner) enterprises will stop cutting their profit margins and will be forced to pass growing operational costs on consumers. 3. Productivity growth. We live in a global knowledge economy, which is driven by innovation – technological, business-process or customer related. The crucial factor to succeed in the global knowledge economy is the country’s ability to develop intellectual capital. Only those who understand the importance of innovations for growth will thrive and prosper in the coming decades. Unfortunately, CEE region lags badly behind the leaders in terms of its current and future ability to generate innovation. One of indicators measuring current ability to innovate is the number of researchers. In the mid-1990s CEE-4 (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) and NIEs regions had similar number of researchers per million people, while two years ago NIEs had almost twice as many persons employed in R&D per million people in comparison with CEE-4. Future knowledge potential of particular country or region can be measured by tertiary enrolment ratio. Tertiary enrolment ratio in the CEE-4 countries improved to 50 percent in 2004, but still remains well below 62 percent in the EU-15 and 82 percent in the United States.

Above data suggests that in the long run low ability to generate innovation combined with low value added FDI may harm the CEE ability to improve productivity. Summing up, with the inflation headwind expected in the coming few years CEE central banks will face a possibly steep sacrifice ratio when controlling inflation. Keeping inflation at the target consistent with EMU accession may require sizeable reduction of the output gap, which in turn may make fiscal targets difficult to achieve. Tail wind of globalization appears to be fading in the coming few years and if agflation or surge in other commodity prices materializes, joining EMU may become “mission impossible” for many CEE countries in the next few years. The window of opportunity created by global inflation “tail wind” might have closed in 2007. References Freeman R. (2005) “The Great Doubling: America in the New Global Economy”, Usery Lecture, April 8, 2005. Georgia State University; What Really Ails Europe (and America): The Doubling of the Global Workforce, The Globalist, June 3, 2005 IMF (2000) “Globalization: Threat or Opportunity?” IMF Staff, April 12, 2000 (Corrected January 2002) McKinsey Global Institute (2005) “The Emerging Global Labour Market”, June 2005. Rogoff K.S. (2006) “Impact of Globalization on Monetary Policy”, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Rybinski K. (2007) “Three faces of globalisation. Offshoring – global imbalances – monetary policy”, Difin, Warsaw 2007 (in Polish) Spiegel online (2007), “Rethinking Renewables: Biofuels Emit More Greenhouse Gases than Fossil Fuels”, http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,508089,00.html  4  BIS Review 137/2007
And certainly, the design of reform package did not anticipate the effect of the contagion spreading to the rest of Asia and our trading partners. The key lesson is that, even in our best effort to get the reform right, we may still fumble. So, how should Asia think about the impact of the global regulatory reform? For Asia, although the banking system has been quite resilient to the crisis, these regulatory reforms carry high stake for us, especially for our future developments. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  The reforms such as Basel III are, to a large extent, designed to correct major weaknesses in Basel II that allowed the crisis to emerge in western countries. These weaknesses were such as undercapitalization, over-leveraging, inadequate liquidity, and procyclicality of the banking system. So, in so far as Basel III would make these banks safer, it would contribute to stability of the global economy. However, the weaknesses that were targeted by Basel III did not cause damage in Asia. This is mainly because the banking model here tends to be simpler, understandable, and traceable. The western system, on the other hand, is so complex that no one, not even the CEO, could understands the bank’s structure and activities. The value of this simpler model is that bankers know what is going on in their banks. Supervisors can keep very close eyes on their activities.

Even though we could not change the international environment (and as I say the exchange rate actually rose despite our interest rate cuts), we could cushion its negative effect on the economy as a whole by providing an offsetting stimulus to the domestic economy. Had we not done so, we might well have suffered recession in the UK. But the hard question for us is could we - and should we - attempt to shelter internationally-exposed businesses even if that were to mean putting our objective of sustained low inflation at risk. In fact I’ve not heard anyone argue openly for that - and I would be surprised if they did. The reality is that if we were to put the economy as a whole at any significant risk of accelerating inflation notwithstanding our mandate - we would not succeed in providing the intended protection to the internationally-exposed sectors other than possibly in the very short term; and in the medium to long term our overall economic performance would almost certainly be worse. The more hopeful news is that we have more recently seen strong signs of recovery - of both economic activity and exchange rates - in a number of emerging markets and transition economies. And we are seeing a strengthening of domestic demand and of output in the Eurozone, where the currency is commonly acknowledged to have considerable potential for appreciation.
It also pursued a forward guidance strategy, aimed at conveying its intention to maintain monetary expansion for a prolonged period. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  In May last year, given the evident improvement in the economic situation, the Federal Reserve communicated its intention to begin tapering, or gradually reducing the intensity of its expansionary impulses through cutting its monthly volumes of securities purchases. Following a period of some confusion around the month of May 2013 (which impacted the markets to some extent), this strategy has progressively taken root. The challenge the Federal Reserve faces in these circumstances is no longer that of a change in monetary tack, but how to trim its expansionary monetary stance, in line with the improvement in the economy’s cyclical position, without endangering economic recovery, which is still not perceived as sufficiently firm. This is a complex challenge that fuels market uncertainty and affects the margin for manoeuvre of other central banks. The monetary policy of the Bank of England The situation of the Bank of England is somewhat different. Like the Federal Reserve, it also exhausted its scope for conventional measures and likewise resorted intensely to securities purchase programmes and to forward guidance. Furthermore, the Bank of England pioneered the implementation of measures aimed directly at boosting lending to specific sectors through its Funding for Lending programme. In short, this programme enabled the institutions most active in specific credit market segments to obtain financing at the central bank at a lower cost.

Do we as economists and policymakers truly understand all the synergies, complementarities and marginal effects of different reforms? Probably not to the extent that we would like. Are we on the same boat when it comes to their positive gains and externalities? I would dare say yes. We also have to keep in mind the political economy dimension of the process. We need to ensure broad support for the reform agenda especially since there might be some short-term costs of certain reforms. In that sense, lacklustre support for market economy and democracy as well as low faith in justice systems in CEE countries compared to long establishes democracies might complicate matters further. This is where policy transparency and communication plays an important role. Clearly, not everything we do will always get full support from the broad public, particularly in the case of structural reforms with long-term gains and short-term costs, but sometimes boldness is rewarded beyond our expectations. 2/2  BIS central bankers' speeches
However, when I was writing about these issues there seemed to be a significant consensus that, in order to meet these demands, at least in part, a good pension system should be based on three pillars: first, a tax-financed public plan that provides a flat-rate or means-tested basic pension; second, a mandatory occupational or private (but publicly regulated) funded pension scheme; and third, a voluntary pension saving scheme, often with tax incentives. Three pillars, rather than one, are needed in order to accommodate the tradeoffs between goals, make the overall system more resilient to different types of shocks, and  1  The main article referred to can be found http://www.sedlabanki.is/uploads/files/mb011_5.pdf. 2  The speech can be found on the http://www.sedlabanki.is/uploads/files/MB041_7.pdf. BIS Review 63/2010  on  the Central  Central Bank  Bank of  of  Iceland Iceland  website: website:  1  provide for flexibility and choice. This is, of course, familiar to most of you here, and an excellent – by now, almost classic – presentation can be found in the 1994 World Bank publication: Averting the Old Age Crisis. By the turn of the century, the Icelandic pension system had taken on many of these attributes. The public pension system provided a low basic pension but a much higher supplementary pension that was, however, means-tested, also against pensions from other sources. This meant that, as the occupational or second-pillar pension funds matured, the public pension would dwindle in relative terms.

Már Guðmundsson: The Icelandic pension system and the financial crisis Speech by Mr Már Guðmundsson, Governor of the Central Bank of Iceland, at the opening dinner of the European Pension Convention 2010, Reykjavík, 2 May 2010. *  *  *  Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, It gives me great pleasure to address you here tonight, and I would like to thank the organisers for inviting me to do so. This is due not least to my past interest in and work on the Icelandic pension system and, more generally, my interest in the optimal design of pension systems. During my tenure as Chief Economist of the Central Bank of Iceland from 1994–2004, I was convinced that the pension system that had developed in Iceland, partly by historical accident, was one of the strengths of Iceland’s economy. This conviction had taken root earlier, when I was involved with pension reform and served for a while as the chairman of the board of a pension fund that has long been among the top ten in Iceland in terms of size. However, this view was reinforced around the turn of the century, when I made an in-depth study of the Icelandic pension system and tried to analyse its effects on the economy and the financial sector. 1 I subsequently tried to propagate the virtues of the system abroad.