samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Nonetheless, there is no getting away from the fact that the house price developments and their effects on consumption are an uncertainty factor in the assessment of the future economic situation. 1  See the box “Households’ consumption, debt and saving” in Inflation Report 2005:3. BIS Review 88/2005  3  The debate on the role of asset prices in monetary policy Before I go on to the current monetary policy situation, let me briefly say a few words about a debate that has been ongoing in recent years in both academic circles and in the central bank world and that has some relevance to what I have spoken about so far. I am referring to what role asset prices should play more generally in the conduct of monetary policy. It has been claimed in some quarters that a monetary policy that focuses on keeping inflation low and stable is not enough to guarantee a favourable macroeconomic outcome. This claim is based on the observation that asset prices have fluctuated fairly sharply also under the regime of low and stable inflation. An example is the build-up of the IT bubble in the equity market and the subsequent dramatic decline in that market. Some have even argued that the risk to financial stability increases under a low-inflation regime.

Although many Asian countries have significantly strengthened their financial systems, they still need to follow through with reforms in the financial and corporate sectors. Singapore’s financial system was lucky to emerge from the Asian crisis relatively unscathed. During the crisis, we undertook an extensive liberalisation program aimed at deepening and broadening capital markets, consolidating and upgrading the local banks, and enhancing Singapore’s position as an international financial centre. At the same time, we put in place a new supervisory framework to oversee financial institutions, shifting from one-size-fits-all regulation to more risk-based supervision. 4  BIS Review 33/2004  Our efforts have achieved encouraging results. Our debt market has grown three-fold since 1998 to reach $ billion in 2002, driven by growing demand in the region for debt financing. Our wealth management industry more than doubled in the same period, with total Assets Under Management growing from $ billion in 1998 to $ billion in 2002. In treasury activities, we have maintained our position as the fourth largest FX centre in the world, with an average daily trading volume of $ billion in 2003. The local banks have consolidated from seven into three banks that are larger and stronger, and are building up their regional footprints. In the recent Financial System Stability Assessment of Singapore, the IMF affirmed the robustness of Singapore’s financial system and the soundness of our legal, supervisory and institutional framework. We are heartened by these outcomes.
Gent Sejko: Albania's economic and financial developments in 2018 Introductory statement by Mr Gent Sejko, Governor of the Bank of Albania, presenting the Annual Report 2018 to the Parliamentary Committee on Economy and Finance, Tirana, 23 April 2019. * * *  Honourable Chair, Honourable Members of the Committee, Thank you for your invitation! The Annual Report and the financial statements are the key instrument for the accountability of our institution. In this light, the Bank of Albania considers the presentation of this Report as an opportunity to foster and enhance the dialogue with the Assembly. During 2018, the work of the Bank of Albania focused on three main aspects: First, on the objectives and duties set out in the legal and sublegal framework, which regulates the work of the Bank; Second, on the objectives set out in our Medium-term Development Strategy; and, Third, recommendations left by the Assembly of the Republic of Albania in the Resolution “On the assessment of the activity of the Bank of Albania for 2017”. The results of our work show that the Bank of Albania marked progress in all the three abovementioned aspects. Let me present a brief overview of developments.

The purpose of the strategy is to improve the retail payments market, promoting the use of electronic payment instruments and broadening the financial inclusion of the population. The strategy will be implemented through the improvement of the legal and the regulatory frameworks, through improvements in infrastructure and financial education. Other activities In the field of statistics, the Bank of Albania continued its work for the methodological approximation of statistics with international standards and their alignment with the acquis communautaire. In cooperation with INSTAT and with expertise from the European Union, the Bank of Albania coordinated the work to develop indicators of macroeconomic imbalances for Albania. During 2018, the EUROSTAT carried out an evaluation mission of the Statistical System in Albania, which assessed that the statistics of the Bank of Albania are in line with the principles of the European statistics Code of Practice. As at the end of 2018, the international reserve reached EUR 3.4 billion, sufficient to cover 6.7 months of imports of goods and services and 156% of the short-term external debt. In order to 6/8  BIS central bankers' speeches  increase the flexibility of managing the needs for foreign currency liquidity, an agreement was finalised with the Bank for International Settlements for a foreign currency credit line. The agreement constitutes an important mechanism available to the Bank of Albania in the event of an emergency situation. Research continued to support the decision-making process for formulating and implementing Bank of Albania’s policies.
In recent years, the MPC has increasingly focused on structural changes in the economy, including by instituting regular reviews and publishing our assessment of the most important variables, such as the equilibrium unemployment rate. Over this period, as unemployment has fallen towards its estimated equilibrium rate and companies have found it harder to recruit and retain staff, pay growth has picked up. Across the economy as a whole, growth in average wages excluding bonuses has risen from around 1¾% a year during 2010-15 to around 2½% in 2016, and wage growth is expected to have picked up a little further to around 2¾% around the middle of this year. The most recent outturns support that judgement, with whole economy total pay increasing by 2.9% in the three months to July and private sector regular pay up 3% over the same period, and domestically generated inflation at rates consistent with the 2% inflation target. 39  Cavallo, A (2018), ‘More Amazon Effects: Online Competition and Pricing Behaviors’, paper prepared for the 2018 Jackson Hole Symposium. 12  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  12  This brings me to a larger point. Although current rates of pay growth in the UK are below pre-crisis averages, this largely reflects continued weakness in productivity growth. While that weakness may reflect the early consequences of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, other factors seem more likely to be at play.

Given that it could happen more rapidly, the challenge of workforce adjustment could be more difficult. The shifts required in employment from jobs involving heads to those with hearts and hands could be far greater each year than seen in previous episodes. Moreover, unlike in the previous industrial revolutions, the more rapid pace of adjustment and longer working lives means workers may not have the option of retiring. This 22  Analysis by the IMF indicates that the extent of job polarisation depends far more on the ease of substitution between labour and technology than it does on the relative price of technology. 23 Calculating the labour share using gross national income and removing distortions that stem from how multinational corporations account for their global operations by excluding retained earnings of firms that have re-domiciled to Ireland, the depreciation of foreignowned intellectual property assets located in Ireland, and the depreciation of aircraft owned by aircraft-leasing companies. 24 The low level of automation in the UK – which Hal Varian has suggested could be linked to the size of the automobile and electronics sectors – may be one reason why the UK labour share has remained resilient. 7  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  7  raises risks of substantial skills mismatch, leading to increased structural unemployment and adverse macroeconomic outcomes. What could we do to shorten the lags? What does history teach us about building Whitaker’s adaptability today?
Such funding could be treated as an added risk factor in assessing a bank’s liquidity needs and those needs should be reflected in a requirement to hold high quality liquid assets. So banks which are funding their expansion in this way will need to match that expansion with an increasing stock of safer and lower-yielding assets. This will tend to reduce their profit margins and so discourage rapid growth which is funded from less stable sources. Of course these outline proposals need a lot more work. Striking an appropriate balance between the prudential objective of protecting the banks against the cycle and the macroeconomic objective of dampening lending in the upswing will not be easy. And they are never going to be the whole answer. The more we raise the cost of cost of increasing lending by banks, the greater the incentive we will create for the growth of intermediation outside the regulated banking sector or to foreign banks not subject to such counter-cyclical requirements. Even if such unregulated competition had no consequences for banks themselves, it could certainly undermine the desired counter-cyclical effects. And the secondary banking crisis of the early 1970s is a reminder that we cannot anyway be relaxed about changes in the scale of lending taking place outside the regulated sector. Conclusion To sum up, the last 15 months have brought home the costs of unbalanced growth in the world economy.

John Gieve: Learning from the financial crisis Speech by Sir John Gieve, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, 2008 Europe in the World Lecture Panel Discussion, at the European Business School, London, 19 November 2008. *  *  *  The years after sterling left the ERM were the most successful and stable in my lifetime. In early 2007, for example, inflation had not moved by more than a single percentage point away from target in the previous 10 years, the output of the economy had grown in every quarter since 1992 Q3 (Chart 1), unemployment had fallen by 5 percentage points from its peak in the early 1990s and living standards had steadily increased. Interest rates had been low and stable. However as we know now, that was the end of “the Great Stability”. The summer ushered in a period of extraordinary turmoil in Western financial markets which we are still trying to calm. And this year has seen the onset of recession not just in Europe but throughout the advanced economies. Despite the dramatic policy measures of the last months, the outlook for 2009 is bleak and the prospects beyond are uncertain. That move – in the space of only 12 months – from the policy maker’s dream of steady noninflationary growth to the biggest banking crisis since the outbreak of World War I and the onset of recession sets the questions for this evening. First, how did we get into this position? Second, what are the immediate challenges for policy?
In the light of experience, it became clear that unemployment could not be permanently reduced by merely accepting higher inflation. 6 One of the first to formulate this clearly in the debate in Norway was then Director General at the Ministry of Finance Per Schreiner, who wrote in 1982 that: 7 "It has long been a commonly held view in the Nordic countries that a policy choice can be made between price stability and full employment. There are strong indications that this choice does not exist […] Personally, I am no longer in doubt that controlling inflation is essential to achieving other social objectives." In line with developments in other countries, a shift in monetary policy also took place in Norway. In 1985, legislation was adopted which gave Norges Bank greater independence. After the last devaluation in 1986, monetary policy was oriented towards a fixed exchange rate. The fixed exchange rate was to be our nominal anchor. The fixed exchange rate regime was abandoned in December 1992 in the wake of the crisis in the European Monetary System (EMS). The UK withdrew from the EMS and our neighbours Sweden and Finland also had to accept a floating exchange rate. The crisis revealed the built-in weaknesses of a fixed exchange rate regime in a world of free capital flows and deep financial markets. And it did indeed finally spread to the Norwegian krone. When the fixed exchange rate policy was abandoned, there was a risk that the Norwegian economy might again lose its nominal anchor.

the substantial tax subsidy benefiting homeowners – amplify fluctuations in asset prices and lending. Conclusion The monetary system has changed through history. If we go far enough back in time, money consisted of coins with a certain quantity of silver or gold. The quantity of silver and gold therefore limited the volume of money that could be produced. This ensured that coins were attractive as a means of exchange and as a means of storing value. On the other hand, paper money cost almost nothing to produce and can be therefore be printed in unlimited quantities. Over the past 100 years, there have been several periods when paper money could be redeemed for silver or gold. For example, this was for a long period the case in the Scandinavian Currency Union. In the period after the Second World War and up to the beginning of the 1970s, the US dollar had a fixed price against gold while other currencies had a fixed exchange rate against the US dollar. This was the basis for what was known as the Bretton Woods monetary system. Paper money had a value because the central bank was obligated to redeem it for gold. 8  BIS Review 111/2008  A system whereby paper money can be redeemed for gold is nevertheless more fragile than a system whereby coins must contain a certain quantity of the precious metal. A central bank can quickly cease to redeem paper money for gold, or redeem notes at a lower gold price than prevailing earlier.
9 See Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Reserve Issues FOMC Statement, June 10, 3/4  BIS central bankers' speeches  2020. 10 For announcements of the various programs, see Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal  Reserve Board Announces Establishment of a Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF) to Support the Flow of Credit to Households and Businesses, March 17, 2020; Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Reserve Board Announces Establishment of a Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF) to Support the Credit Needs of Households and Businesses, March 17, 2020; Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Reserve Board Broadens Program of Support for the Flow of Credit to Households and Businesses by Establishing a Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (MMLF), March 18, 2020; Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Reserve Announces Extensive New Measures to Support the Economy, March 23, 2020; Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Reserve Will Establish a Facility to Facilitate Lending to Small Businesses via the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) By Providing Term Financing Backed by PPP Loans, April 6, 2020; and Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Reserve Takes Additional Actions to Provide Up to $ Trillion in Loans to Support the Economy, April 9, 2020. 4/4  BIS central bankers' speeches

Ravi Menon: MAS' Annual Report 2016/17 Remarks by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at MAS' Annual Report 2016/17 Media Conference, Singapore, 29 June 2017. * * * Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Welcome to MAS’ annual report media conference. GLOBAL ECONOMY The global economy is in better shape than it has been in a long while. Economic growth is on a positive momentum. IMF has projected global GDP growth for 2017 to hit 3.5%, a marked improvement from the 3.1% last year. Growth is more broad-based, across both advanced and emerging economies. Growth in the major markets — the US, Eurozone, Japan and China — is experiencing a synchronised upturn. For the first time since 2014, all the major regions of the global economy — making up more than 90% of world GDP — are poised for a stronger growth outturn compared to the previous year. Global trade is recovering, on the back of a pick-up in manufacturing activity and bottoming of commodity prices. World merchandise trade volume is projected to grow by 2.4% this year, almost double last year’s growth rate. The JP Morgan Global Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) has been registering readings of above-50 for 15 consecutive months now. Economic expansion in the US is becoming more entrenched. The IMF has forecast GDP growth of 2.1 %. This is a credible projection, based on the resilience of private consumption and an incipient pick-up in private investment; it does not assume a large fiscal stimulus.
Other things equal, the smaller the sample, the greater the model uncertainty and the better the performance of simple, heuristic strategies. Small samples increase the sensitivity of parameter estimates. They increase the chances of inaccurately over-fitting historical data. This risk becomes more acute, the larger the parameter space being estimated. Complex models are more likely to be over-fitted. And the parametric sensitivity induced by over-fitting makes for unreliable predictions about the future. Simple models suffer fewer of these parametric excess-sensitivity problems, especially when samples are short. Experimental evidence again bears out that conclusion. For example, simple rules have been shown to outperform complex ones when tracking serial criminals, provided the number of committed crimes in a sequence is in single figures (Snook et al (2005)). Investment strategies tell a similar story. Simple tallying rules, like 1/N, outperform complex strategies, like mean-variance, unless the sample size is very large. In the study by DeMiguel et al (2007), the sample threshold at which complex rules out-perform simple ones is in excess of 3000 months (around 250 years) of data. Less is more, at least without much (much) more data. (d)  Complex rules and defensive behaviour  There is a final, related but distinct, rationale for simple over complex rules. Complex rules may cause people to manage to the rules, for fear of falling foul of them. They may induce people to act defensively, focussing on the small print at the expense of the bigger picture.

Scheibehenne, B and Broder, A (2007), “Predicting Wimbledon 2005 tennis results by mere player name recognition”, International Journal of Forecasting (3), pp 415–426. Selten, R (2001), “What is bounded rationality?” In G. Gigerenzer & R. Selten (Eds. ), “Bounded rationality: The adaptive toolbox”, pp 13–36, Cambridge, MIT Press. Serwe, S and Frings, C (2006), “Who will win Wimbledon? The recognition heuristic in predicting sports events”, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 19, pp 321–332. Simon, H A (1972), “The Sciences of the Artificial”, MIT Press. Simon, H A (1956), “Rational Choice and the Structure of the Environment”, Psychological Review, 63 (2), pp 129–138. Snook, B, Zito, M, Bennell, C and Taylor, P J (2005), “On the Complexity and Accuracy of Geographic Profiling Strategies”, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Vol. 21, No. 1, March. von Neumann, J and Morgenstern, O (1944), “Theory of games and economic behaviour”, Princeton University Press. Wang, G, Grone, B, Colas, D, Appelbaum, L and Mourrain, P (2011), “Synaptic plasticity in sleep: learning, homeostasis and disease”, Trends in Neurosciences. Weitzman, M (1974), “Prices versus Quantities”, Review of Economic Studies, 41(4), pp 477–91. Wilde, O (1893), “Lady Windermere’s Fan”, J W Luce. 22  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Wübben, M and von Wangenheim, F (2008), “Instant customer base analysis: managerial heuristics often “get it right”“, Journal of Marketing, 72, pp 82–93.
Forecasts of UND1X at different times and actual outcome Annual percentage change  4  4  UND1X, outcome Inflation Report 2004:4 Inflation Report 2003:1 Inflation Report 2002:1  3  3  2  2  1  1  0 2000  0 2001  2002  2003  2004  2005  2006  Sources: Statistics Sweden and the Riksbank  2. Productivity growth in the business sector since 1980 and HP trend Annual percentage change 8  8 Business sector Forecast HP-trend  7 6  7 6  5  5  4  4  3  3  2  2  1  1  0  0  -1  -1  -2  -2  -3 -4 1981  1981-1990: 1.7%  1984  1987  1991-1994: 2.8%  1990  1993  1995-2000: 3.2%  1996  1999  -3  2001-2004: 3.0%  2002  -4 2005  Sources: Statistics Sweden and the Riksbank  BIS Review 18/2005  7  3. Forecasts of CPI inflation in 2004 at various times: the Riksbank and an average of other forecasters Annual average  3.0  3.0  Riksbank Average of other forecasters Outcome (0.5) Lowest forecast Highest forecast  2.5  2.5  2.0  2.0  1.5  1.5  1.0  1.0  0.5  0.5  0.0 Dec-02  Jun-03  Dec-03  0.0 Dec-04  Jun-04  Sources: Consensus Inc., Statistics Sweden and the Riksbank  4.

Lars Heikensten: Introduction on monetary policy Speech by Mr Lars Heikensten, Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, to the Riksdag Committee on Finance, Stockholm, 15 March 2005. *  *  *  Allow me as usual to begin by thanking you for your invitation. I think it goes without saying that these hearings are a highly valuable feature of the open discussion of monetary policy that we are all keen to safeguard. It is also my hope that the hearings can help spread knowledge about monetary policy issues to a wider audience, especially since they are now broadcast live on television. As is customary at the first hearing of the year I intend to begin by looking back on developments last year. As we all know, inflation turned out sharply lower than the Riksbank’s target in 2004. When that happens it is natural that a debate on monetary policy should arise in the public domain. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the discussions in the past year have been unusually lively. I commented on the debate in detail when I was here in October, but there may be reason to touch upon it again today. Subsequently I intend to present our current assessment of the inflation outlook and explain the interest rate decision we made yesterday, after which I will round off with some general reflections on Swedish monetary policy and the conditions under which it operates.