samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Several banking institutions have embarked on customer relationship management systems to better understand the needs of their customers in order to provide better levels of service and to gain a better understanding of their drivers of profitability. In the area of corporate governance, the hybrid approach adopted by Malaysia includes legal reform, self-regulation as well as measures to encourage market-based regulation. New measures were introduced to further improve the level of governance among banking institutions. This includes limiting the number of directorships of chief executive officers, reviewing the responsibility and accountability of the board and management as well as requiring for the setting up of various board committees. Emphasis on improved corporate governance goes hand in hand with the call for improvements in risk management standards. Arising from the experience during the Asian financial crisis, greater emphasis has been placed on enhancing the credit skills and to create a more robust credit culture. An accreditation process was introduced, aimed at better equipping credit officers with the required skills. Efforts are also on-going to prepare the industry for an enhanced risk management regime under Basel II and to continuously provide the relevant input towards the development of the framework, particularly from the perspective of emerging market economies. A comprehensive 10-year consumer education programme was also introduced early this year. This is to raise consumer awareness and understanding on banking products and services and to educate the public on their rights and responsibilities in their relationship with a financial institution.

And that, of course, my Lord Mayor includes the holders of your high office over so many years - and it includes the City Corporation. We at the Bank have enjoyed tremendous moral and practical - not to mention gastronomical - support in all our efforts to promote the reputation and prosperity of the City, and I hope that you may feel that we have been equally supportive of initiatives that you have taken to the same end. From my perspective it’s been a very warm and constructive relationship which I have no doubt will continue. You, Gavyn, have certainly contributed to that relationship during your period in office and I am grateful to you for that. But more than that you have maintained the finest traditions of the Mayoralty in the lead that you have given to the City. You have taken on an exhausting - and in this case I really mean exhausting - program - both at home and around the world in promotion of our interests and you have still found time, with the Lady Mayoress, to entertain us right royally this evening. We are all most grateful to you. So to you all - as I make the transition from Who’s Who? To Who’s He? - I say thank you and farewell until we meet again - as I very much hope we will if ever Vanessa and I manage to tear ourselves away from Cornwall.
The third area in which more work is needed concerns information and advance planning. In recent years the Bank has been forcefully arguing the importance of information gathering to  BIS Review 157/2009  5  the government and FSA. In my experience resolution work is like icebergs – I don’t mean that in the sense that banks are about to hit them. It is like icebergs in the sense that a vast amount of the work done is beneath the surface, hidden from view. Because resolution is an invasive form of surgery, it requires a very large amount of information to be carried out safely. Moreover, the planning work has to be done quietly, out of sight in order to avoid fuelling the failure of the bank, and it needs to start well in advance of the actual resolution weekend. As the authority responsible for resolution operations, the Bank of England faces a tension. In the ideal world, we want to work closely with the management of the bank to plan a resolution, at a time when it remains a contingency option that management naturally wish to avoid. But we also have to avoid the sense that a bank is receiving the attention of the undertakers. A very important development here will be the production and maintenance of resolution plans, as part of the overall recovery and resolution plans, or living wills.

Also, I think that we are much more likely to make progress in this field by agreeing on how national regimes can fit together to deal with international banks, rather than trying to devise an international resolution regime. The key issue then is burden-sharing, and that together the national regimes provide for equitable treatment of creditors whatever their domicile. A robust set of resolution regimes should not allow for bias in favour of domestic creditors. The UK, I should stress, is not one of those countries, but we are keen to work to produce a framework of resolution regimes that allows bias in favour of domestic creditors to end. Thank you for listening to an account of the UK resolution regime. It is an important development as part of making our banks more robust to failure. It sits alongside enhanced regulation and supervision, and whatever structural changes may take place in the industry. But it remains work in progress, and in an important respect always will be because it needs to be ready to respond to threats that will evolve as well. And, finally, I should tell you my motto as head of the resolution unit, namely that I am happiest when we don’t need to perform a resolution. 6  BIS Review 157/2009
2  BIS Review 138/2009  With regard to the labour market, we are assuming that it will remain weak and that unemployment will continue rising until the end of next year. Employment will not increase until the beginning of 2011. Historically, it is usually the case that employment recovers with some time lag after production has picked up. The weak labour market is expected to hold back wage increases in the central wage bargaining rounds during 2010, which should contribute to lower cost and inflationary pressures. And even if economic prospects look better than we anticipated in our earlier forecast in September, we will have more spare capacity than normal in the Swedish economy throughout the forecast period. Repo rate low until autumn 2010 The Riksbank has cut the repo rate very substantially over a fairly short period of time, from 4.75 per cent last autumn down to 0.25 per cent in July this year. The largest cuts were made mainly during last autumn and winter. Since February the repo rate has been lower than ever before during the period we have conducted inflation targeting (Figure 3). Figure 3.

This dynamic will test the ability of governments to sustain commitment to an open multilateral trading system, and the manner in which this plays out will have an important impact on future productivity gains. A fourth challenge involves prospective changes in the global exchange rate regime. The international monetary system now incorporates an uncomfortable disparity in the extent to which real effective exchange rates vary across regions. The monetary authorities of the United States and Europe allow considerable variability in their real exchange rates, though they are not indifferent to movements in exchange rates. Japan has somewhat less enthusiasm for flexibility and runs a regime in which it seeks to avoid large swings in the value of their currency. Emerging market economies run a mix of regimes from those that permit significant flexibility to those that run essentially fixed pegs or regimes that seek to contain variations to relatively small degrees around implicit targets for their currencies against the dollar or a basket of the currencies of their major trading partners. The world has lived with this system for some time. But this is not an ideal mix, either for the monetary system as a whole, or for those countries which permit very little variability in their real effective exchange rates, and it’s probably not sustainable over time. It also is not ideal because it limits the extent to which markets work to facilitate adjustment. It creates the risk of larger moves in the major currencies than might otherwise be the case.
Greater harmonization and clarity about the triggers for action, the tools to return insured funds quickly to depositors, the authority to implement a quick resolution, and the legal powers to restructure and continue key banking functions would allow for more effective crisis management. Hence, it is not just about opening our borders; we need to examine how our domestic regulatory framework interfaces with that of other countries. International cooperation The regional cooperation among central banks in East Asia have advanced significantly in this recent decade in the aftermath of the Asian Financial crisis. The focus of cooperation has been in the areas of financial stability, financial markets and payment and settlement systems. The participation in the working, technical and high level committees have contributed towards efforts to facilitate the adoption of international standards for banking supervision and financial stability taking into consideration the regional perspective. It has also contributed towards identifying supervisory priorities and areas of concern that will have an impact on financial stability, and towards improving techniques relating to supervision and surveillance. Challenges pertaining to cross-border issues such as regulatory arbitrage, competition laws, regulatory harmonisation are, however, yet to be fully resolved. The new Central Bank of Malaysia Act 2009 gives Bank Negara additional flexibility and the mandate to engage in international cooperation. The Act allows for the Bank to engage with foreign supervisory authorities to coordinate and cooperate on financial stability measures.

In most areas, inflation has fallen significantly and has been more stable than previously. The real economy also seemed to be developing with more stability, which was probably partly due to the fact that the policy was being conducted in a better reasoned manner than previously. There may be those who believed that most problems had been solved, and that the improved stability of the macroeconomy was here to stay. But the Great Moderation would turn out to be a deceptive calm. But an improved monetary policy was not enough The recent period has seen frequent discussion of the financial crisis and its causes, to put it mildly. Consequently, I do not intend to go into any detailed description of the development of the crisis, but will remain on a relatively intuitive level. The origin of the financial crisis lay in a number of interacting macroeconomic and microeconomic factors. However, the core of the crisis was that the banks and other participants took on too much debt in relation to the risks they were taking. Shortcomings in the regulatory framework, combined with a lack of understanding of new complex financial instruments, contributed towards the altogether too low pricing of risk by the market. Regulatory frameworks and supervision also failed to ensure that the banks had enough high-quality capital to maintain confidence when the economy took a downward turn and inflated asset values fell.
45 We should also bear in mind that the current situation is highly unusual. We must not fall into the trap of believing that the innovative policy measures being taken now in response to these unusual conditions represent the basis for a new paradigm in the future. 46 I suspect that when the dust has settled and more normal conditions return, monetary policy regimes will not look drastically different from pre-Crisis days. •  I think more central banks will have an eye to financial stability considerations – at least informally – when setting monetary policy. •  More central banks are also likely to have macroprudential policy toolkits at their disposal, which they will use from time to time but perhaps not on the scale that has been used in Asia in recent years. •  But in essence, monetary policy will remain largely focused on price and output stability – as it should be. 47 Perhaps as T S Eliot puts it, the end of all our exploring is to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. 48  I wish you a successful conference. Thank you. References Bank for International Settlements (2010), “An assessment of the long-term economic impact of stronger capital and liquidity requirements”, Basel Committee of Banking Supervision. Borio, C and Zhu, H (2012) “Capital regulation, risk-taking and monetary policy: a missing link in the transmission mechanism?” Journal of Financial Stability, Vol. 8(4), pp. 236–251.

•  The risks to financial stability are nowhere near pre-Crisis levels, but they bear close watching. We must not repeat the mistakes of the past. 11 But there is as yet no consensus on how to secure financial stability and, in particular, what role, if any should be played by monetary policy. 12  There are three broad approaches to these questions. •  The first is to stick to the status quo. Monetary policy remains focused on price stability and no recourse is made to macroprudential policy beyond the use of capital buffers to pre-empt insolvencies. •  In the second approach, monetary policy explicitly takes account of financial stability in addition to price stability. •  Under the third approach, monetary policy remains focused on price stability, while financial stability is secured with the help of macroprudential policy. 13 I will keep my remarks on the first approach brief as it is well-known and is still the dominant practice in most central banks today, especially in the advanced economies. Under this inflation targeting approach, monetary policy will not try to respond to credit cycles or asset bubbles unless they have a demonstrable impact on inflation outcomes. •  As Lars Svensson puts it, flexible inflation targeting “remains the best-practice monetary policy before, during, and after the financial crisis”. •  John Taylor, who will address us this evening, provides a more rule-based characterisation of this approach through the Taylor rule.
The smaller the geographic area, the lower the potential for agglomeration effects. Some of these agglomeration benefits may themselves arise from having a diverse economic eco-system, as this enables positive spillovers between sectors and skills within an area.48  43  Mundell (1961). For example, Berger, Dell’Ariccia and Obstfeld (2018). Alesina, Tabellini and Trebbi (2017). 46 For example, Alesina, Tabellini and Trebbi (2017), Carlino and DeFina (1996), Cumming (2018), Dow and Montagnoli (2007) and Fratantoni and Schuh (2003). 47 Krugman (1991) and Krugman and Venables (1996). 48 Izraeli and Murphy (2003). 44 45  35  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  35  (c)  Factor Mobility  A third sector of factors influencing the choice of optimal policy area concerns the degree of factor mobility. Easy movement of factors between regions can smooth-out differences between regions. For example, people moving from low to high unemployment areas can smooth out regional differences in incomes. In this way, factor mobility can serve as a risk-sharing device between areas, even without policy intervention. The other side of this coin is that, people and money do not always flow in this direction. Factor mobility can sometimes increase, rather than smooth out, differences between regions. For example, people or firms may move to areas which offer strong existing incomes and jobs. If so, this will tend to amplify, not  ameliorate, regional differences. That is the theory.

As we know commuting often detracts from people’s well-being, this cartogram perhaps explains why Londoners are richer but more miserable.21  21  For example, Office for National Statistics (2014) and Novaco and Gonzalez (2009). 23  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  23  Chart 17: Cartogram of UK travel time to work  Sources: ONS Labour Force Survey, 2011 Census and Bank calculations. Notes: UK local authorities re-sized and coloured by mean travel to work time (minutes). 24  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  24  Modelling the Economy  How can these micro-level data help when modelling the economy? Economists and policymakers typically use highly-aggregated models which operate at an economy-wide level, often comprising a small number of “representative” agents. In their most aggregated versions, there is a single representative household and company. The most widely-used is the Representative Agent New Keynesian (RANK) model.22  RANK-type models have real virtues. They are underpinned by an optimising view of individual human behaviour and, in this sense, can be said to be “micro-founded”. They are explicitly identified, in the  statistical sense, and parsimonious. These characteristics mean these models can often offer deep insight into comparative static questions about the impact of changes in the deep parameters of an economy, such as shifts in risk-aversion among households or in levels of technology among firms.23  There are also, of course, costs of simplicity.
Accountability and transparency are essential counterparts of independence, and the media play a fundamental role in ensuring that they are put into practice, which is why our participation in events such as this one is so important. So I should like to thank the APIE for organising this event and inviting us to participate. This look back reminds us that, more than 10 years ago now, an international financial crisis hit Spain particularly strongly, arriving at a time when the economy was suffering from significant domestic and external macro-financial imbalances. Spain’s banking system was clearly excessively large at the time, over-concentrated on lending funds to real estate and residential construction activities and highly dependent on international wholesale financing. These significant vulnerabilities meant that the cost of the crisis in terms of GDP and – even more importantly for society – unemployment, was very high and much larger than for our main competitors. In fact, Spain’s GDP returned to its pre-crisis level only two years ago. As regards the labour market, the unemployment rate is still five percentage points higher than in 2008 and more than 10 percentage points higher than in countries like the United States and Germany. And that is a reminder of the importance of strengthening mechanisms to analyse and diagnose promptly the risks and vulnerabilities facing the economy and, in particular, the financial system.

Furthermore, these institutions played a very important role in resolving the crisis, since they were able to take over other institutions in a weaker position. It is not surprising, therefore, that the international presence of Spanish banks has increased since the crisis, in contrast to that of the banks of most European countries, which have tended to reduce their international operations. Over the last decade, Spanish banks have increased their international exposure by 45%, while the banks of countries such as Germany, France and Italy have reduced theirs by 38%, 16% and 15%, respectively. 5/17  On the other hand, the effort to adjust business in Spain has been highly significant. Specifically, over the last 10 years, the total assets of business in Spain have been reduced by 20% and employment in the industry by 32%. Also, the number of institutions has fallen by 34%, with a decrease in the number of domestic banks1 from 122 at the beginning of the crisis to 61 in 2018. As a result, concentration has increased significantly. Most of the mergers and takeovers have given rise to healthier banks, with significant cost savings. 1  Grupos consolidados y entidades sin grupo, de propiedad nacional. 6/17  One effect of this consolidation process has been the disappearance of 43% of the bank branches existing in Spain.
It seems that apart from the – growing for a few years now – role of the global financial markets and the liberalization of commerce, new factors have emerged, such as taking advantage of the technological progress in the ICT and joining the global economy by China and India. Thomas Friedman, author of the famous book entitled “The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century”, 24 hows how radical the changes in the organization of the manufacturing process and service performance have been over the recent years, as a result of, inter alia, the use of new communication technologies, such as the Internet, mobile phones, or the appearance of such techniques of gaining and processing information as the Google search engine. I may share my personal thought with you. I have just completed my work on the first draft of a paper discussing global imbalances. Owing to the Internet and new websites providing specialist information and knowledge in the area of economy, it took me three months to write the article. I worked on it only in my free time, of which I do not have much as the deputy president of the central bank. Ten years ago, over a three–month period, I would probably not have been able to collect even half of the literature, not to mention the ongoing monitoring of speeches delivered at all important conferences dedicated to global imbalances.

6  BIS Review 60/2006  The technological progress in IT and telecommunications, in particular the dynamic growth of the Internet and database systems, has significantly impacted the globalization of financial markets. Technological changes would not have been possible without a huge reduction in the cost of computer memory and data transmission. At present, the cost of manufacturing of a microprocessor is nearly 1,000 times lower than it was 30 years ago, and the cost of data transmission (1 byte over a distance of 1 km) is over a hundred-fold lower. Modern technologies have enhanced the capacity of creating and marketing new, less expensive goods and services. The increased computing power has facilitated valuation of complex financial instruments, such as options, swaps and convertible bonds, which has contributed to a rapid development of derivatives market. The development of IT and telecommunications has streamlined prompt acquisition and processing of information necessary for operations on the financial market. Information used on the financial market has become as much of a commodity as any other (e.g. washing powder). It is produced according to specific standards and is comparable (the format of data on inflation, balance of payments or quarterly performance of a listed company are presented in a similar manner, irrespective of the country that publishes the data). Today, we all take it for granted. Whereas only in 1997, when I became the chief economist responsible for the analysis of the Polish economy with a large international financial institution, releases of the macroeconomic data were not scheduled.