samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Therefore, it is essential to look at trends and changes in the governance in the light of the lessons to be learned from the global financial crisis. It would be an unpardonable mistake by exiting the crisis without learning all its lessons. Governance can generally be seen as the manner of exercising power in a country’s economic and social resource management to ensure its development. It should also apply to the regional and global context. We all know that good governance means drafting appropriate policies, programmes and regulations that must thereafter be transposed into legislation. The role of the governments, that is of politicians, is obvious here, and institutions play a major part in a country’s governance, as the American Nobel laureate Douglas North noted. I cannot help emphasising this, the more so as our host today is a citadel of legislative power. There are many aspects one can approach when talking about governance. I would like to say a few words about three levels: macrogovernance, corporate governance and also one of the key themes of these days – governance in the European Union. Let me begin with macroeconomic governance which is closer to my area of concern. I do believe that approaching governance in a broader economic context could prove both relevant and useful. In this context, I cannot stop short of underlying how important consistent economic policies are for ensuring a sustainable development, and to repeat my belief that there is no substitute for consistent, sound and stability-oriented economic policies.

Therefore, I will share with you some of the lessons from my own experience. First, I will refer to the importance of having a good fiscal and monetary policy mix. If fiscal policy is relaxing, then the natural reaction is to tighten monetary policy. But one should take  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  into account that monetary policy cannot always be a substitute to a sound fiscal policy. In other words, not always and in any circumstances can monetary policy steps compensate for fiscal policy measures. Secondly, I will touch upon the risks related to pro-cyclical fiscal policies. We have experimented this in Romania and are fully aware on the risks related to the boom-bust cycles. During booms, as budget revenues pick up there is a strong temptation to spend more and no appetite to publicly debate the issue of structural deficits. On the other hand, when bust emerges one realize how limited your toolkit is and that all measures to address the situation translates in to a prolonged recession and GDP volatility. Last but not least, I will refer to the monetary policy by underlining how essential financial stability is to help achieve our overriding goal which is price stability. As I said before, it is my belief that the two are not conflicting; they may be compatible if your measures are carefully implemented.
The "leader" – the social partners – can internalise the monetary policy response and take the "follower’s" – Norges Bank’s – response to their actions into account. This approach is most relevant when wage setting is centralised. A number of studies2 have shown that countries with a relatively high degree of centralisation and coordination, such as Norway, can achieve relatively low unemployment. When wage-setting is decentralised, monetary policy will instead influence wage growth via market mechanisms, by stabilising aggregate demand for goods, services and labour. Monetary policy that is flexibly oriented towards low and stable inflation will function well whether wages are set at the central, local or individual level. 2 In the initial period after the introduction of the inflation target in 2001, it appeared that the social partners had not yet internalised the response pattern ensuing from the monetary policy mandate. We are now well into a cyclical phase with very high capacity utilisation and low unemployment. In this situation, there may be a risk that wage growth will again accelerate. On the other hand, the experience gained by the social partners that large pay rises push up interest rates may have the effect of curbing pay increases. In local wage negotiations at enterprise level, competition, the supply of foreign labour and the possibility of outsourcing or relocating activities may dampen the impact. Low and stable inflation should not be taken for granted. Norway’s and other countries’ economic history shows that inflation and inflation expectations can become unhinged.

How do banks in Hong Kong measure up in terms of environmental issues? As an international financial centre, Hong Kong provides a base for a number of multinational banks that have developed detailed environmental policies and procedures. In the case of local and regional banks, I would say that environmental issues are less highly articulated. This is why I welcome this conference and the involvement in it of the Hong Kong Association of Banks. It is not my purpose in this speech to anticipate the more detailed advice that subsequent speakers are going to offer. But I would like to offer a few general recommendations that banks should take into account in dealing with environmental issues. First, banks should keep themselves informed about international and regional initiatives on the environment, particularly those that directly concern financial institutions. In this connection, I would draw the attention of those institutions that are not already aware of it to the work of the United Nations Environment Programme (“UNEP”). This is the main UN institution that deals with environmental questions. As part of its work, it has established a Financial Institutions Initiative on the Environment which is a partnership between UNEP and leading banking and insurance companies to promote sustainable development and environmentally sound business practices. The basic role of the Initiative is to promote the integration of environmental considerations into all aspects of the financial sector’s operations and services.
Let me extend my appreciation to our industry associations and partners, including the Embassy of Switzerland in Singapore, Swiss House Singapore and Swiss Business Hub ASEAN for partnering IBF in its organization of the workshop on “Talent Development in Wealth Management” in November last year; and PricewaterhouseCoopers without whom we would not have had the pleasure of listening to Professor Collard today. I also wish to thank the Singapore Workforce Development Agency and the Monetary Authority of Singapore, for their close collaboration with IBF. I look forward to more of such collaboration between IBF and our industry associations and partners in the year ahead. I wish you a fruitful session ahead. BIS Review 81/2008  3

Its objective was to identify issues of legal uncertainty which might give rise to material risks, and to consider how such issues might best be addressed. The Committee seeks to meet this objective, first, via liaison with industry and market participants to identify those areas of legal uncertainty with potentially adverse impacts, and, second, by working with market experts to propose solutions. One area in which the FMLC has been active in recent years is in encouraging the development of a smoothly functioning legal framework for cross-border transfers of intermediated securities. In 2005, the Committee undertook a thorough analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of harmonisation of the private international law in this area, as reflected in the Hague Convention. It was, and still is, widely accepted that such harmonisation would contribute to legal certainty by facilitating a clear identification of the law governing the holding and transfer of indirectly-held securities. This is  BIS Review 77/2007  7  particularly important in the context of the cross-border use of collateral: a key element of banks’ global liquidity management strategies. Early in 2006, the FMLC published a paper that undertook a full analysis of the Convention and expressed strong support for its central propositions. The FMLC’s work in this (and other) areas has been well received and has contributed to the decisionmaking process for government at the national and supra17 national level. Indeed, overall, the Committee has had some notable successes in addressing and ameliorating legal uncertainty in the financial markets context.
Nor is this just a question of learning about parameter values. That would yield an optimal state-contingent procedure for updating the monetary policy rule. It is that we are unwilling to commit now never to learn from future experience. So we would not want to embed any rule deeply into our decision-making structure, such as giving it the force of law or making it part of the constitution. Instead, we delegate the power of decision to an institution that will implement policy period by period exercising “constrained discretion”. The status and purpose of such institutions can be embedded into the law or constitution, which may increase the cost of reversing the delegated powers, but the optimal policy path should be open to change in response to learning. Since  7  4  As reported by Gore Vidal (2003). BIS Review 5/2004  we cannot hope to describe ex ante what it is we expect to learn, and since new ideas are unlikely to be uniformly recognised and instantly accepted, it may be sensible to delegate both the immediate policy decision and the process of learning to the same institution.8 An interesting example of seeking flexibility to allow for learning occurred during the writing of the US constitution. One draft clause specified that Congress should be allowed to “… emit bills on the credit of the United States”. There was a debate on a proposition to strike out the clause.

First, they expand the possibility frontier of the technology of collective decisions and can be designed to raise the cost of those decisions deviating from pre-announced contingent paths. Second, they are set up explicitly to exercise a degree of discretion - “constrained discretion” - subject to the broad objective of price stability. Discretion is inevitable because of the need to learn about the economic environment. Institutions thereby become repositories of experience and knowledge which they communicate to society as a whole. III. Case Study I: Exchange rate regimes in Brazil and the UK  I want to illustrate the importance of institutions and the credibility of their stability by three case studies. My first example concerns the collapse of exchange rate regimes in Europe and Latin America. It demonstrates that economic institutions require a broad base of political support if financial markets are to believe that those institutions are likely to survive. For a while fixed exchange rate regimes enjoyed a degree of support in both Europe, with the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), and Latin America. But experience shows that, in terms of credibility in financial markets, the design of those policy regimes was less important than the fact of their having broad political support. Brazil in 1998-99 is a case in point. In 1998 Brazil operated a crawling peg exchange rate regime.
A combination of financial fragility and weak business and consumer confidence has weighed heavily on the Japanese economy, and on the Yen; and the financial thunderstorms, which broke initially last year over a number of other countries in Asia, are still intermittently rumbling around the region and elsewhere. The economic fallout from these developments poses a serious downside risk to the growth of world activity and threatens the emergence of potentially large international payments imbalances. It is a dangerous environment. All of this has prompted a far-reaching re-examination of the international monetary structure, and in the meantime it presents the international monetary authorities with some difficult immediate management challenges. It also, of course, represents an uncertain international background for the conduct of monetary policy in this country. Our own overall economic performance over the past year was again very encouraging. Output growth (on the latest data, to the first quarter of this year) was 2.9% significantly above the rate of inflation (measured by the GDP deflator) for the fourth time in the past five years - which I think is unprecedented in post-war British experience. On this basis over the past five years annual output growth has averaged some 3.1% while annual inflation has averaged 2.2%. And unemployment - on the conventional claimant count basis - fell further last year, to 4.8% on the latest figures, the lowest since the summer of 1980. The task, of course, is to sustain this pattern of relatively steady growth with low inflation into the medium and longer term.

Mr. George comments briefly on the global economy and on recent economic performance in the United Kingdom Speech by the Governor of the Bank of England, Mr. E.A.J. George, at the Dinner with the Lord Mayor for Bankers and Merchants of the City of London on 11/6/98. The past year, since we last enjoyed the generous hospitality of the Mansion House, on this great City of London occasion, has been a testing time. It has been characterised by major imbalances in both the global economy and here in the United Kingdom - which have complicated the task of policy-makers everywhere, including the task of the Bank of England’s now legitimised Monetary Policy Committee. Internationally there has been good news in the enviable performance of the United States - Goldilocks - economy, with continuing robust domestic demand growth and further falls in unemployment, with so far remarkably little inflationary pressure. To the extent that this performance can be sustained, it provides substantial underpinning for the global economy as a whole. And there has been encouraging news, too, in the re-emergence of domestic demand growth in the Continental European countries as they prepare to take the final step to monetary union. That is a promising context for the launch of a strong, credible, currency and I wish the European Central Bank every success in its historic task. Domestic expansion with monetary stability within Europe is in the interest of us all. Elsewhere though the international situation has been decidedly less benign.
Zamani Abdul Ghani: The SME sector in Malaysia Speech by Mr Zamani Abdul Ghani, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia, at the Signing of Strategic Alliance Agreement between Credit Guarantee Corporation Malaysia Berhad (CGC) and Dun and Bradstreet (D&B) Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Kuala Lumpur, 3 July 2007. *  *  *  Yang Berbahagia Datuk Wan Azhar Wan Ahmad Chief Executive Officer Credit Guarantee Corporation Malaysia Berhad Mr. William Lim Wah Liang Group Executive Director Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) Malaysia and Singapore Distinguished guests, Members of the media, Ladies and Gentlemen, Assalammualaikum w.b.t. and Good Morning It gives me great pleasure to be here with you this morning to officiate and witness yet another milestone of progress for the Credit Guarantee Corporation Malaysia Berhad. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank both CGC and Dun & Bradstreet Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. for the invitation to be a part of this significant occasion. The forging of this strategic alliance between CGC and D&B is indeed timely. In the long run, we believe this initiative would bring much benefit to the financial sector and contribute greatly towards the development of the SME sector, especially in enhancing SMEs' access to financing as well as market penetration and awareness on the importance of SMEs. The SME sector has been and shall remain one of the key drivers of the nation's economic growth.

To overcome this perception, there should be adequate and reliable credit information mechanism, such as an SME credit bureau, that serves the needs of both the SMEs' and the potential lenders'. The establishment of a proposed SME Credit Bureau under this strategic alliance between CGC and D&B would complement other initiatives of the Government and the financial sector to further enhance SMEs' access to financing. One of the most important roles of the Bureau is to make available SME information, which includes their operational and financial status to potential lenders. In addition to relevant and timely information, potential lenders could also take comfort that the information is independently provided, hence increasing its reliability. The importance of a credit bureau in the current environment cannot be over-emphasized. A World Bank report stated that a good credit information infrastructure can contribute significantly towards assisting SMEs' access to capital. The report further highlighted that small firms with access to credit bureaus have a 40% chance of obtaining a loan, whereas firms without access to credit bureaus have only a 28% chance of receiving a loan. Therefore, significant opportunities exist to increase lending activities to SMEs in Malaysia with the establishment of an SME credit bureau. BIS Review 76/2007  1  Currently, information available for lenders to assess the creditworthiness of Malaysian SMEs is quite fragmented. Although there are a number of parties providing information on SMEs, the information are mostly tailored towards specific requirements and does not add the necessary values required from the perspective of potential lenders.
We also need to build bridges to the future and shape a recovery that makes our economies fit for the future. But bridges need solid foundations. Europe’s future must be built on strong democratic legitimacy. Europe’s citizens must be at the centre of the debate about the Europe that we want to build as we emerge from the crisis. As their elected representatives, you, together with the European Parliament, have a crucial role to play in making their voices heard. I now look forward to our debate. [1] In French: “J’ai toujours pensé que l’Europe se ferait dans les crises, et qu’elle serait la somme des solutions qu’on apporterait à ces crises.” See Monnet, J. (1976), Mémoires, Fayard, Paris. [2] In French: “[la Communauté européenne] elle-même n’est qu’une étape vers les formes d’organisation du monde de demain.” See Monnet, J., ibid., p. 617. [3] Following a significant drop in the first quarter of 2020, euro area real GDP fell by 11.8% in the second quarter, resulting in a record cumulative decline of 15.1% in the first half of the year. [4] ECB staff macroeconomic projections for the euro area, September 2020. [5] Milasi, S. et al. (2020), “  The potential for teleworking in Europe and the risk of a new digital divide”, VoxEU, 14 August. [6] Lagarde, C. (2020), “Payments in a digital world”, speech at the Deutsche Bundesbank online conference on banking and payments in the digital world, 10 September.

This is an incarnation of the wise measures adopted by the government under the leadership of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques to carry out more structural reforms (institutional and regulatory) which we have begun to feel their positive effects in all aspects of economy. It will be appropriate here to say a few words about the dynamic and crucial role played by the banking sector in the Kingdom, which is manifested in the substantial increase in the credit extended to the private sector which grew by 29 percent annually during 2003 – 2005; and it amounted to Rls 436 billion at the end of 2005. As a result of the expansion in banking business, the assets of the banking sector increased by 14.4 percent annually during the past three years (2003 – 2005). At the end of the first quarter of 2006, they stood at Rls 797.4 billion, constituting about 70 percent of the Kingdom’s economy. Deposits with the banking sector rose by 13.7 percent annually during the past three years, and they amounted to Rls 521.5 billion at the end of the first quarter of 2006. The positive indicators of the banking sector which rest on the robust fundamentals of the Saudi economy have prepared an appropriate environment for banks to adapt to successive, regional and international changes during the previous period. Banks operating in the Kingdom have been able to overcome the crises that hit other economies, and have been able to benefit from banks’ experiences and modern banking technology.
Jean-Claude Trichet: The Euro after two years: present situation and prospects Speech by Mr Jean-Claude Trichet, Governor of the Banque de France, at a conference organised by “The Economist”, held in Madrid, on 7 February 2001. *  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, it is a great pleasure and an honour for me to be invited to speak in this seminar organised by The Economist, today in Madrid. I also thank Arthur Andersen and the Banco Bilbao Viscaya for their contribution to this gathering. It is also a great pleasure to meet again with my colleague Jaime Caruana, between two meetings of the ECB Governing Council. I am particularly happy to express my views on the already successful existence of the euro and Monetary Union, and the conditions and prospects for its further success. st  As you all know, within ten months, on 1 January 2002, the euro will become a reality across Europe as euro banknotes and coins are introduced. This will be the largest monetary change over the world has ever seen. However, it should be recalled that for all economic, monetary and institutional st purposes, Monetary Union was created on 1 January 1999. Then, a decisive event in the history of Europe occurred. The euro was born and the irreversible nature of this change has convinced an increasing number of economic players that the success of the euro is necessary for Europe.

According to the IMF, this effect is estimated to have contributed 1.5-2.0 percentage points per annum to inflation for EU countries catching up on productivity. The recent statistics available for the United States also confirm that wage and salary differentials within the euro area are by no means atypical in a monetary union : for example, in the US the average weekly earnings in the non-durable goods sector stood at USD 546 at the national level, while standing at USD 437 in Mississippi and USD 644 in New Jersey. I am convinced that we can be reasonably confident in the increasing integration of European countries, and in the fact that economic developments are becoming more and more correlated in the area. It has been highlighted, in the academic field, by several empirical investigations that business cycles are becoming more synchronous across Europe. Secondly it has often been questioned whether EMU can be a success without some form of enhanced political union. Certainly, for EMU to function well, all Member States must be aware of the spill-over effects of all their national policies, especially their budgetary policies. In this regard, we are in favour of strong co-ordination between economic policies, while respecting the independence of the Eurosystem. This co-ordination is contained in the Treaty itself, which obliges Member States to treat national economic policies “as a matter of common interest” and subjects them to a multilateral procedure. Even more importantly, the euro zone is not devoid of mechanisms conducive to an appropriate policy mix.