samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Before proceeding to a more in-depth analysis of the topic, allow me to clarify an issue that was subject to previous public debate. The National Bank of Romania has nothing against wage hikes. Quite the opposite, we might say. The Romanian economy could only benefit from an increasingly fast rise in wages, in order to enjoy a higher living standard, surmount the historical disparities that separate us from the Western economies and put a stop to labour force migration. Nonetheless, we must analyse with a clear mind and assert bluntly that a mismatch between pay rises and labour productivity gains is unsustainable. Wage hikes in excess of labour productivity are not likely to bring about a higher living standard, but on the contrary, they may lead to a lower living standard, given that, sooner or later, the disparity between the two fundamental indicators will entail a fast-paced rise in prices, the weakening of domestic currency, external indebtedness. All this has a negative influence on  BIS Review 162/2008  1  investment and delays the achievement of real convergence of the economy rather than speed it up. Over the past few years, annual productivity gains came in at impressive 10% and beyond each year. Multiple factors stood behind this performance, such as the initial low level, the significant decline – even if not always illustrated by statistical indicators – in the population working in agriculture and, highly important, the strong increase in investment.

It appears that growth in investment will increase in the period ahead: the high level of investment in the petroleum sector will contribute to higher investment growth in the offshore supplier industry. There are signs of rising investment in the construction industry. "Repatriation" is also being considered in Rogaland: the Gjestal Spinneri spinning company is looking at the possibility of investing in a new facility in Oltedal, enabling the company to transfer production from the UK to Norway. Employment is rising, with the most marked increase in the construction sector. Almost a third of the enterprises report that shortages in the supply of qualified labour may constrain output growth. Through the past year, there have been increasing reports of higher selling prices. One in four manufacturing enterprises is expecting a higher rise in prices this year than in 2004. In retail trade, two in three enterprises are expecting an accelerating rise in prices. The picture is mixed for the corporate service sector. Profitability is still improving considerably in all sectors. This reflects both an increase in volume and cost reductions. In the adopted budget for 2005, the structural, non-oil deficit increases compared with 2004. It therefore appears that fiscal policy will provide some stimulus to growth this year. In the National Budget for 2005, the underlying rise in expenditure over the central government budget was projected at 5.2 per cent, which is somewhat lower than the previous year and somewhat lower than projected nominal growth in mainland GDP.
In 1973, western economies experienced a recession which would prove to be the start of a long period of sluggish growth. Annual GDP growth in Western Europe was nearly halved compared with the previous ten-year period. This was largely due to a negative shift in productivity growth. In addition, we experienced a cost shock as a result of the oil crisis in 1973. In Norway, the recession in the 1970s was dealt with by means of a strong counter-cyclical policy. Despite price regulation and rising unemployment, inflation rose sharply. This was an indication that structural shifts had taken place in the economy in the 1970s, shifts that were not apparent to politicians and economists at the time. The objective of full employment was given priority at the expense of price stability.3 But we did not achieve higher growth in exchange for higher inflation. An economic policy that fuels inflation does not generate higher economic growth. On the contrary, it paves the way for subsequent recession and unemployment. It would take time, however, before this view took hold in Norway. One of the first to express this idea clearly during the debate in Norway was Per Schreiner, Director General in the Ministry of Finance at the time. He wrote the following in 1982:4 “It has been a common belief in the Nordic countries for a long time that it was possible to make a political choice between price stability and full employment.

He has done pioneering empirical and theoretical work across a remarkably broad field of topics. His main interests, however, lie in banking, corporate finance and economic development, and especially the role played by finance in economic development. In his paper entitled ʻFinancial dependence and growth’, co-authored with Luigi Zingales, he found evidence of a positive causality between the level of development of a country’s financial sector and income growth. According to Google Scholar, this paper has been cited more than 9,000 times. This is on a par with Milton Friedman’s influential 1967 presidential address to the American Economic Association on the concept of the natural rate of unemployment. Raghu’s trademark is his willingness to challenge the accepted wisdom of the day. The bestknown example of this took place at the Jackson Hole symposium in 2005. There he warned of an upcoming meltdown in the global financial system, with substantial negative consequences for the real economy. Three years later, the global financial crisis broke out. And it was largely caused by the very factors that he had identified. For Raghu, financial markets play an important role for economic growth in the long term. However, financial markets have a tendency to deviate from fundamental values. Financial regulation has therefore been a concern of his since well before the crisis. What are his recommendations in this regard? To be effective, regulation must avoid being procyclical, that is, over-regulating in a bust and de-regulating in a boom. Rather, regulation must be comprehensive and contingent. Consider two types of such regulation.
Banks with CDO exposure have already made full provision and recognized losses in line with IAS 39, and presently all sub-prime related CDO positions have been unwound. More importantly, Thai banks also do not have investment in US GSE securities. This is another positive point that will help insulate the banks from any further spillovers. Reflecting this, the direct impact of the turmoil so far, on the Thai banking sector, has been limited. Second, on the issue of liquidity and financing, banks in Thailand are predominantly domestic-owned. Hence, they rely more on deposit funding rather than external funding. Domestic funding is a more stable source of funding and is not affected by the turmoil. This feature will help cushion Thai banks from the effects of the global credit crunch. BIS Review 111/2008  1  Third, fundamentals of the Thai banking system have improved and the key fundamentals are sound and resilient. As a sector, banks in Thailand have enjoyed good profits for the past seven years and are well capitalized with the BIS capital adequacy ratio at 15.2 percent at end of June this year. Over the years, better risk management, improved asset quality, greater provisioning coverage against losses, and the regulatory and supervisory frameworks that meet international standards, have significantly improved the overall risk profile of the sector. As for the most recent quarter, net profit of 57 billion baht was registered in the second quarter of this year.

Bandid Nijathaworn: How strong are Thai banks to weather the turmoil? Keynote address by Dr Bandid Nijathaworn, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Thailand, at the Fitch Thailand’s 2008 Annual Conference, 10 September 2008. *  *  *  Thank you, Chairman. First, let me thank Fitch Thailand for the invitation to address this year’s conference as a keynote speaker. Our topic this morning is “How strong are Thai banks to weather the turmoil?” My answer is short and simple: Thai banks are strong enough to weather the current global turmoil. The sector is also well positioned to support the economy. This is the message I gave six weeks ago when we had a press briefing at the Bank of Thailand. Although conditions in the global economy and financial markets have changed somewhat since then, it is the same message of resiliency and strength that I want to echo to you this morning. I agree with the two previous speakers that global financial market conditions and growth prospects have further weakened especially in the past two months. In financial markets, we continue to see falling share price indices and increased spreads in a large number of US dollar products, including high-quality US corporate bonds, money market spreads, and bank credit default swaps. Doubts about additional losses by banks in major economies also persist and this has made it more difficult for banks to raise capital.
This means that heavy and prolonged interventions may be self-reinforcing over time, steadily increasing the necessary volume of intervention purchases required to maintain the krone exchange rate. The foremost example of such a game situation in Norway’s exchange rate policy history was Friday, 20 November 1992, when we made intervention purchases for NOK 37 billion from the time the market opened until the market closed. Norges Bank does not want to intervene in such a way that this type of game situation arises. However, the Bank will use interventions if the krone moves substantially out of line with what we consider to be reasonable based on fundamentals or in the event of exceptional short-term volatility. It may also be appropriate to reinforce a desired development in the exchange rate that has already been observed in the market. In such a situation, it is assumed that the risk of ending up in a game situation against exchange market players is marginal. However, we must take into account that the krone exchange rate cannot in the long run deviate substantially from the level implied by economic fundamentals. The instrument available to Norges Bank for influencing economic fundamentals is the interest rate. Over time, therefore, the interest rate is the most important instrument of monetary and BIS Review 10/1999  –8–  exchange rate policy. This is also recognised in the formulation of the guidelines for monetary policy. According to the National Budget for 1999, “Interest rates must be adjusted in order to avoid persistent and large-scale interventions”.

See Barry Eichengreen and Marc Flandreau, “The Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, and the Rise of the Dollar as an International Currency, 1914– 1939,” Open Economies Review 23, no. 1 (2012): 57–87. 9 In his report on the discount system in Europe, Paul Warburg wrote that the “annual tribute to Europe resulting  from our primitive financial system is not merely a waste of money, but reflects upon the dignity of a nation and economic importance of the United States.” See Paul Warburg, The Discount System in Europe (Washington: Government Printing Office, 61st Congress, 2nd Session, Senate Doc 402, 1910), 9. 10 For the guarantee, from 1921 until 1974 when the New York Fed discontinued the guarantee option on banker’s  acceptances, the New York Fed charged 1/8th of 1% on the face amount of banker’s acceptances purchased on behalf of foreign central bank accountholders. Dollar banker’s acceptances became a favored investment instrument by foreign central banks in the days before the introduction of the first regularly issued U.S. Treasury bill in 1929. 11 The maintenance of gold vaults and reciprocal gold custody accounts among major central banks provided  significant operational advantages for the functioning of the international gold standard. In addition to the safety of storing gold with another central bank, through the practice of earmarking central banks could settle accounts with one another without the need to physically deliver gold bullion. This was especially useful in periods, such as wartime, when navigation of sea lanes could be impeded.
The use of the Fund’s return must therefore be smoothed over time in order to prevent events in international capital markets from spreading to the Norwegian economy. 6. Conclusion In the character of Peer Gynt, Ibsen drew a rather unflattering portrait of the Norwegian man who travelled out into the world and became rich - but who had no concern for others. At the end of the play, Peer is penniless. Ibsen himself left Norway, and although the Norwegian landscape and his Norwegian identity were at the core of his writing, it was his encounter with other ideas and thinking that enabled him to reshape his experience into world-class literature. In the asylum in Peer Gynt, where “man is himself to the uttermost limit” and “no-one considers another’s ideas” but “encloses himself in a barrel of self”, Peer Gynt is crowned “Emperor of Self”. When the roles are reversed and the asylum’s keepers protest at being caged instead of the inmates, the director of the asylum, Begriffenfeldt, answers: “When the world’s in a whirl, then we must whirl with it”. 13 We do not share this attitude. We must not whirl helplessly along with the world. We should take advantage of the opportunities globalisation offers, but also contribute to those changes ourselves. Thank you for your attention. 13  Henrik Ibsen: Peer Gynt. Translated by Peter Watts. Penguin Books, London, 1966. BIS Review 10/2006  9

The credit expansion coincided with a protracted boom and a significant proportion of the borrowed money was spent on speculation, both in real estate and in financial assets, such as equity. The real estate speculation in Sweden culminated in a bubble that burst in 1990-91. Shielded by the economic upswing, there had been many misdirected and overly optimistic investments in various industrial and other projects. BIS Review 65/1998  -2-  In these aspects I find similarities between Sweden in the late 1980s and the Asian countries during the 1990s. A feature common to Sweden and Korea was, moreover, that the domestic financial market was liberalised long before the external capital outflows. This meant that overheating of the domestic economy could not be adequately balanced by capital outflows for investment abroad. But there are also some differences. Other factors that contributed to Sweden’s acute crisis were a relatively deep international downturn and high interest rates in our part of the world in the wake of German reunion. On top of this, our fiscal position was more vulnerable, entering the 1990s with a public debt-to-GDP ratio of around 40 per cent. Sweden’s external borrowing ratio was also high - some 30 per cent of GDP. Besides reflecting the public budget deficit, this had to do with an extremely low private savings ratio. In some years this ratio was actually negative. These weaknesses made Sweden highly vulnerable to shifts in confidence in our economy. The financial sector There were also underlying weaknesses in financial systems.
Sukhdave Singh: Financial governance and economic growth Keynote address by Dr Sukhdave Singh, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia (Bank Negara Malaysia), at the Malaysian Economic Convention “Financial Governance and Economic Growth”, Kuala Lumpur, 28 September 2015. *  *  *  It is indeed an honour to be speaking to such a distinguished audience. It is also a great pleasure for me to be here this morning and join my colleagues in the Economics fraternity at this 2015 Malaysian Economic Convention. To begin, let me share with you a story. Twenty years ago, on 28 January 1986, the NASA space shuttle Challenger was launched. Seventy-three seconds into its flight, spectators were horrified as the space shuttle broke apart in a fiery display and disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean. Seven astronauts died. The catastrophe was traced to the failure of a single O-ring – a simple seal at a joint on one of the rocket boosters. The O-ring failed due to the unusually cold temperatures on the morning of the launch. Relative to the highly sophisticated technologies involved in building and launching the shuttle, the O-ring was considered established technology, one with a patent history of 90 years by the time the Challenger was launched. It was as ironic as it was instructive that such a complex machine, incorporating the most advanced aerospace technology of its time, failed and combusted due to a component as trivial and basic as an O-ring.

Denis Beau: Building an appropriate climate stress testing framework for capital markets Opening remarks by Mr Denis Beau, First Deputy Governor of the Bank of France, at the Future Europe Sustainable Europe Global Virtual Conference "Europe’s global response - promoting global financial coordination towards our common sustainable future", 6 July 2021. * * * I would like to thank you very much for your kind invitation to present the work the Banque de France and the ACPR, its supervisory arm, conducted on climate stress-testing and to share some of the lessons we have drawn from it. I will focus my remarks on 1/ the objectives to be set to such exercice 2/ the tools to be used. ***** 1- I think it is not a matter of debate between financial institutions and their supervisors that climate change affect financial institutions through the traditional risks categories they face. Sizing the exposure to and impact of climate-related drivers on those traditional risk categories is however difficult, given the specificities of those climate-related risk drivers, which are not necessarily economic in nature, and the multiple layers of uncertainty which affect them. In particular, data on past changes in climate and their financial impact may be a particularly poor guide to future magnitude and dynamic of climate related risks. In addition, financial institutions decision-making horizons are usually too short-term oriented to fully account for the long time horizon of risks associated with climate change, the so-called “tragedy of the horizon".
Chart 15 plots real household disposable income per head across households grouped into five income categories. Because household spending differs materially depending on someone’s income – for example, poorer households spend proportionately more on food and energy – we deflate the income of each group using a price index which reflects their different spending patterns. Chart 15 paints a fairly reassuring picture. In general, lower income groups have fared somewhat better than higher income groups since the crisis: the lowest income quintile has seen disposable incomes rise by around 5% since 2007, while the highest quintile has seen income fall by around 5%. Those in the bottom half of the distribution have seen incomes rise since 2007, while those in the top half have seen them fall. This reflects the impact of the benefits and pensions system in supporting lower income households. As a result, the distribution of incomes across the UK has probably narrowed a little since 2007. Income inequality has, if anything, fallen. That means, when we look at measures of social welfare aggregated across different income groups, we find it has not performed very differently than aggregate real disposable income since the crisis (Chart 16). These patterns of gains and losses are, however, very different when we turn to wealth. Chart 17 plots the distribution of wealth gains since 2010 across income quintiles. It suggests a dramatically uneven pattern. Those in the bottom two-fifths of the income distribution have seen virtually no gains in their wealth since 2010.

Premièrement, en coordonnant les politiques budgétaires des États membres de l’Union monétaire, le pacte permet de doser de façon convenable les politiques monétaire et budgétaires (policy mix) au sein de la zone euro. Cet élément est essentiel pour la politique monétaire. Étant donné que l’Europe ne dispose pas d’un budget fédéral important, tout comme elle n’est pas dotée d’un gouvernement  3  BIS Review 22/1999  fédéral, la somme des budgets nationaux doit servir de budget global pour l’ensemble de la zone euro. Cette situation rend nécessaire une surveillance mutuelle étroite et la coordination des politiques budgétaires au sein de la zone. Deuxièmement, par le biais de l’instauration d’un système de sanctions financières en cas de déficits excessifs, le pacte permet d’éviter que les économies bien gérées aient à supporter des primes de risque injustifiées. Troisièmement, le pacte de stabilité nous permet de réfuter l’affirmation selon laquelle la zone euro ne dispose pas de stabilisateurs automatiques en cas de chocs asymétriques subis par un État membre. En réalité, en incitant les États à viser à moyen terme une situation budgétaire proche de l’équilibre ou en excédent, le pacte leur permet de laisser s’accroître les déficits budgétaires durant les récessions sans dépasser la valeur de référence de 3 %. Bref, il leur permet de se constituer, durant les périodes économiques normales, un volant de sécurité budgétaire auquel ils peuvent recourir pour résister à un choc asymétrique. B. Les préparatifs techniques approfondis ont permis l’introduction réussie de l’euro sur les marchés 1.
Regional economic conditions (update since the April regional press briefing)  Turning to our region, we can see a nascent recovery in most areas, with a holding pattern in other parts. This mixed pattern of growth is not surprising in the aftermath of a recession, and particularly a deep one with a financial crisis, as well. On the positive side, I can report that economic activity has picked up in many parts of the region. To measure activity we use a set of indexes of economic activity – called Coincident Economic Indicators – that we produce here at the New York Fed for New York State, New York City and New Jersey, plus a similar index produced in Puerto Rico. These indexes provide a timely, monthly gauge of economic activity. They show that in New York State and New York City, activity has expanded at a relatively brisk pace since the beginning of the year. In Puerto Rico, where the recession began three years before the mainland downturn,  BIS Review 100/2010  1  the economy also appears to be picking up in recent months. In contrast, economic conditions in New Jersey remain essentially flat. Although activity there is no longer declining, New Jersey has yet to establish a sustained recovery. But, what about jobs – which are the key for people to truly feel the recovery in their lives?

The government projects public spending to increase in real terms by around 0.25% per annum (on average) between 2019 and 2022, compared to +1.1% in 2017–2018. Achieving this significant change is necessary and will require additional efforts, which are not yet specified. Public expenditure needs to be made more efficient, in particular on social protection spending, which include pensions and unemployment benefits and which constitute the bulk of the difference between French and German public spending ratio, as can be seen on the graph. [slide 11] Second, I would like to emphasise the interaction between labour market and education reforms. Ambitious labour market reforms have been implemented, aiming at increasing employment flexibility. The negotiation space given to social partners for decision-making, especially at firm level, has been widened. This could reconcile efficiency and worker protection, as we see it in Northern Europe. Staff-representation obligations have been simplified by the creation of a single representative body instead of three, which enlarges the negotiation field and hence eases compromise. Finally, the uncertainties of labour disputes have been eased with a cap on severance pay in case of abusive lay-off and a new type of collective layoff by mutual consent. [slide 12] To yield its benefits, increased flexibility on the labour market requires greater adaptability of skills through a better-functioning lifelong training and apprenticeship system. Without adaptability of skills, the higher layoff rate due to increased flexibility could push up structural unemployment, as unemployed workers deprived from appropriate skills may not find a new job.