samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Many other central banks, including the Bank of England and Bank of Canada, have ongoing analysis projects on digital central bank money. 31 Considering how rapidly developments are proceeding, it is probably good to be aware that it will require both resources and cooperation with external players, both authorities and companies, for the Riksbank to act proactively in this matter. The Riksbank will modernise the supply of settlement services I have given several reasons for why the private market cannot be expected to provide a secure and efficient payment system without government interference: economies of scale and network effects lead to concentration in a monopoly system that becomes vulnerable and results in a lack of competition and innovation. At the same time, positive network effects suggest that cooperation and standardisation may be effective solutions. In Sweden, we have a long tradition of cooperation between the banks in the area of payment which has been very positive for Swedish consumers. Bankgirot, Bankomat (ATMs), Bank ID and Swish are a few examples. The Riksbank and other central banks have traditionally provided systems and central bank money to allow financial institutions to be able to regulate their mutual debts in a secure manner. The payment market is now in a state of transformation, among other things due to technological progress, not least via solutions for smart phones. In other words, we are on the way to a market in which end users demand that payments be rapid and constantly available.

When you look at the last thirty or forty years, you see repeating cycles of stop-go-policies. So, the trick is to attack the budget  deficit, which is crucial. If you are able to do that, then other  things will fall into place. The Government has taken several measures recently to boost exports. By recognizing the need for broad-based institutional  support, the Government has already taken steps to create an Page 12 of 17  Agency for International Trade. The AFIT is taking the lead in  negotiating a series of trade Agreements. An early harvest is being sought to increase the benefits from the existing FTA in goods with India. These include Mutual Recognition Agreements among  Standard Institutions and relaxing quotas on goods of interest to Sri Lanka. Negotiations are also underway to deepen and broaden the Agreement in goods through adjustments to the negative lists. The ETCA will also extend the application of negotiated rules to services, investment, training and technology. Similar agreements are being negotiated with China and Singapore. Now there is a natural concern, natural nervousness about a small country like Sri Lanka negotiating Partnership agreements with enormous countries like China and India. We are not the first  small country to negotiate trade agreements with a large country. Mexico is not a small country, but it is interesting that Mexico has benefited most from NAFTA, much more than the US or Canada.
The government has translated[1] this into three objectives: to spur a vibrant, innovative, and internationally competitive insurance sector; to protect policyholders and ensure the safety and soundness of firms; and to support insurance firms to provide long-term capital to support growth, including investment in infrastructure, venture capital and growth equity, and other long-term productive assets, as well as investment consistent with the government’s climate change objectives. These are consistent and mutually supportive objectives. Safety and soundness underpin the other two objectives: the sector can only be internationally competitive if it operates within a robust and reliable infrastructure, which includes the prudential regime as well as things like the legal system; and only a financially sound insurance sector  Goldilocks and the three pillars: how much capital is just right? ‐ speech by Anna Sweeney | Bank of England  Page 2  can make a sustainable contribution to long term investment. Conversely, an innovative sector, that supports the wider economy through long term investment, is ultimately a sounder one. Tailoring will mean reforms to specific aspects of the regime that are not well-designed or imperfectly calibrated for the UK, and are currently distorting incentives and behaviour. The risk margin is probably the best known example. The concept – a margin over best estimate of liabilities so that they are held on the regulatory balance sheet at an estimate of their transfer value – is sound.

BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  decisively in the event of an excessive appreciation of the Swiss franc. This policy was maintained throughout the first half of 2010. In spring 2010, the news on the state of the Swiss economy turned increasingly positive although the forecast remained fraught with major uncertainties. It was not clear, for instance, that partial unemployment (short-time work) could be reabsorbed without a significant additional increase in the rate of unemployment. The recovery appeared to be on the way but was presumed to remain very fragile. At the same time, the sovereign debt crisis in Europe was causing major tensions in financial markets. In general, markets were commonly afraid that the euro could face long term structural problems, the flight to safe investments was universal and the pressures on the Swiss franc were substantial. The SNB considered that, at that time, the Swiss economy was unlikely to have gained enough strength to be able to withstand a further violent appreciation of the franc. Such a development would have placed the Swiss economy under such severe strains that the threat of a deflationary trend would have again come to the fore. The SNB was not prepared to take this risk; it resisted an excessive appreciation of the franc and in so doing was led to acquire large quantities of foreign exchange.
Regarding the concept of compound interest, however, the percentage is very close to the average observed in the OECD countries (46%) and in the EU members (44%). Nonetheless, this should serve as no consolation, since this average means that over half the interviewees do not understand a basic financial concept such as compound interest rates. The need to reinforce the general public’s financial literacy is also patent in some of the results on knowledge, holding, acquisition and use of financial products. Firstly, as far as knowledge of financial products is concerned, the Survey asks interviewees whether they have heard of the following products: (i) savings accounts, pension schemes, investment funds, shares and fixed income (all savings vehicles); (ii) life insurance and medical insurance; (iii) means of payment such as credit cards; and (iv) debt products such as mortgages and personal loans. It can be concluded from the results that there is less knowledge of savings products than of debt or insurance products. Shares and pension schemes are well known (around 90% have heard of them), but only 73% of interviewees have heard of savings accounts and term deposits and only 78% of fixed income, while the percentage of those who have heard of life and medical insurance, credit cards, mortgages and personal loans is, in all instances, higher than or equal to 95%.

The most frequently acquired product in Spain is the credit card, followed by personal loans. Here, too, there are significant differences in the acquisition of savings products based on educational level and on the level of income, which are less marked in the case of debt products. Thus, in the case of interviewees with a university education, 32% acquire savings products, while in the case of those with primary schooling, only 8% acquire them. By level of income, 43% of those who live in a household with income of over € acquire savings vehicles while only 8% do so in households with income of up to € Finally, the Survey also enables information to be had on the use of financial products: in particular, on one hand, on whether interviewees have saved over the past 12 months and, if so, using which savings vehicle; and, on the other, whether the household’s spending has exceeded its income over this period and, if so, how they financed it the last time this happened. This information shows that, as regards saving, 61% of interviewees have been saving in the past 12 months. The percentage increases in terms of educational level and level of income. One noteworthy feature is that the second most common method of saving, behind the current account, is cash, even in the highest educational and income segments. In particular, 38% of interviewees who save do so in cash. Only 14% do so via a savings account and 11% via a pension scheme.
I assume that this is one explanation why, for instance, it took Sweden until 1999 before there was sufficient political support to grant the Riksbank increased formal independence and to confirm by law the price stability objective, despite the fact that these reforms had been proposed when the inflation target was introduced in 1993. However, the concern among politicians over making central banks independent is quite unwarranted. The independence does not, of course, mean that the central bank is free to conduct any monetary policy they wish; it only means that it should be able to use the means at its disposal to meet the objectives set by the political system without outside intervention. This is usually expressed as the central bank being instrument independent but not goal independent. The delegation of powers should be regarded as a means for politicians to ensure that the long-term aim of the monetary policy that they endeavour to achieve – but have difficulty guaranteeing – can become a reality. Furthermore, a natural consequence of the independence is that the central bank shall be accountable for its actions and that monetary policy shall be conducted in a transparent manner 7 . It is interesting to note that, despite fairly substantial initial doubts, people have afterwards been very satisfied with the reforms implemented. Monetary policy therefore appears to have essentially delivered what was hoped for and I am not aware of any country where making the central bank more independent has been regretted. Conclusion Let me round off.

They promote a form of moral hazard that can sow the seeds of instability and of costly fluctuations in the real economy”. In practice it is difficult to know whether an “imbalance” does contain the seed of a future negative demand shock on a scale that would leave inflation below the target for some considerable time, or whether it will unwind of its own accord. The fact that growing imbalances might cause sharp deviations of inflation from target at some point in the future, raises the possibility of a trade off between deviations of inflation from target over the next  BIS Review 68/2002  15  year or so and deviations of inflation from target further ahead. That, I believe, is the right way to think about the challenge to monetary policy posed by asset price movements. Although there are no simple answers I hope I have shown that inflation targeting is enough, provided that one thinks carefully about the horizon over which policy can hope to affect inflation. The second challenge for monetary policy over the next decade is the possibility of deflation. That prices are now rising at the slowest rate for decades is, of course, a positive achievement of which the Bank is proud. But is the real threat now deflation? It is important to recognise that falling prices of manufactured goods is not the same as general deflation.
The radically-changed economic conditions of course had a major impact on the repo-rate forecast. It was revised so much that the repo-rate path also ended up far outside the uncertainty bands that surrounded the forecast produced in September 2008. It could also be said that the monetary policy actually conducted was closer to crisis management than to forecasting. Let me illustrate this with an analogy. Figure 2 The repo rate and forecasts for the repo rate at different times, per cent 7  7 90% 75%  6  6  50% Outcome September 2008  5  5  September 2009 September 2010 April 2011  4  4  3  3  2  2  1  1  0  0 06  07  08  09  10  11  12  13  Note: All forecasts entail a degree of uncertainty but to preserve the graphic profile only uncertainty bands for the September 2008 forecast are shown. Source: The Riksbank. 6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Monetary policy is sometimes compared to driving a car, in that it is a case of moving forward safely along a road at a good speed. The forecast can be compared to looking ahead along the road and then adjusting the speed of the car and the movements of the steering wheel to keep the car on the road. The financial crisis can be compared to a collision that threatens to throw the car off the road.

This proved not to be the case and these days we present the entire cohesive forecast for the inflation target, wages, GDP and its components, the repo rate and so on. I believe that by doing this we have increased the public’s understanding of monetary policy and reduced the drama surrounding the entire monetary policy process. Assessing economic activity entails reviewing material that is in a constant state of flux, and when we change our monetary policy these changes can be concretely related to changes in real-economic conditions. I would also like to add that the quantified forecasts are of course interesting, but the associated analyses of the driving forces behind different courses of development are at least as interesting. How do we make our forecasts? Developments abroad play an important role For a small open economy like the Swedish economy, the international outlook is the point of departure for the forecast. We cannot influence events abroad, but what happens there has a major impact on developments here at home. Here I would like to highlight some of the special aspects relating to the forecast of developments abroad. 1  Apart from the fact that it is considered desirable to stabilise resource utilisation, resource utilisation is also an important inflation indicator. Resource utilisation is thus an important factor that plays several roles in the monetary policy analysis and there is an almost constant discussion of what measures of resource utilisation are the most relevant.
Increasingly often, decisions on how to react when various risk limits are exceeded are being taken on the merits of the individual case, rather than being based on a mechanical rule. Greater transparency and less mechanical use of risk models could be contributing factors in improving the functioning of the financial markets, but they will not solve the problem of short-term assessments of financial operations. Counteracting this requires clear information on the targets for the financial operations. This is an important task for the authorities, the individual companies and various types of business association, such as the Swedish Mutual Fund Association. In connection with this, it is of course necessary to review the advice provided to clients. And, as I mentioned earlier, I also believe that a review of the reward structure in the mutual fund business would be useful, so that incentives for fund managers are better adapted to the interests of the savers. 4  BIS Review 75/2001  Conclusion The rapid economic internationalisation has made daily life much more complicated for many of us who work in the financial sector. Today, for instance, a person managing various securities funds in principle has the whole world on his or her desk. It is not enough to have good knowledge of a particular type of company or sector, or of developments in an individual country.

Our export to Austria was 1.1 billion USD and import from Austria was 1.6 billion USD at the end of 2012. These numbers are quite small compared to the potential. On the financing side, however, there is good news. Austria is the leading country in foreign direct investment flows to Turkey for the period after 2008 with 7 billion USD in total. Direct investments are mainly focused on the energy sector. There are currently 643 Austrian firms operating in Turkey. Distinguished Guests, The European Union is a success story regarding peace and cooperation among nations with rather bitter historical memories. No wonder the European Union obtained the Nobel Peace Prize in year 2012. Despite all the debates and a high degree of uncertainty regarding the new economic governance structure in the EU, I sincerely believe Turkey’s closer cooperation with Austria will bring invaluable outcomes in line with the European spirit. To conclude, I would like to express my view that the future of the commercial, financial and economic relations between Austria and Turkey looks more promising than ever. Today’s joint meeting and the opening ceremony of the Exhibition “Contemporary Turkish Painting and Printmaking in the Republican Era” are small, symbolic, yet quite significant steps to mark the start of this new and healthy trend. Thank you very much for your attention. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3
The wage gap measures the difference between actual wage growth and the growth that over time is consistent with the inflation target, and is an indicator of labour market tightness. With estimated productivity growth at 2 per cent, wage growth of 4.5 per cent over time will be consistent with an inflation target of 2.5 per cent. In the chart, the wage gap up to 2000, i.e. before the introduction of the inflation target, is defined as the difference between wage growth in Norway and in other countries. This wage gap appears to be closely in line with the output gap as measured by Norges Bank. Normally, the interest rate is set with a view to achieving inflation of 2½% at the two-year horizon. Norges Bank operates a flexible inflation targeting regime, so that weight is given to variability in inflation as well as to variability in output and employment. Monetary policy affects the economy with a lag. The choice of a two-year horizon is thus based on striking a balance between variability in inflation and variability in output and employment, and a perception of how interest rates influence these variables. If extraordinary conditions prompt Norges Bank to apply a different time horizon than two years, the Bank will provide an assessment of this. The same applies if special emphasis is placed on developments in financial markets. External cyclical developments and events have had considerable implications for developments in the Norwegian economy. The international upturn came to a halt in 2000.

And one of the most important duties of a central bank is to safeguard the financial system. In a crisis, that means acting as lender of last resort, supplying emergency loans to financial institutions when normal funding isn’t available. The U.S. Treasury Department and other federal agencies were also doing all they could to shore up the financial system. Now, I know that this financial support to big banks and Wall Street firms made many people irate, especially when so many Americans were losing their jobs or their homes. We should remember, though, that ordinary people suffer terribly when the financial system breaks down. The ultimate goal of our programs was to avert a major depression and much higher unemployment. Because of these programs, we were able to avoid a meltdown of the financial system and head off a depression. But we couldn’t prevent a terrible recession. The shock waves from the burst housing bubble and the financial crisis were simply too great. As it happens, it’s normal that severe recessions and sluggish recoveries follow financial crises.1 Research at the San Francisco Fed and other places shows that downturns following financial crises are much more severe when the preceding expansions had unusually rapid growth of credit and leverage.2 When the credit pendulum swings, it takes many years for household and business spending to return to normal. And, in fact, there was extraordinary credit growth before the recession.
Other, more recent, shifts include the increasing incidence of self-employment, flexible and part-time working and zero-hours contracts. These shifts in the nature and quality of work have become very topical recently. The UK government has commissioned an independent review, chaired by Matthew Taylor, to look into their impact. 3  These changes in working customs, contracts and practices have been given a variety of descriptions. Some have called them the “casualisation” of work, with jobs becoming less structured and more informal. 4  Others have called them the “gig” economy, with work becoming less four-cornered and more task-oriented. 5  Other still have associated these changes with heightened “insecurity” in the jobs market, with implications 6  for households’ incomes and spending. All of these descriptions recognise that these shifts affect the quality of work in the economy, even as the quantity reaches levels not seen for many decades. 7  Because the causes and consequences of these shifts in working practices are many and varied, no single description of them is perfect. Surveys suggest that, for some people, the move to greater self-employment and part-time working has been a welcome development, increasing the degree of control and flexibility over their working lives. For others, these same shifts are less a lifestyle choice than a necessity, increasing their degree of uncertainty and concern about income and jobs. Gigging can be fun for some. But not everyone wants to be a roadie when it comes to the world of work.

Perhaps a more neutral, if less catchy, description of these trends is needed. In terms of their economic impact, these trends have had the effect of making work more “divisible” than in the past. The fall in unionisation has made workers more divisible at the level of the profession, sector or firm. Wage bargaining 1  See, for example, Abel et al (2016). IMF (2017). See www.gov.uk/government/groups/employment-practices-in-the-modern-economy 4 Solow (2015). 5 For example, Hook (2015). 6 Hudson-Sharp and Runge (2017). 7 Chapman (2017). Also see OECD (2017) for some discussion of ‘job quality’. 2 3  4  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  4  is less likely to be collective, and more likely to be idiosyncratic, these days. Similarly, the rise in self-employment and part-time working has made work more divisible at the level of the individual worker. People are more likely these days to be paid by the task or the hour. In short, these shifts have meant work and workers may have become more diffuse, more granular, more divisible than in the past. This increased “divisibility” of jobs and work potentially raises a number of important issues, economic and social, about the relationship between employee and employer, many of which are being tackled by the Taylor Review. I want to explore just one dimension - the extent to which they may have influenced wage-setting in the economy.