samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Those who perceive EU membership as a unique opportunity are equally aware that catching up with some of the most economically and socially advanced countries on earth is a major task for countries whose average income is still only some 40 per cent of the EU average. This challenge can only be overcome if the candidate countries seriously question the way they have organized and managed their economies in the past, and resolve to raise their performance. The magnitude of the task is not to be underestimated because the necessary changes are pervasive – affecting both institutions and mindsets, policies and work practices – and they also entail costs, financial and otherwise. There is clearly, however, also a widespread conviction in the other candidate countries that this would be change with a purpose. Apart from the highly desirable prospect of convergence with EU income levels and living standards, a process itself facilitated by EU financial and technical assistance, the pay-off would include anchoring the future prospects of each new member country to those of an economic superpower, unfettered access to a large and rich market with a single currency, the adoption across the board of international best practices and standards and, not least, a place at the table where decisions are taken which would affect these countries even as non-members. The dynamics of regional economic integration are such that the choices available to our policymakers will be inevitably conditioned in future by the policies of an enlarged and stronger EU.

Zeti Akhtar Aziz: Role of central banks in emerging economies Speech by Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz, Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia, at the Svein Gjedrem Colloquium, Oslo, 18 November 2010. *  *  *  Introduction Central banks continue to be challenged with changing demands as the environment before us is rapidly being transformed. These fundamental and pronounced changes have prompted calls for a review of the role of central banks in the financial system and in the economy. Frequently, such calls have been precipitated during a financial crisis, as was the case during the Asian financial crisis and more recently during this current global financial crisis. However, such institutional reforms undertaken in periods of exceptional conditions risks influencing the nature and direction of the reforms. While the reforms following a crisis may address the immediate term demands, of equal importance is the medium and the longer term implications of the reforms. Perhaps, an important lesson for central banks is that such reinvention and modernisation should be undertaken during the good times so that we will not be subjected to such changes during the worst of times. In essence, in such a dynamic environment, central banks need to continue to adjust and evolve to remain relevant and, thus, useful. It is my great honour to be invited to speak at the Norges Bank Colloquium held in honour of Governor Svein Gjedrem.
We have therefore issued advice to the banks on the steps that they need to take, such as: review of business strategies and business processes that might be affected by the Euro; review of nostro accounts in the legacy currencies; adaptation of information systems; and review of contracts that might be affected by introduction of the euro. Secondly, we have thought it sensible to introduce legislation that will provide for continuity of contracts in relation to the introduction of the euro. In doing so, we are following the example of the EU itself as well as some other jurisdictions. In theory, such legislation may be unnecessary since the well-established “lex monetae” or “law of the currency” principle means that the currency of a payment obligation should be determined by the law of the country of that currency. This means for example that a payment obligation payable in French francs would become payable in euros after the introduction of the euro because that is the situation that applies under the law of France. However, despite this general principle, concerns have been expressed that parties to contracts might argue that the introduction of the euro represented a fundamental change of circumstances, bringing the contract to an end or requiring its terms to be adjusted. In addition, another feature of the introduction of the euro is that it will replace the ECU at a rate of one for one on 1 January 1999. The ECU is a currency basket but not a currency in its own right.

The “lex monetae” principle does not apply in this case and therefore the euro will not automatically substitute for the ECU in contracts. It is to remove uncertainty on these points that we have decided to legislate. We believe that this is appropriate for an international financial centre such as Hong Kong. The financial and legal community in Hong Kong strongly supports this view. This is just one specific example of how Hong Kong is affected by the introduction of the euro. There will undoubtedly be more far-reaching effects on our economy and our financial system as the single currency takes root. This is why this seminar is timely and important. I hope that you will find it enjoyable and useful. BIS Review 95/1998
Goh Chok Tong: Strengthening Singapore’s position as a leading financial centre in Asia Speech Mr Goh Chok Tong, Senior Minister and Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), at the 2005 MAS Staff Seminar, Singapore, 29 November 2005. *  *  *  Let me begin by welcoming you to the 2005 MAS Staff Seminar. It has been a busy but good year for the industry and MAS. Positive global and regional outlook 2. Globally, 2005 looks set to end on a positive note. The IMF has projected world economic growth of 4.3% this year and sees the potential for further growth next year. The US economy remains resilient. It has withstood progressive interest rate hikes and the devastation caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. While the oil market remains tight and the US current account and budget deficits continue to be cause for caution, the Greenspan era should end positively. 3. Asia is doing well. East Asia's combined economy has been growing by an average of 3.4% per year between 2000 and 2004. Take away Japan, East Asia's annual growth rate is even more impressive - 6.4%, well above the global average of 3.8%. East Asian countries have accumulated massive foreign reserves and now account for nearly 60% of global reserves. Global investors looking for better returns have shown strong interest in Asian equities, bonds and alternative investments. 4. The blockbusters in Asia's growth story are China and India. I have spoken about them in some detail last year.

1  Directive 98/26/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 May 1998 on settlement finality in payment and securities settlement systems  2 Directive (EU) 2015/2366 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 November 2015 on payment  services in the internal market, amending Directives 2002/65/EC, 2009/110/EC and 2013/36/EU and Regulation (EU) No 1093/2010, and repealing Directive 2007/64/EC 3 Directive 2009/110/ЕC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 September 2009 on the taking up,  pursuit and prudential supervision of the business of electronic money institutions amending Directives 2005/60/EC and 2006/48/EC and repealing Directive 2000/46/EC  2/2  BIS central bankers' speeches
I find it difficult to believe that the mutual fund companies’ growing interest in influencing boards of directors through the selection of board members or using other means would solve the fundamental problem of weak institutional ownership. We cannot therefore ignore the conflict of interests in indirect ownership. Changes in the financial infrastructure There are other important ownership issues in the securities market. Here, I am thinking in particular of corporate governance with regard to marketplaces, clearing houses and other systems used for trading financial instruments and which are part of the financial infrastructure. Many companies active in the financial infrastructure have traditionally functioned as cooperatives or been owned by their largest users. In some cases, these companies have been transformed into profit-making limited companies, where other parties than the users have gone in as important owners. Stockholmsbörsen is of course the most striking example of this. This development is not specific to Sweden. The same tendencies exist in the international securities markets. Otherwise, each country has traditionally had a separate organisation for each vertical stage of the transaction chain: a stock market, a clearing house and a central securities depository for the financial instruments. There has thus been a significant degree of centralisation at national level. The reason for this is of course that there are substantial economies of scale in these operations. The fixed costs for operating the systems are high, while the floating costs are low. Moreover, there are considerable network effects.

Transforming our payments infrastructure  Speech given by Victoria Cleland Executive Director, Banking, Payments and Financial Resilience Payments International, London 27 November 2018  I would like to thank Sam Leighton, Richard Lewis, and Cameron Penny for their contributions. 1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/default.aspx  Transforming our payments infrastructure Payments are an essential part of our lives, and of the UK economy. Last year UK payment systems processed more than 26 billion transactions worth over £ trillion, covering everything from small scale card payments and cash withdrawals to major corporate transactions. The UK payments landscape has undergone considerable change in recent years. Increased take-up of new types of payment technology in retail and wholesale markets has been facilitated by factors including increased ease of use, the growth in e-commerce, and increased confidence in their reliability and security. Looking to the future, we expect this transformation to continue, driven by incumbents but also the growth of new Fintech firms who will continue to find innovative ways of meeting demand for faster, simpler, cheaper and more flexible payments. This wave of innovation could deliver positive outcomes ranging from better choice for consumers, to improved access to finance for businesses, to lower transaction costs, enhanced resilience and greater capital efficiency.
Having a common survey instrument would promote benchmarking of, and accountability for, progress on culture and behavior. A core element of any firm’s mission and culture must be a respect for law. Federal Reserve guidance advises that banks should strive to “[m]aintain a corporate culture that emphasizes the importance of compliance with laws and regulations and consumer protection.” 4 To maintain such a culture, senior leaders must promote effective self-policing. If audit uncovers an instance of fraud in one unit, the firm’s leadership should ask, “Where else could this behavior occur?” If the press reports fraud at a competitor in a particular business line, the same self-assessment should apply. “Could this happen to us, could we have a similar problem here?” When fraud is detected, boards and senior leaders must ensure that they are informed promptly, and that a thorough inquiry is undertaken at once. The senior leaders of financial firms, and those who report to them, must also be proactive in reporting illegal or unethical activity. Early self-reporting sends a powerful message to employees and to regulators about a firm’s respect for law. This is one important reason why those who selfreport in a timely way should be treated preferentially, compared to those that drag their feet and whose bad behaviors are only uncovered by enforcement investigations. How will a firm know if it is making real progress? Not having to plead guilty to felony charges or being assessed large fines is a good start.

During the year, the ACP thus developed a more cross-functional mode of operating, thereby responding to the intention that led the Government to merge the former authorities in 2010. The ACP’s College has set out priorities for the supervision of each of the two sectors in a coordinated manner, and the ACP has set up an autonomous and cross-functional research directorate. On the other hand, in line with international and European initiatives, the ACP’s supervisory methods are complemented by the “stress test” approach to ever more complex scenarios and by the monitoring of the systemic nature of certain institutions. Organised by the European authorities (the EBA for banks and the EIOPA for insurance companies) and the Basel Committee respectively and implemented concretely in France by the ACP, these approaches supplement the individual supervision of banks and facilitate the macroprudential supervision of the financial system. The ACP’s supervision methods have also fully taken on board its remit with respect to consumer protection, which is an essential condition for maintaining consumer confidence in the French financial sector. The ACP’s mandate is to promote, in coordination with the AMF – the report of our joint unit will be presented to you shortly – the sound conduct of market players’ commercial practices  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  without hampering responsible financial innovation that is suited to each category of customers. In 2011, the ACP thus took a whole range of measures, of which I will only mention the main ones.
And I will group them under four headings in the terminology of the Phillips curve: we have under-measured slack in the labour market; the curve has shifted downwards; the curve has become flatter; and the curve is not there. 8  The premise of the Phillips curve – that the rate of change in prices is related to the gap between supply and demand – extends beyond the labour market. Indeed, although Phillips’ paper looked at wage growth the term Phillips curve is now often used to describe the relationship between general prices – inflation – and the unemployment gap (or other measures of supply/demand imbalance). In a stylised world, price and wage Phillips curves would tell us the same story – in a closed economy (where there is no impact from changes in import prices) in which the labour share is constant and productivity is growing in line with trend, there should be a steady relationship between wage inflation and price inflation. The labour share in the UK has been relatively flat since the turn of the century. 9  The natural rate of unemployment, sometimes referred to as U*, typically refers to equilibrium unemployment in the long-run. However, there may be temporary factors that affect the level of unemployment consistent with stable inflation, and therefore the medium-term equilibrium unemployment rate, sometimes called the NAIRU – the ‘non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment’.

As a result, real pay growth has ranged from minus 2% to plus 3%. But, due in no small part to the stickiness of nominal pay and its apparent insensitivity either to inflation or a very rapid fall in unemployment, domestically generated inflation pressure has remained low. A similar evolution of unemployment and pay has been seen in other advanced economies – particularly the 2  US. Indeed, the apparent disappearance of the relationship between pay and unemployment is for me the second big puzzle in advanced economies post-crisis. The first is the related puzzle of the disappearance of productivity growth which has almost certainly been responsible for some of the weakness in pay growth but that does not explain the full weakness (Chart 2). 3  Why does this matter? The Bank of England does not target unemployment, let alone pay growth. Monetary policy makers learned, painfully, around the time unemployment was last at 4.3% that monetary policy cannot in the longer run determine real things like unemployment. Attempts to do so can result in very perverse effects. Rather, they should direct their efforts to controlling nominal things like inflation. 4  1  Of the 22 quarters over 2012-2017, whole economy total (regular) wage growth fell below 1% in five (four) of them and breached 3% in one (none). 2  While some indicators of US pay growth have partially recovered (Yellen, 2017), the general picture remains one of relatively modest pay growth.
A weaker exchange rate affects inflation directly in that imported goods will become more expensive. At the same time, domestic goods become cheaper than foreign goods. This leads to a decline in imports and a rise in exports. Higher demand for domestic goods contributes to an increase in resource utilisation and inflationary pressures. Inflation expectations are also important to the way in which companies set prices and to how wage formation functions, and thereby to the development of inflation. If everyone is confident that inflation will remain low, the companies do not need to change their prices so often, and employees do not need to increase their wage demands. This makes it easier for the Riksbank to achieve the inflation target. This then is mainly how monetary policy is supposed to work normally. But when the financial markets are not working normally the transmission mechanism is also affected. The various channels simply do not work as effectively as they usually do. This also makes the link between monetary policy and financial stability particularly important. Monetary policy and financial stability are interlinked As you know, the Riksbank has more than just a monetary policy mandate. In addition to maintaining price stability, the Riksbank also has the task of promoting a safe and efficient payment system. We thus have two main tasks: monetary policy and financial stability. These tasks are of course interlinked even under normal conditions.

The major question now is how we can restore confidence in the financial markets so that they can manage on their own. This is a task that authorities around the world have been struggling with for some time now. In my opinion, we need a purge of the international banking system. The problems that are weighing down the banks’ balance sheets must be brought to light. It is only when we see the depth of the losses that confidence can be restored. The great complexity in the current financial system means that this is a much more difficult process than in the Swedish bank crisis of the 1990s. It is difficult to say how long it will take before the programmes currently being implemented in Europe and other parts of the world have the intended effect. Meanwhile, the Riksbank is prepared to do whatever it takes to maintain the functioning of the Swedish financial system. Thank you! BIS Review 41/2009  19
In this respect, I should first like to refer to the recent developments in the doubtful assets ratio for loans granted to households for house purchase. For the last few months, this ratio has been on a rising trend. And as it will no doubt continue to grow in the future, I feel we should view it as a worrying factor, but only a moderately worrying one, for the following reasons. Primarily, because we must not forget that this ratio had been at exceptionally low levels as a result of the high rates of growth of lending itself (the denominator of the ratio), so that increases would have been expected even in the absence of the present tensions. Secondly, because the current levels are still relatively low and well below those of other markets. However, in addition, there are some specific features of our financial practices that tend to limit the scope of this source of risk. I am basically referring to the fact that in Spain, unlike in the United States, households tend to default on their mortgage payments only in really extreme conditions. The causes for concern may be greater in the case of loans for property development. True, the coincidence of the maturing of the property cycle and the triggering of international financial tensions has been particularly untimely for the Spanish economy.

Vítor Constâncio: Effectiveness of Monetary Union and the Capital Markets Union Contribution of Mr Vítor Constâncio, Vice-President of the European Central Bank, for the magazine of the Eurofi conference in Malta (5-7 April 2017), 4 April 2017. * * * The euro area recovery is continuing at a moderate, but firming pace, and is broadening gradually across sectors and countries. The ECB’s monetary policy measures have been a key contributor to these positive developments, and the only expansionary macroeconomic policy in support of the recovery. Real GDP growth has expanded for 15 consecutive quarters, growing by 0.5% during the final quarter of 2016. Dispersion in growth rates across euro area countries has fallen. Economic sentiment is at its highest level in nearly six years. The unemployment rate is back down to single-digit figures and over four million more Europeans are employed now than three years ago. Since the onset of the crisis, the ECB has put in place a number of conventional and unconventional monetary policy measures to stimulate the economy and rehabilitate the monetary transmission mechanism, which had become impaired at the height of the crisis. This comprehensive range of measures has worked its way through the financial system, leading to a significant easing of financing conditions for consumers and firms. Together with improving financial and non-financial sector balance sheets, this has strengthened credit dynamics and supported domestic demand. Bank lending rates for both euro area households and non-financial corporations have fallen by over 110 basis points since June 2014.
3  Reinhart, C. and K. Rogoff, 2009, “This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly”, Princeton University Press. 4  Gorton, G. and A. Metrick, 2009, “Securitized Banking and the Run on Repo”, NBER Working Paper 15223. 5  Reinhart, C. and K. Rogoff, 2009, “This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly”, Princeton University Press. 6  Roubini, N. and X. Sala-i-Martin, 1995, “A growth model of inflation, tax evasion, and financial repression”, Journal of Monetary Economics, Vol. 35(2), pp. 275–301  BIS Review 126/2010  5

The second condition may be even more stringent. Ultimately, what makes a reserve currency is the ability to serve unconditionally as a store of value. The country must therefore develop deep, liquid and unfettered financial markets. It also entails an ability to offer “benchmark” safe assets that keep their value in all circumstances, and may serve as vehicles for reserve accumulation. Typically, only government debt will be used as a reserve asset. So, being a reserve currency also means that “foreigners” will permanently hold a large part of Government debt and their judgment will ultimately prevail as to the true solvency of the Government. Being a reserve currency therefore implies constraints as much as it brings benefits. That may be the reason why countries, including China, would proceed cautiously on the road towards full reserve currency status. There is a distinction between being a reserve currency, on the one hand, and a global currency, on the other. The first concept refers to the currency as a store of value; the second may concern only its role as a medium of exchange. These are two different attributes. A currency may be widely used in transactions without being considered for reserve accumulation. This distinction maybe relevant when looking at the composition of the special drawing rights (SDR). As you know, this is the “basket currency” that serves as a unit of account for the IMF and, to a limited extent, as medium of exchange between its member countries.