samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Again, we are seeing the two-way flow of talent for the different areas of professional expertise and the workforce leading to an increasingly diversified background of employment in different parts of the world. Malaysian professionals can be found in every continent in wide ranging areas of employment. Let me turn to the participation of women in the economy. About half of the Malaysian population are women and they account for about 47% of the workforce. The representation of women at the professional, managerial and technical levels has increased from less than 30% in 1990 to about 40% currently. Such progress has been achieved given the educational opportunities that have been made available to women. Literacy rates among women is about 90% due to the countries comprehensive and inclusive education system. Female primary and secondary students account for half of total enrolment, while at the public universities, female students account for 55% of the total enrolment. It is this educational foundation which has accorded equality to women in Malaysia . It has enabled women from all walks of life and backgrounds to contribute and participate fully in Malaysia's economic prosperity. Women in Malaysia have also participated significantly in the small and medium enterprise sector of the economy. A significant number of women run family businesses makes up a large part of this sector.

As this occurs, we are seeing the increased two way flows of investment, financial flows and talent. With full employment, activities requiring low labour cost are no longer our comparative advantage. Both multi-nationals and domestic corporations in such activities have since the 1990s relocated to other parts of the region. Resources are now redeployed to new areas of comparative advantage which are generating new areas of growth. As part of this transformation, the services sector has continued to become an important driver of growth, reflecting the flexibility and agility of the economy to shift resources to new areas of growth. While Malaysia continues to be a recipient of foreign direct investment amounting to 7.2% of GNP, outward foreign direct investment by Malaysian corporations account for 6.9% of GNP. BIS Review 37/2008  1  The financial landscape has also been dramatically transformed to become more diversified, more market oriented and more liberalised. The sector has also evolved from being fragmented to becoming more consolidated, operating with higher levels of efficiency. There are also stronger international linkages not only in terms of increased foreign presence in our financial system but also our financial institutions are increasingly venturing abroad. This trend has increased our international inter-linkages resulting in greater economic and financial integration with the global economy and international financial system. New areas of growth are also emerging in the financial system including in investment banking and Islamic finance.
The teams include representatives of the Association, which is a very positive fact. We are already going into the stage of intense communication and joint work with the ECB. I strongly hope that the political process, with all its unpredictability and uncertainty, will ultimately support, not block, the overall progress of the accession to the euro area. And keeping this hope, I would like once again to congratulate the Association, its management, secretariat, and all its members on the 30th anniversary and to wish you good health and much success. 3

In the UK, we have a strong flow of defined benefit pension liabilities to insurers, which provides a further incentive to ensure the regulatory regime can facilitate productive investments within the bounds of appropriate risk management of those funds. But what is ‘productive investment’? If we completed a survey here today, I expect we could easily receive a different answer from each attendee in the room, and I won’t claim to have the best. However, here’s one prepared earlier: ‘investment(s)… that have the potential to expand the productive capacity of the economy, while also generating marginal returns to society that exceed  Page 4  the marginal cost of that investment to society’[6]. This was the definition used in the terms of reference of the Productive Finance Working Group, which comprised representatives of industry, HM Treasury, the Bank of England, and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Examples given in those terms of reference include: plant and equipment; research and development; technologies and infrastructure. That working group’s report focussed on the role that Defined Contribution pension funds could play. But long-term and illiquid productive investments could be a natural match to life insurers’ long term, predictable liabilities - in particular pension annuities, which commonly reside in matching adjustment (MA) portfolios. Given the long-term guaranteed nature of these liabilities, and the cost of shareholder capital to support this business, it is natural that insurers’ investment risk appetite will be reasonably low in these portfolios – and this indeed has long been the case for annuity books.
The effect, on that view, was initially to drive down credit risk premia relative to equity risk premia, and to spur the issue of synthetic securitisations to fill the gap in supply.2 If that story drives expansion of ABS/CDO issuance, Shleifer’s model helps motivate a lot of those securities being fundamentally mispriced. During the good times, everyone feels that they are achieving a nice balance of risk and return. They are getting, they think, safety, liquidity and return! But something eventually happens to cause them to wake up, and to see the risks they have neglected. Investors can then react in a dramatic way. They stop buying, sell; prices collapse etc. But an exogenous shock is not needed to generate that unravelling. If the overpriced securities have led to credit conditions being too loose, then somebody – households, firms, sovereigns, or everyone – will have accumulated too much debt, and so eventually fundamentals assert themselves: defaults rise, and realisation sets in. As a younger colleague said to me, “the model’s key features are all way outside what I was taught in the ‘90s”. But doesn’t it sound ever so slightly like the real world? For me, one of the strengths of Shleifer’s paper is that he cites good examples, not only from the recent crisis but earlier ones too.

Policy Moreover, the policy implications of Shleifer’s paper are arguably rather different from those stemming from theories that attribute the crisis solely to bankers acting rationally in response to the private incentives created by remuneration packages and the problem of Too Big To Fail. In that sense, Shleifer’s model formalises the argument of Charles Goodhart and others that bankers badly misjudged the risks rather than consciously ran the system towards the edge of the cliff. One policy implication of myopia is that, as Shleifer himself says, we need to attend to risks beyond banking – in shadow banking etc. I spoke about that around this time last year.6 We need policies on firms and funds that perform similar economic functions to banking, such as money funds; as Shleifer says, the constant-net-asset-value basis of most money funds encourages a belief that they are riskless, and yet in fact they are not insured and carry no capital. We also need policies on markets that deliver maturity transformation and leverage. This crisis happened partly because the authorities did not keep up with developments in capital markets. I shall not revisit that in detail this evening, other than to say that the Bank is glad that its new Financial Policy Committee will have a responsibility for advising HMG when to move the perimeter of microprudential supervision and a power to make Recommendations to the securities regulator on rules governing funds and markets where they are material to stability.
This is why in the more recent period, as a central bank, we strive to gather as much as possible micro information, for the corporate sector in particular. One of the important steps was the launch of the first Survey on Wage and Price Dynamics, similar to the survey conveyed for the euro area, which provided one of the most comprehensive overviews on the behavior of corporates in terms of wage and price adjustments. The results of the survey, and the subsequent research, gave valuable information. It pertains to information on the nominal and real wage rigidities, and the way the corporate sector adjusts  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  its balance sheet in response to different shocks. All of this supports the understanding of the monetary policy transmission and calibrating economic models that incorporate heterogeneous agents. One of the lessons from the crisis was that not many central banks had enough granular data on the corporate sector. As mentioned, granular data serve as an important analytical tool for assessing the potential vulnerabilities in the economy, and thus as an important input in the monetary and financial analysis of the central bank. We recognized the importance of the corporate sector data quite early, in the context of detected financial stability risks in particular. Aggregate balance sheets of the Macedonian corporate sector have been transmitted from Macedonia’s Central Registry to the central bank since. Yet again, it was recognized that the aggregation loses information, and a more disaggregated approach should be employed.

This would hold back consumption spending, and hence GDP growth, in the oil importing countries. Not surprisingly, the world economy is expected to slow in 2008, led by the US and other developed economies, amidst falling asset prices and tighter credit conditions as well. The US is weighed down by falling house prices, weak consumer spending and continued credit market distress. Domestic demand in Europe is expected to be subdued while softer external demand and the strong Euro could constrain export growth. Some slowdown is to be expected in Asia, although firmer domestic demand conditions should offset some of the weakness in exports. The region would also be buoyed by continued strong growth expected of China, India and the Middle East, which would help to mitigate the impact of the softer G3 economies. Indeed, inflation has emerged as a bigger concern in Asia, particularly among the faster growing economies I have just mentioned, including Vietnam. Thus, governments and central banks in the region not only have to deal with slower growth prospects, but also guard against rising inflationary pressures arising from strong domestic monetary expansion as well as higher commodity prices. High commodity prices would shape manufacturing decisions and define future trade flows. Higher shipping costs from fuel hikes have eroded the wage advantage of low cost producers such as China and Vietnam especially in inexpensive items that have high freight cost relative to final sale price.
Charts 22a to 22f look at different cuts of the data according to: (a) the UK region in which the company is based; (b) the sector in which the company operates; (c) whether the company exports overseas; (d) whether the company is foreign-owned; (e) whether the company has introduced new products and processes in the preceding three years; (f) the size of the firm; and (g) the company’s leverage. 50 51  Andrews et al (2015). With thanks to John Van Reenen for making these data available to us. 13  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  13  Beginning with the regional picture, it is well-known that there are sharp differences in average productivity across UK regions. 52  For example, the UK’s highest productivity region (London) is around 75% more  productive than its lowest (the North East). Nonetheless, if we look at the regional distribution of productivity, the similarities are more striking than the differences (Chart 22a). Every region has the same long, thin upper tail of frontier companies and a short, fat lower tail of laggard firms. It is true, as a matter of arithmetic, that the upper tail of frontier companies is somewhat larger, and the lower tail of laggards shorter, in London than in, say, the North East. But the key point is that every region has plenty of both types of firm. Regional differences are not the main factor explaining the UK’s long tail of firms nor why this tail is longer in the UK than elsewhere.

24.05.2017  Welcome address I Conference on Financial Stability/Banco de España-CEMFI Luis M. Linde Governor  Good morning ladies and gentlemen, It is my pleasure to welcome you to this first Conference on Financial Stability, jointly organised by the Banco de España and the Centro de Estudios Monetarios y Financieros (CEMFI). Thank you very much for your interest in and attendance at the Conference. We have a very interesting agenda for today and tomorrow, structured around six sessions and a panel discussion covering a wide range of topics related to the theory and policy practice of financial stability. This event is bringing together distinguished speakers and discussants from central banks, international financial institutions and academia - a combination which will offer a diversity of perspectives and also ensure a lively and, for sure, interesting debate over the next two days. This conference has been possible thanks to the joint effort of Banco de España and CEMFI. I am very grateful to the organisers, in particular to Rafael Repullo, Director of CEMFI, as well as to all the members of the scientific committee responsible for promoting this meeting and selecting the papers to be presented in the programme. This event has aroused particular interest among researchers, with -I am told- nearly one hundred papers having been submitted for just twelve slots.
So, although inflation is expected to be slightly higher than previously anticipated, our assessment is that it will be in line with the Riksbank’s target towards the end of the forecast period. Some questions One could say that the Inflation Report revolves around some questions, which I intend to touch upon briefly: •  One question is to what extent the high oil price will significantly hamper international economic activity. Although we, like most other forecasters, still assume that the oil price will fall again over the coming years, our assessment is that the price will be higher during the forecast period than we estimated in May. However, there are indications that the effects of the high oil price on growth will be relatively limited. For instance, the rise in the oil price appears to be largely a result of the fact that the world economy is expanding, although concern over terrorist acts and other factors also appears to have played a role. In addition, western world economies are today much less dependent on oil than they were in the 1970s, while monetary policy is now conducted in a way that makes it difficult for inflationary impulses from oil price rises to gain a foothold. Our current assessment is therefore that the high oil price will dampen, but not derail, the international economic upswing and that the effects on global inflation will be fairly modest. •  Another question is how inflation could be so low thus far this year, despite growth being relatively high.

UND1X inflation is expected to be 1.4 per cent one year ahead and 2.0 per cent two years ahead, while the corresponding figures for CPI inflation are forecast to be 1.6 per cent and 2.5 per cent, respectively. This time, both the international and domestic inflation risks are judged to be balanced. On the international front, the main upside risk is that the oil price will develop more unfavourably and have greater contagion effects on other prices than is currently foreseen. The downside risks mainly consist of a number of financial imbalances that could contribute both to lower inflation and weaker economic activity. These include high house prices and an increase in household indebtedness in many countries, as well as the large deficits in the US federal budget and current account. On the domestic front, the risks are mainly related to productivity growth; more specifically to what extent the robust productivity reflects a more permanent structural phenomenon and to what extent it is due to cyclical  6  BIS Review 59/2004  factors. There is considerable uncertainty in this regard and there is a risk both of overestimating and underestimating future productivity growth. The balanced risk outlook means that the probability of inflation being higher than the forecast in the main scenario is judged to be equal to the probability of it being lower. In other words, the risk-adjusted inflation forecast is the same as the forecast in the main scenario.
If you are able to trust the other party to the contract, you do not have to hedge against all possible outcomes.10 The wheels of business turn faster and more smoothly. The 1800s were characterised by upheaval and a change in the pace of economic development. In the old society, safety lay in close-knit networks and small institutions: the family, relatives and neighbours. Once the pace of development picked up, however, these networks and institutions were no longer sufficient. New ones were needed. Local savings banks are a good example. Specialisation, a market focus and new tools demanded more financial muscle than the old, family-based networks could mobilise. The solution was for villages to join forces to create savings banks, an institution rooted in the local community but reaching beyond the old networks. Løten savings bank opened in 1855. A good public school system is a prime example of an inclusive institution. In May this year, I had the pleasure of visiting Stavanger Cathedral School. The head teacher, Turid Myhra, showed a portrait of one of her predecessors, Johannes Steen; schoolmaster, statesman and nation-builder.11 Steen was notably a key driving force behind what was to become an important milestone in the construction of Norway’s collective identity: the adoption of the Primary School Act in  Andenæs found this to be an interesting statement.

Agricultural prices are set in negotiations between the agricultural organisations and the state (...) In these circumstances, it is almost meaningless to talk about the central bank’s special responsibility for inflation.”39 The diminished role of the institution, which persisted well into the 1980s, must be seen in the light of mixed experiences with par policy, ambitious aims of micromanaging the economy, and the conviction that lower unemployment could be achieved by accepting higher inflation.40 At the same time, major imbalances were building up in the economy. Fiscal policy, in conjunction with credit regulation and tight political control of business investment gradually undermined the monetary system as an institution. Later in the 1970s, these problems came to the surface. Growth declined, inflation surged and unemployment rose sharply. I should add that these problems were not confined to Norway. In 1971 the Bretton Woods system collapsed. Two year later the first oil price shock occurred. At the beginning of the 1980s, the problems in the Norwegian economy had reached a pinnacle. In May 1986, the Brundtland government decided to devalue the Norwegian krone by 10 percent. As was usual on such occasions, it was said that this would be the “last time”. Less usual was that it actually was the last time. Gro Harlem Brundtland, Gunnar Berge and Bjørn Skogstad Aamo had come to a decision. Devaluation policy was consigned to the past.
However, the notion that the economy will grow more swiftly remains a forecast rather than a reality at this point. As is always the case, there is substantial uncertainty surrounding this forecast. Moreover, there is always the possibility of some unforeseen shock. Thus, we will continue to monitor U.S. and global economic conditions very carefully and will adjust our views on the likely path for growth, inflation and the unemployment rate accordingly. Regional economic conditions Let me turn now to the regional economy. A year has passed since Superstorm Sandy devastated the tri-state region. And even today, many of the hardest-hit places are still struggling to recover and rebuild from the storm. In fact, reminders of the storm’s damage remain visible in neighborhoods across Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, as well as along the coasts of Long Island and New Jersey. On a more encouraging note, however, the broader regional economy has proven to be remarkably resilient. After a brief dip following the storm, the regional economy quickly rebounded and has continued to add jobs at a reasonably good pace. Moreover, the region’s housing markets have continued to show steady improvement throughout the year. To help monitor the performance of the regional economy more generally, the New York Fed produces economic activity indexes for New York State, New York City and New Jersey. Based on these measures, New York City’s economy has continued to grow strongly throughout the year, and both New York State and New Jersey have seen some pickup in growth in recent months.

Both the incidence of student loans and average loan size are by far greater in for-profit institutions than in comparable public colleges. Given the importance of post-secondary education in our nation’s future, and the key role that human capital plays in our nation’s growth, we at the  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  New York Fed will continue to analyze the growth of the private for-profits in particular, and post-secondary institutions in general, in our region and the nation. I will now ask Jaison Abel to discuss economic conditions in our region. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches