samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
According to a recent study by the British Think Tank New Financial, it will take the lead in the EU in 14 of 30 sectors studied2. This polycentric structure would improve the circulation of the abundant savings in the euro area – a surplus amounting to EUR 360 billion last year – channelling them towards financing needs on the continent. Besides, euro area businesses have been lacking equity financing for many years now. The Capital Markets Union – and what I more broadly call a “Financing Union for Investment and Innovation” – is even more essential given the prospect of Brexit. European governments all agree in principle; but so far it remains a blind spot in the recovery strategy. Let us at last turn words into action. II. Preparing Europe payments for the digital currency age Payments are not a usual topic for Europlace and distinguished financial forums. Indeed, they used to be considered as technical, back-office and even boring stuff. But a revolution is underway, and if we collectively miss it, it would mean a massive disintermediation of banks in the two key assets linked to payments: daily customer relations, and personal data. And it would also mean a major loss of sovereignty for Europe. To this day, the coexistence and complementarity of central bank and commercial bank money as settlement assets has structured the payment landscape. Yet this structure is increasingly being questioned.

Ample liquidity: refinancing operations (TLTRO III, PELTROs) Also in keeping with our mandate, I would like to briefly mention that we have been able to rely on the traditional tools we have at our disposal. For example, we have made changes to our existing refinancing operations and introduced new pandemic emergency longer-term refinancing operations (PELTROs) in order to provide credit to the banks and the real economy. As a result, we have seen a surge in the provision of credit in support of the real economy as well as a related knock-on effect on asset prices. Supervisory measures – the need for an innovative approach to tackle the crisis I would now like to look at the supervisory side, where the ECB has had to take an innovative 3/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  approach to tackling the crisis. As I mentioned earlier, what is true for our bold monetary policy response to the pandemic is also true for our supervisory response: our measures are exceptional and temporary and within the regulatory boundaries of the internationally agreed framework. The ECB was one of the first supervisory authorities to recommend that all banks under its supervision restrict their dividend distributions in the light of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Soon after our announcements in March, other supervisory bodies around the world followed suit with similar measures. While not binding, most banks have followed the ECB’s recommendation.
Lim Hng Kiang: Impact of current issues to Asia’s growth and the global environment ahead Keynote address by Mr Lim Hng Kiang, Deputy Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore and Minister for Trade and Industry, at the Merrill Lynch Asia Rising Stars Conference 2008, Singapore, 14 May 2008. *  *  *  Ladies and Gentlemen, It gives me great pleasure to address this gathering of industry leaders and rising businesses in Asia. I find the term “Rising Star” a very apt description of Asia. It reflects the rising importance as the region, and its companies, many of which are growing rapidly and looking towards the world. The Asian story has taken on a more pan-regional character with a vibrancy underpinned by strong growth in intra-Asian trade and investments. Indeed, there are many rising stars. Asia and its companies have featured strongly in an increasingly interconnected world. The globalization trend can be seen from many aspects – movement of products and services, capital and talent. Through these links, there is greater access to global markets and resources. At the same time, there is also greater interdependence and susceptibility to contagion effect during crises. This presents a unique set of challenges and opportunities to Asia and its companies. This conference is a good opportunity to take stock of these challenges and opportunities. You will get to hear from many expert speakers on what holds for the rising Asian business and for the investors considering Asian opportunities.

In such an environment, companies too will have to carefully manage the higher input and other costs and how much of that to pass on to consumers, to preserve your margins without losing either competitiveness or affordability. BIS Review 60/2008  1  Subprime crisis and Asia’s continued push to deepen capital markets The second issue is the turmoil in global financial markets. The transmission of the crisis is a good illustration of how inter-connected financial markets are today. The problem started with US subprime mortgages, in fact a relatively small part of the US mortgage market, but it rapidly escalated into other securitized markets, to more generic debt capital instruments and eventually into the wholesale or LIBOR money markets. From there, as central bank surveys have shown, there is now a general tightening of lending conditions to end-borrowers, which are exerting a drag on the US and Western European economies. Asia has felt some of the tremors of this crisis, but as yet we have been relatively unscathed. In the banking sector, a number of banks in the region wrote off losses on their US sub-prime mortgage related assets. Compared to their peers in the US and Europe, the impact on their balance sheets and profitability has been less severe. This can be attributed to a combination of factors. Following the Asian financial crisis, banks here had taken active steps to improve their credit standing by enhancing their capital base.
Banks that believe the authorities consider them to be too big to fail may assume excessive risk and their creditors may supply them with credit at a cost that is too low. For instance, if banks believe that the central bank will solve any liquidity problem, this will weaken their efforts to prevent such problems from arising - and if they occur, from solving problems in the interbank market. The use of credit on special terms in situations where financial stability is not threatened is associated with indirect costs. The situation must thus be carefully examined before loans on special terms are granted. If it is widely known and recognised that if an institution’s problems are confined to liquidity, it should be possible for the institution to raise loans in the market. A problem bank’s creditors - often other banks - will in such a situation make their own assessment of the bank’s solvency. In principle, it is not a foregone conclusion that the central bank and other authorities would be in a better position to evaluate an institution’s solvency than its own creditors. Implicit insurance schemes, which are in fact what loans on special terms are, may impair the effective functioning of markets and lead to excessive risk-taking among banks. It may take a long time before the costs come into evidence. In a crisis situation it is important to take into account the long-term benefits of not providing support such as better functioning markets and more appropriate risk-taking.

First: there are now a larger number of financial groups, which comprise banks, insurance and mortgage companies, etc. The size of these entities has increased the risk of negative systemic effects if problems should occur in one of them. On the other hand, size increases the scope for spreading risk. Second: the number of foreign financial institutions in Norway has increased. They will normally operate in several markets and engage in a broader range of activities. They may thus be more resilient to a recession or a crisis situation in Norway than banks whose activity is confined solely to Norway. The risk of contagion to other institutions is thereby reduced. Third: globalisation of financial markets means that events outside Norway feed through to the Norwegian economy faster and with greater force. Payment system As mentioned, several measures have been introduced to strengthen the payment and settlement system. At the same time, the volume of payments has increased sharply. The risk of problems in the banking sector spreading through the payment system has not been eliminated. A high-priority task of Norges Bank is to identify risks and, together with the industry, contribute to more secure and effective systems. It has also become increasingly important for our settlement systems to have good international links. Interdependence of financial and monetary stability The objective of monetary stability - which in Norway means exchange rate stability and low inflation - and the objective of financial stability are interdependent.
We will now in parallel (i) engage actively in a public consultation from next Monday, (ii) study within the HLTF all the regulatory, technical, financial stability issues, (iii) start experimentations within NCBs, of which the Banque de France intends to be an active contributor including in Retail CBDC. Following this “three-tracks approach”, towards mid-2021 the Eurosystem will decide whether to launch a digital euro project, which would start with an investigation phase. Whatever the decision, it would complement cash, not replace it. The Eurosystem, the Banque de France, will never abandon cash, as it is part citizen’s freedom in choosing their means of payments, and hence their trust in the currency. 3/ A European mobilisation on private payments infrastructure, thanks to the engagement of major European banks – including French ones – in the so-called “European payments initiative” (EPI). We definitely need to go beyond existing national schemes, and offer crossborder solutions and a pan European brand. EPI needs to be detailed, opened up to other banks and jurisdictions, and accelerated. But it definitely warrants the full support of the Eurosystem. We should additionally ensure that efficient public infrastructure such as TIPS is compatible. Let me stress that there is no contradiction between considering a euro-CBDC and supporting EPI. We may probably need both, and we should in any case build them to be complementary. My preference would be to seek a renewed public/private partnership for the dissemination of central bank money in a retail form.

Despite being weighed down by one of the most severe droughts during the past year, farm income and rural consumption have recently regained their momentum, as rainfalls are back to its normal level. In the meantime, public investment and stimulus measures have also helped restore private confidence, while strong growth in the tourism sector continues to reinforce the momentum of our economic recovery. Ladies and Gentlemen, Such positive economic development should indeed be welcomed. However, it should not distract us from making continued investment on a more important task which is to undertake the much-needed structural adjustments. This is what I referred to as “an engine overhaul” in my talk last year. Fortunately, technology and innovation offer very powerful tools which can be used to accelerate our growth engine. We need to first position ourselves to receive the full benefits of their arrival – both in terms of human capital and infrastructure. The good news is that the government has already launched several initiatives geared in this direction. Throughout this forum, you will get to learn about the rationale and aspiration of key reform initiatives, such as the new S-curve, public private sector collaboration, and upgrading of the tourism and the healthcare sectors. The Bank of Thailand also plays a critical role in this engine overhauling process, both through our conduct of monetary policy and financial sector development policy.
17  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  17  Producing something along these lines would be a new departure for macro-economic policy, if not for some of the other arms of policy. Analyses of monetary policy have tended to emphasise the economy-wide effects, measured in terms of macroeconomic outcomes like GDP, unemployment and inflation. This still makes sense as a means of explaining the social good monetary policy is offering. But messages often land most effectively when they are personalised. Monetary policy has an important personalised impact on most people’s lives. Some scorecard-like device could, at times of significant change in the monetary policy stance, help explain, in simple terms, the personal as well as societal benefits monetary policy confers. It would seek better to explain how monetary policy is affecting your job, your cost of living, your GDP. This should help make monetary policy relevant to people’s everyday lives. At a time of diminished trust, and some scepticism, it could potentially make a contribution towards improving public understanding of, and trust in, monetary policy. It would mean the next time someone shouts from the audience “That’s your bloody GDP”, we would have right of reply: “Oh no it’s not; it’s yours too.”  18  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  18  References  Agerström, J, Carlsson, R, Nicklasson, L and Guntell, L (2016), ‘Using descriptive social norms to increase charitable giving: The power of local norms’, Journal of Economic Psychology, Vol. 52, pp. 147-153.

In general, the young are borrowers with a stock of debt, the old are savers with a pool of assets. 18  Bunn et al (2018). We also use the Family Resources Survey (FRS) for household incomes. 20 See https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/debt/methodologies/wealthandassetssurveyqmi 21 As discussed in Vermeulen (2016), for example. The ONS Wealth and Asset Survey is probably the UK household survey with the best coverage of the tails of the distribution. 22 The measure of wealth used is net total wealth, comprising financial, property, physical and pension assets, net of debt. There is a question about how much households are aware of pension wealth, and therefore value it. The distributions are not especially sensitive to whether pension wealth is included. 19  7  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  7  If we overlay the income and wealth distributions in 2007 and 2013 (the end-date for our exercise), these are pretty-much identically-shaped (Charts 5 and 6). On that basis alone, there has not been any clear shift in income or wealth inequality since the crisis. Standard summary measures of inequality, such as the Gini coefficient, confirm that conclusion: for both income and wealth, the Gini is largely unchanged. 23  On the face of it, then, this does not strongly suggest that the relaxation of monetary policy since the crisis has significantly worsened inequality. Unless, that is, other factors have more than counterbalanced the effect of monetary policy.
Only if the krona were abolished and replaced as legal tender by the euro, in a similar manner as Panama and Liberia have done with respect to the dollar, would exchange rate risk and the associated interest rate risk premium disappear. However, it is good for thought that no country with its economy in good order has chosen this path. Seignorage then accrues to another country or group of countries and all influence over monetary policy is surrendered. Nor is it clear that such a path would be acceptable to the European Central Bank. Participation in the Monetary Union would be a preferable option to adopting the unions currency unilaterally as this would allow for a share in seignorage and give the possibility for influencing monetary policy decisions. This would, however, require membership of the European Union as I mentioned earlier and any decision in that regard of course concerns wider issues than only monetary and exchange rate arrangements. This is of course a very general analysis of the options we face, but nevertheless shows that the issue is more complicated than we are sometimes led to believe. All the alternative options have strengths and weaknesses. Also, future developments and what will actually be on offer are still in doubt. One reason is that the European Monetary Institute, the precursor of the European Central Bank, has not been empowered to discuss linkages with any non-member of the European Union. The task of preparing Monetary Union has been more than sufficient.

Ladies and gentlemen, Moving from the financial side to the real side, let me share with you the Monetary Policy Committee’s latest assessment to summarize where the Thai economy stands at the moment. This year, the Thai economy is projected to gradually recover, driven mainly by government spending and the tourism sector. Government spending, mainly through small investment projects, has lent support to the recent economic recovery. Contribution from large-scale infrastructure projects is expected to become more evident in the latter half of this year. Meanwhile, tourism has been an important growth driver, with a broad-based improvement in a number of tourists from China and other regions. In 2016, we estimate that more than 32 million foreign tourists, improving from 30 million last year, will choose Thailand as one of their destinations. In addition, the Thai economy has benefited from expansion of investment in certain sectors, notably those related to telecommunication and alternative energy. Exports of goods to CLMV countries, which now account for around 10 percent of our total exports, has supported economic growth and has potential to grow further, despite a decline in export volumes of oil in recent months due to temporary factors. Overall, the Monetary Policy Committee forecasts that the economy will grow at 3.1 percent in 2016, picking up from a growth rate of 2.8 percent in 2015 and 0.9 percent in 2014. However, I must admit that overall momentum of the Thai economic recovery remains slow at this stage.
We revised the year-end inflation forecasts for 2016 and 2017 upwards by 1 point and 0.5 points, respectively, compared to the October Inflation Report forecasts. As I have just mentioned, driven mostly by oil prices, USD-denominated import prices have registered a considerable decline since October 2015. When analyzed jointly with exchange rate developments, the downward revision in the assumption for oil and import prices is expected to pull down the end-2016 inflation forecast by 0.6 points compared to the October Report forecast. On the other hand, the portion of January 2015 public price adjustments which exceeds the inflation target, is likely to push the end-2016 inflation forecast up by 0.4 points. Another influential factor on forecasts in this period proved to be the rise in net minimum wages. Given the announced support by the government and the effects of this minimum wage rise on demand and costs to the employer, we revised the end-2016 inflation forecast upwards by 1 point. Considering the effect of the minimum-wage-rise, we attribute 0.3 points of this to the food inflation, which we raised from 8 to 9 percent for 2016. Lastly, we estimate that a higher-than-projected actual inflation rate at end-2015 compared to the October Inflation Report forecast coupled with the rise in core inflation indicators will push the end2016 inflation by 0.2 points.

There are also reasons for closer study of the potential threats to the stability of the financial system arising from such developments. Finansinspektionen and the Riksbank play important roles here. If the infrastructure is instead mainly owned and run by the users, the problems may not primarily concern pricing, but rather how the conditions for changing established structures are affected. Here I am thinking of the incentives for new developments and the possibilities for new participants to become established in the market. This is extremely important to avoid rigid structures in the financial markets. The conclusion is that it must be possible to adapt the rules and supervision governing the companies working in the financial infrastructure to the organisational form chosen by the companies. In a changing world, our task is to ensure we employ the best methods for carrying out our supervision and oversight work. The picture is further complicated by the fact that the authorities in different countries become involved when consolidation work crosses national boundaries. EU regulations Another important driving force for change is the new regulations being produced within the EU, arising from the Financial Services Action Plan of 1999. One of the purposes of these plans was to harmonise regulations for securities trading between the different European countries. The EU has decided to introduce what is known as the Lamfalussy Process to achieve the target of implementing all parts of the plan prior to 2005.
It has been the impressive growth in productivity that has been the fundamental factor behind the stunning improvement in the output/inflation mix we have been observing these past several years. What accounts for this improvement in productivity, and is it sustainable? These questions are really at the heart of the debate as to whether the United States is or is not a “new economy”. No one disagrees that the surge in the production of computers and software has been integral to the recent upswing in productivity. Where the differences in view enter is over the deeper sources of productivity growth and the sustainability of the productivity improvements - that is, whether they are temporary or permanent. Those suggesting that there is no “new economy” argue that the recent improvement in US productivity growth is easily explained: it is a combination of a normal cyclical reaction to a surge in demand and a pickup in the growth of the capital stock, most notably high-technology equipment and software. Once growth in demand settles down, this view holds, and investment in high technology slows, productivity growth will moderate. Even proponents of this view recognize, however, that the rapid increase in productivity and output growth in the computer industry will likely increase the growth rate of the economy over the longer term. By contrast, those supporting the idea of a “new economy” tell us that what we are witnessing in the US economy is the fruition of some longer-term trends in information technology, deregulation, globalization and labor markets.

Over the same period, core CPI inflation has fallen from average annual rates of over 6% to 2%. One important sign of underlying change is that the volatility of economic fluctuations has declined since the mid-1980s, evidenced by the fact that there has been only one recession in the United States in the past 17 years. Improved macroeconomic policy management and such positive supply factors as generally lower commodity prices certainly have contributed to the strong performance of the US economy in recent years. Also critical has been the emergence of new technologies, specifically the adoption of “just-in-time” inventory systems, which we copied from Japan. Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York suggests that these new inventory systems have helped account for a significant reduction in the magnitude of inventory swings and hence less volatile growth of the US economy. The spate of recent announcements of new resource management systems by auto companies, retailers, and others suggests that we have not yet exhausted the potential benefits from such inventory and production systems. These inventory and production management techniques are just one aspect of the most significant factor that has characterized the improved performance of the US economy, which is non-farm business productivity growth. As I have noted, this had averaged about 1½% a year over the previous 20 years, but since 1995 has improved steadily.