samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
This Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) functioned well for a decade or so but it ultimately fell apart due to the divergences in the economic and fiscal policies of the participating countries. Speculative attacks ensued and ultimately triggered a crisis that forced two large countries – the United Kingdom and Italy – to leave the ERM in 1992. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Parliament), and judiciary (the EU Court of Justice). The creation of the single currency is an act of further political integration. Under the Maastricht Treaty the European Economic Community became the European Union, a proper reflection of the fact that the ultimate aim – the finalité, as we say in French – of the European project is more than just economic. The EU is a real, albeit limited, political union. 2. The Maastricht framework and its shortcomings  Let me now review briefly what I consider to be the three most important shortcomings of the Maastricht framework – the ones on which we need to achieve progress urgently: i) stronger fiscal institutions; ii) real convergence across the euro area; and iii) the establishment of a financial market union. The Maastricht Treaty created the European Central Bank (ECB), which took up its monetary operations on 1 January 1999. The monetary dimension of the Maastricht Treaty has worked very well. Since the start of EMU, the ECB has kept annual inflation rates on average very close to 2%. As regards economic policies however, no new institutions or competences were created.

Part of the consensus is that Basel III should be seen as a set of minimum requirements. Hence, countries are free to impose more stringent rules if they wish. But we should not underestimate how Basel III strengthens bank-capital adequacy rules. A fundamental feature of the new framework is the significant increase in required minimum capital levels. All banks must hold common-equity capital of at least 7% of their risk-based assets, compared with only 2% previously. In the event of a credit boom, banks under Basel III would potentially need to hold a further 2.5% in common equity, bringing the total to 9.5%. Finally, the most systemically important banks must hold up to 2.5% in additional common equity. That is a total of 12%, a sixfold increase from pre-crisis levels for these institutions. The Basel Committee supports a regulatory framework that is both prudent and as simple as possible. Hence the Basel III agreement introduces several simplifying changes to the regulatory framework. For instance, the definition of capital now focuses on tangible common equity, the truest form of loss-absorbing capital. Moreover, all components of the capital base and associated deductions such as goodwill or deferred tax assets must be disclosed in a fully comparable manner. By standardising and simplifying the measure of capital, Basel III makes the regulatory framework easier to understand, and will enable market discipline to work better. Another important step has been the introduction of a non-risk based leverage ratio as a supplement to the risk-based requirement.
Moderate price and wage inflation is also a necessary condition for a stable exchange rate over time.” A prerequisite for the conduct of monetary policy is that fiscal policy generally contributes to stable economic developments. Fiscal policy influences the total level of domestic activity, and thereby the rise in the prices and costs of goods and services produced in Norway. In a situation with a high level of economic activity, an expansionary fiscal policy will tend to push up price and wage inflation. This in turn will influence expectations in the foreign exchange market concerning future movements in the exchange rate, fuelling depreciation pressures and therefore impeding the implementation of monetary policy. A fiscal policy adapted to the economic situation, on the other hand, will contribute to facilitating the implementation of monetary policy. In the current economic situation, the pressure in the economy should be dampened. The tightening in the National Budget for 1999 of 3/4 per cent of GDP will help to curb price and wage inflation and alleviate the pressure on monetary policy. 10) Conclusion We are thus facing a period of slower growth. Given the pressure that has built up in the economy, particularly in the labour market, such a correction is inevitable as a result of production constraints. However, the prospects are much brighter than after the fall in oil prices and the wage settlement in 1986. The Norwegian economy – including both households and the business sector – is now in a stronger position to cope with a cyclical turnaround.

Encik Adnan Zaylani Mohamad Zahid: Distribution in a digital economy - Customer @ Core Keynote address by Mr Adnan Zaylani Mohamad Zahid, Assistant Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia (Bank Negara Malaysia), at the General Insurance Agents Convention &quot;Distribution in a Digital Economy - Customer @ Core&quot;, Bangsar South City, 18 October 2018. * * * Let me first begin by thanking Persatuan Insurans Am Malaysia (PIAM) for hosting this convention and inviting me to deliver the keynote address. This is my first ever engagement with the general insurance agency force but also the insurance industry as a whole and I am very pleased to be here at this fittingly themed convention, “Distribution in a Digital Economy – Customer @ Core”. There is no question that we are now in an era of the Digital Economy. According to the World Bank there has been an accelerated growth of internet access of more than 170% in global accessibility in the past ten years. In 2006, only 17% of the world’s population was estimated to have an Internet connection – but now that number is 46% in 2016. During the same period, Malaysians with Internet access has increased from 52% to 79%, which is a very high number amongst many countries. With such widespread accessibility, a market presence on the Internet has never been more important.
In this regard, banks have to embrace and employ technologies not only to improve their organisation’s own competitiveness, but also to be able to provide more efficient and lowercost financial services to Asian businesses and households. Regulators also need to establish an ecosystem that encourages financial innovation, competition, and efficiency improvement. In my view, there are at least two areas that banks and financial institutions could help improve productivity. First, digitization will certainly enhance productivity in financial services. In Thailand, electronic payment and digital banking are becoming increasingly widespread. Under the national e-payment program, businesses, households, and the government will significantly benefit from the cost reduction of financial services both in terms of money and time saved. Many initiatives under the national e-payment program, for instance, the new faster payment system or “PromptPay” and electronic government payments will provide foundation for many new add-on applications that will improve productivity across different segments of the Thai society. Thai banks have definitely played significant roles in hatching out these initiatives, starting from ideas and all the way through to implementation. Second, financial connectivity, particularly within our region, will also play a key role in enhancing productivity. Regional cooperation amongst Asian countries, not only in trade and investment, but also in finance has a potential to expand much further. I strongly believe that improved financial connectivity in Asia will be mutually beneficial to all.

There are already many ongoing initiatives, for instance, promoting the usage of local currency in the region, the ASEAN Banking Integration Framework, the Asian Payment Network, and the Asian bond and capital market initiatives. Despite progress made thus far, financial institutions and policymakers in the region could step up our joint efforts in various ways. Let me now turn to immunity, which is equally important under the increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world in order to keep the financial system resilient throughout and thus be able to continue to support their clients and the real economy. 4  As the financial system is the blood vessel of the economy, immunity needs to start from safeguarding against blood infection. We will need to ensure that banks have adequate capital and provisioning cushion to be able to withstand swings of economic cycle and financial volatility. The Bank of Thailand welcomed the post GFC’s regulatory reform addressing concerns on systemic risks including the conservation buffer, the countercyclical buffer, G-SIBs and D-SIBs, as well as the recovery and resolution plan to further strengthen financial safety net. To complement these rules, and build a better immune system that is strong and resilient through any cyclical or structural shocks, I believe we need to target the underlying factor contributing to immunity, namely, the culture and behaviour of banks. Fundamentally, an organisation is predominantly defined by its behaviour and culture.
M R Pridiyathorn Devakula: India and Asia - trade linkages and alliances Remarks by Mr M R Pridiyathorn Devakula, Governor of the Bank of Thailand, at the Wharton Global Alumni Forum, Mumbai, 6 January 2006. *  *  *  Dean Harker, Mr. Ambani, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am honored to be here today among friends and associates of the Wharton Global Alumni. Given that it is the first time that the School is organizing the Forum in India, it seems only fitting that we should be talking about the rise to prominence of India as an engine of growth, both in the region and globally. More importantly, I would like to highlight the potential for India’s trade and investment linkages with East Asia, and how the two regions of South and East Asia can leverage on one another and become a global force to be reckoned with. China and India, Asia’s two largest economies, are often hailed as potential growth areas and the new engines of growth for the world. China’s rising economic prominence has been particularly evident in the past decade and a half, with its gross domestic product (GDP) in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, measured as a share of total world GDP, rising from 5.7% in 1990 to 13.6% in 2005. India, although coming later into the scene, has quickly caught the attention of the world as a potential global economic powerhouse.

Stefan Ingves: Financial crises in an international perspective Speech by Mr Stefan Ingves, Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, at the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority, Copenhagen, 12 September 2006. *  *  *  Thank you for inviting me here today. It is easy to forget what a financial crisis entails, now that a number of years have passed since we last experienced one and it is therefore important that we remind ourselves. Although we cannot yet see any immediate threats, we must look ahead to prevent potential crises. During my twenty minutes or so today I intend to talk about the following: •  the fact that most of the various crises in different countries during the 1980s and 1990s have had a number of common causes,  •  the fact that it is important to invest in preventing and managing crises,  •  the fact that risks and potential vulnerabilities in the financial system are now changing rapidly as the differences between banks and other financial institutions decline and crossborder integration intensifies,  •  the fact that the cooperation between authorities within and between countries must be developed further, both with regard to regular monitoring and crisis management. In particular, it is necessary to discuss how the responsibilities and costs should be divided up in the event of a crisis. Many of the experiences I describe refer to crises and countries outside of Scandinavia, even outside of Europe, which does not prevent them from being relevant to our discussion.
First question would be, what do you think of this type of proposal? And second, if this were implemented, what do you forecast the impact to be? 11 / 13  BIS central bankers' speeches  President Dudley: Well, there’s been a lot of discussion in Washington about this border tax adjustment. If you were starting with a corporate tax code from scratch, it would be, I think, quite attractive in a lot of ways because it basically eliminates a lot of the incentives to engage in games of transfer pricing. It reduces a lot of the incentives to book your intellectual property abroad. So, it actually has a lot of attractive features. I think the challenge is that it’s very different than the current tax regime, and so there really would be some pretty significant adjustment costs and frictions of moving from the current regime to that new regime. And so, I think the question is really going to be: do people think those adjustment costs are a price worth paying for what I would agree is probably a better corporate tax regime. Certainly, a much better tax regime than the one we have today. But you know, there’s going to be a lot of people that are going to be worried about how that adjustment is going to affect their particular industry. If you’re an importer, you’re going to be worried that your price of imports is going to go up.

Now it’s hard to say how much weight to put on that because historically consumer confidence goes up and down, and it doesn’t just necessarily feed into consumer spending. But the increase in business confidence is quite striking, especially for smaller businesses. And so one of the big open questions that we’re going to be assessing over the next few months is: is that improvement in animal spirits, so to speak, going to actually feed through and lead to more spending? So, I think where a year or two ago, I think our anxieties were more about the risks to growth to the downside, so as that – well, a year ago, we were worried about events in China, we were worried about uncertainties about Europe. I think now the balance of risk is gradually shifting, where the possibility is that growth could actually be stronger than expected, rather than weaker than expected. The markets expect fiscal stimulus out of this Administration. That’s another factor that probably will over time tilt the equation more to the upside. But on fiscal policy, it’s really hard to factor into your forecast at this point because we don’t know what it is, how big it is, or when it will happen. Other than that, we have it completely nailed down. So, it’s really hard to sort of put that into your forecast. And so the way I think about the fiscal policy outlook is that we’re probably going to get some fiscal stimulus at some point.
At this Conference, where I had the honour and pleasure to address, I underlined the valuable contribution of the banking industry to Albania’s development over the past two decades and identified some challenges and opportunities that may lie ahead for all of us, together, in the future. In our vision, these challenges and opportunities are related to the degree and quality of intermediation of funds in the economy – in other words, the volume and structure of credit, and the expansion of the range of financial products – to boost financial inclusion of the population and innovative technological development in the economy. The premises of this meeting remain consistent with what I said earlier. The Albanian banking sector has developed rapidly over the past two decades. Now, this sector administers around 2.4 million bank accounts of individuals, and provides credit to around 327,000 economic units, of which around 307,000 are households and around 19,000 are small or large enterprises; the rest are other public or private entities. In macroeconomic terms, the volume of financial savings administered by the banking sector accounts for around 70% of the GDP, whereas the volume of credit accounts for around 35% of the GDP. Moreover, in the past two decades, the banking sector has expanded its operational network across the territory of the country and has introduced bank products and payment instruments in line with global developments in this sector. In brief, the banking industry has contributed to the development of the Albanian economy by encouraging savings and generating credit.

BIS Review 149/2010  3  Role of financial systems Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, in development finance it is recognised that economic development is partially dependent on the financial system to help mediate the transfer of money to areas of the economy that need it most. The financial system has a number of key functions, which help facilitate these shifts in money that are important for sustainable economic growth. The most important of these are:   Savings;    Loans;    Investments;    Business Growth and    Government Expenditure  Responding to international capital flows Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to discuss, though briefly, the role international capital flows and their effects on our economies. Many of the same principles that apply in domestic capital markets also apply in international capital markets. The probability of default is essential to understanding international capital flows and exchange rate movements. Asymmetric information, for instance between foreign and domestic investors, can have important consequences. And, as in domestic markets, there is no presumption that the market, left to itself, is efficient. Today, developing countries are more vulnerable to international capital flows than ever before. What would have been a mistake with minor consequences in a closed economy can become magnified into a major crisis in an open economy. This is the lesson many people draw from the recent crisis which struck a number of economies in the world.
They reflect diminished uncertainty about the expected path of monetary policy in the United States. And they imply that the imbalances in the global economy will be diffused smoothly. Of course, not much is certain in economics and finance. One cannot know with confidence whether future economic policies and outcomes will justify the confidence in the benign outlook now reflected in risk premia. What are the broader challenges and forces that will dominate the policy agenda and affect economic outcomes? I want to touch on four, though this is a selective list. First, all of the major economies face difficult fiscal sustainability issues, and these will be exacerbated by the approaching demographic cliff. Fiscal policy in most of the major economies is on a path that will lead to increasing, rather than stable or falling debt-to-GDP ratios. In virtually all the major economies, the cost of committed benefits substantially exceeds the stream of tax resources available under current policies. If one were to produce a ten year forecast of the U.S. fiscal position using the  fan charts to illustrate uncertainty that are a feature of the inflation reports of many central banks, the size of the fan would be very wide, indicating a substantial probability of deficits significantly worse than the already troubling central path for the deficit predicted given current policies.

But that is rarely possible in practice, other than perhaps a very short distance ahead. 8  See Woodford (2012). 9  See Carney (2012). 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  The difficulty of utilising this particular policy channel is probably not a great issue in normal times. But it looms larger when policy is constrained by the zero lower bound on interest rates. In such circumstances – and assuming that alternative policies, such as quantitative easing, are unavailable or ineffective – an ability to exploit this policy-expectations channel becomes much more valuable, as the commitment to hold policy loose in the future feeds back onto aggregate demand today by reducing expected future real interest rates. This comes about both through a low future nominal interest rate and a higher future rate of inflation because policy is held “loose for long”. The intent of such a loose-for-long strategy is in some ways similar to quantitative easing, as both reduce interest rates further down the yield curve. But the former does so by changing the path of risk-free rates at the near end of the yield curve, while the latter operates mainly through variations in the term premium further out along the yield curve brought about by changes in relative asset supplies. Moreover, the loose-for-long approach partly works by raising future inflation, which is not an objective of quantitative easing.
On 26 October, the Governing Council of the ECB, dividing in half the volume of our monthly net asset purchases, took a decisive step towards possibly ending them, while maintaining with all our other instruments an ample degree of monetary accommodation. Second, we in Europe share a large single market. It removes all internal borders and regulatory obstacles to the free movement of goods, capital, services, and persons in the European Union. It is a tremendous asset which belongs to us all – the 27 – and it is no coincidence that access to the single market lies at the heart of the Brexit debate. We cannot foresee the outcome of the future negotiations and we don’t want to “punish” the United Kingdom in any measure. But we must respect one consistency principle: access to the single market must continue to go hand-in-hand with strict acceptance of all its rules. There can be no cherry-picking or free-riding. For the financial services industry, this means that you can hardly expect to obtain a European passport if you do not accept the single market's rules. Third, we share a common social model which combines high standards of public service, relatively low levels of inequality – much lower than in American society – and a good intensity of social dialogue. And this has been achieved in a market economy.

i  “The Global Economy and the Global Financial System: In an Era of Revival and Metamorphosis”, Speech at the Institute of International Finance (IIF) Spring Membership Meeting, Haruhiko Kuroda, Governor of the Bank of Japan, 9 May 2017. ii European Commission, Standard Eurobarometer 87, Spring 2017. iii Musgrave (R.) and Musgrave (P.), Public Finance in Theory and Practice, McGraw Hill, 1989. iv Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day, 1989.