samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The Bank is uniquely positioned to run such a programme, given its public policy objectives, its own sterling and foreign currency operations, and its location within one of the world’s foremost international financial centres. Up to 70 Bank staff, the vast majority of whom have other, full-time operational duties, help to collect MI as part of their day-to-day responsibilities. Personally, I estimate that, over the past 6 months, I have been involved on average in two meetings with market contacts every working day. Our external contact base is very extensive,3 internationally diverse,4 and covers a wide range of markets, from vanilla instruments such as gilts and equities through to all manner of derivatives. This MI programme makes a crucial contribution to meeting the Bank’s core purposes by (partially) making up for missing data (at least qualitatively and occasionally quantitatively) and helping us to understand better the behavioural patterns that underlie movements in financial variables. On the monetary policy side, for example, it can shed light on the drivers of commodity prices and changes in market-based measures of inflation expectations. On the financial stability side, the significant complexities in the financial system, the lack of data and the constantly and rapidly evolving nature of financial markets mean that MI is particularly useful in helping us spot the emergence of stress and new developments and risks that might introduce potential vulnerabilities and fault lines in parts of the financial system.

As regards the economic effects, the recent crisis concerning Ukraine and the consequent imposition of sanctions on and by Russia has so far had limited spillover effects on the euro area economy, either via trade or financial links. However, the Baltic states and Finland are more likely to feel any negative effects than other euro area economies owing to the strong trade ties they have with their eastern neighbours. But on the economic risks, I would like to add that the European “family” provides safety nets to partly offset the negative effects of geopolitical tensions related to Russia and Ukraine. For instance, the European Commission announced support measures to protect food producers affected by Russia’s food embargo. The euro area is a large market that can help Lithuanian producers to make up for losses from the Russian market. Finally, euro area countries can use the emergency liquidity lines provided in euro by their national central banks, which in turn would receive euro liquidity from the Eurosystem, in the event of significant turbulences in the financial sector. Why is lending to the real economy in the euro area sluggish? What else needs to be done in addition to the mix of different measures that the ECB is applying, such as low interest rates (or negative interest rates for bank deposits at the ECB) and the planned asset-backed securities programme? It is true that credit dynamics remain weak. At the same time, recent trends show some positive changes.
Macroeconomic scenario As I said earlier, in the past several months the differences between the performance of the global and the domestic economy have deepened. The external scenario remains complex, and the growth outlook has weakened somewhat with respect to June’s forecasts. In contrast, Chile grew more than foreseen in the second quarter, intensifying the utilization of installed capacity. Headline inflation has been lower than expected and is currently at the lower part of the tolerance range, as are core measures. Within core inflation, the difference between the behavior of goods inflation and services inflation stands out. The latter, more closely related to the state of the output gaps, is still near 5% annually, reflecting that medium-term inflation risks are still present. In this context, the Board has held the monetary policy interest rate (MPR) constant at 5%. Internationally, the biggest news has concentrated in the performance of the emerging world, shaping a scenario where deceleration exceeds forecasts. The reduced strength of Brazil, China and India stands out. Several elements are behind this slowdown, including the effects on their exports of the global deceleration, especially from Europe, and the stringent policies applied in the past. This has driven the notorious drop in these countries’ manufacturing growth rates. In Latin America the outlook is still quite heterogeneous. As I just said, the sharp deceleration of Brazil is worth noting. Given its size, it explains a large part of the downward revision of growth figures for the region this year and next.

The prevention of excessive inflation and the alleviation of inflation fears is the best that a central bank can do to support long-term economic growth. As for money market liquidity and extraordinary crisis measures, they do not hinder the pursuance of the necessary interest rate policy. If it is necessary to continue fixed rate tender procedures with full allotment to guarantee the normal operation of the money market, it may also be a reasonable move when the monetary policy interest rates are already on the rise. In this case, one does not hinder the other. It must also be pointed out that contrary to the popular misbelief, general monetary growth in Europe has not been very rapid after the introduction of extraordinary measures. Recent data indicate that it amounts to only a couple of per cent a year, which is too little rather than too  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  much. Meanwhile, extraordinary instruments in the market do not mean that the money market environment is too lenient, because the European central banks have performed monetary policy transactions to curb liquidity according to need. Naturally, if the arrangement principles of such tender procedures become obsolete, they should be reviewed immediately. The same principle applies to the impact of the state budget on monetary policy. The situation of the state budget undoubtedly has a great influence on economic developments and it plays a great role in the analysis of the economic situation.
Certainly I seriously underestimated the scale of the downside risks from a potential financial crisis, and that implied overrating the ability of monetary policy to offset this shock. I will return later to the question of how a more long-term perspective might sometimes alter the desirable approach to policy. Before that, I want to discuss some issues around the MPC’s inflation projections and how we assess uncertainty. The balance of demand and supply The MPC’s projections for inflation, absent external shocks, are determined to a significant extent by our judgements about inflation expectations and about the likely developments in the pressure of demand on supply (this phrase is a better description than the more usual “output gap” – however I will now use the latter as a convenient shorthand). During my stint  4  Large (2005). 5  Gieve (2009). 2  BIS Review 27/2010  on the MPC, the way in which we have chosen to assess the output gap, as reflected in the assumptions underlying our main macro-model, has changed on a number of occasions. Of course, one model has never been the sole guide to our projections – a number of other models are also drawn on as appropriate. And the final shape of the fan charts published in the Inflation Report is the product of the MPC’s judgement including on the insights from these models.

Reliability of a central bank, in turn, can be assessed based on the accuracy of its projections, its ability to identify financial risks, the quality of its statistics and the safety of the domestic currency and payment systems. For adaptability, a central bank must develop its analytical skills to identify structural changes in the economy and emerging sources of risk, telling them apart from necessary innovation. To this end, it may need to deepen its knowledge of markets and agents, and to be on top of technological developments. Adaptability also depends on the preparedness to react to unforeseen events. Central bank integrity requires appropriate access to information, control of conflicts of interest, strong middle office arrangements in market operations, and effective auditing across different areas and processes. For accessibility, communication of monetary policy is essential, as well as analysis and communication of financial risk, consultation in the issuing of new regulations, and well-structured accountability. The fairness dimension of trust can be enhanced through prevention of crises and risk management, financial education and inclusion, and securing equal opportunities in staffing and promotion decisions. Assessing public trust in a central bank across these dimensions does not need to start from scratch. Instead, it provides a framework to organize existing data in a more meaningful way. It can also shed a new light on how to read and use data coming from different streams of the literature. The substantial work on central bank transparency led by some of our participants in this conference is a good case in point.
Within the Eurosystem, the ECB has established a high-level task force to prepare a comprehensive analysis of the possible benefits and challenges related to retail CBDC, to be discussed in coming weeks within our Governing Council. • In this journey, we must set up appropriate synergies between public and private actors. Unequivocal support should be given to the European Payment Initiative (EPI): this project is essential for the safety, the rapidity and the European sovereignty of payments. Success of EPI is determined by (i) access to a large customer base, (ii) adherence of large merchants, and ultimately interoperability should EPI have ambitions to develop outside of Europe. • Let me stress there is no contradiction, as sometimes feared by commercial banks, between considering a euro-CBDC and supporting EPI. We may probably need both, and build complementarity. My preference would be to seek a renewed public / private partnership for the dissemination of central bank money in a retail form. Possible impacts on the banking sector could be reduced with different tools: for instance, limiting the quantity of digital euro in circulation would prevent excessive shifts of commercial bank money into digital euros. For the Eurosystem, this strategy would imply to clarify the interplay we would like to put in place between EPI and the CBDC, thus validating an intermediated model while providing enough customer proximity and value added to intermediaries (like front-end solutions).

In this fast-changing environment, public policies should be agile and should help build innovation and growth • The success of the payment services directives (PSD1&2) has illustrated that the European legislation can accompany new trends and trigger innovation. With new settlement assets such as Global Stablecoins, the adaptation of existing regimes will have to fit into a larger regulatory framework, to be adopted at a global level. • Central banks need to have an in-depth understanding of innovation and souldn’t be afraid to “learn by doing”. The Banque de France is now engaging with the innovators from the private sector to conduct a program of 8 experiments, with a view to integrating a wholesale CBDC into innovative procedures for exchanging and settling tokenized financial assets. The expansion of the BIS Innovation Hub with the establishment, in Paris and Frankfurt, of the Eurosystem Centre will definitely accelerate the collaboration among central banks in innovative financial technologies. • We, the ECB and the Eurosysteme, may decide to issue a money in digital form. Let me be clear: we cannot allow ourselves to lag behind on CBDC. That may mean that we create if necessary a retail CBDC, in order to ensure the accessibility of central bank money for the general public, in particular in countries where the use of cash in payments is declining. And/or it may mean that we Europeans may decide to issue a wholesale CBDC, with the aim of improving the functioning of financial markets and institutions.
But in addition to this concern over excessively sharp movements in exchange rates, an equally heated discussion has flared up in recent months, both in the US and Europe, as to whether the  BIS Review 47/2003  3  perhaps most important fixed peg that exists today between two major international currencies, that between the US dollar and the Chinese renminbi, should be abandoned. For the past decade, the Chinese currency has been pegged by the People’s Bank of China at a rate of around 8.28 renminbi per dollar. Critics of this policy, mainly leading US politicians and some industrialists, believe that Chinese exports have been given an unfair advantage when the renminbi has tracked the dollar’s fall against the euro. The most drastic answer to these exchange rate issues would be to propose a new global monetary system of the kind that existed after the Second World War and up to the early 1970s in the shape of the Bretton Woods Agreement and the link via the dollar to gold. This kind of solution has actually been recommended by Robert Mundell, a currency area theorist and winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. Even Keynes considered the establishment of a global currency, the bancor. Mundell points to transaction gains for trade and the financial markets, but also other arguments. One of these is that the signalling of international relative prices is distorted by exchange rate fluctuations caused by capital flows.

Per Jansson: The Riksbank’s monetary policy strategy – in tune or out of tune with the rest of the world? Speech by Mr Per Jansson, Deputy Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, at a meeting at SEB, Stockholm, 2 June 2014. *  *  *  Was the strategy for monetary policy that was formulated in the decades before the global financial crisis – and which long appeared so successful – actually too narrow? Does monetary policy need to put greater effort into preventing financial imbalances from arising? The crisis turned many things upside down and forced both central banks and researchers around the world to rethink their arguments and theories.1 Today I intend to talk about the rather lively discussion conducted among central banks and in the academic world on this issue. This is a discussion that is both interesting and important, but which I feel has made very little impact on the debate in Sweden. While the discussion here in Sweden for the most part is based on the answer being already given, the attitude in the international debate is much more open and inquiring. Most people agree that macroprudential policy should be the first line of defence against financial imbalances. But an increasing number have also begun to take the view that monetary policy may need to give macroprudential policy support by, as it is often called, “leaning against the wind”.
The Association of Banks in Singapore, or ABS, is therefore developing a Central Addressing Scheme (or CAS). •  CAS will allow payments to be made through FAST using only a recipient’s mobile number, or NRIC number, or Unique Entity Number. •  The industry is also working to provide a seamless and common user interface for making FAST transfers regardless of the customer’s bank. •  If all goes well, by this time next year, we will no longer need to remember bank account numbers for a majority of our electronic fund transfers. A second key barrier to using FAST is cost. •  SMEs have told us that some banks can charge up to $ for fund transfers using FAST. But they offer free cheque payments every month! •  This is surprising. Our own studies indicate that the marginal cost of e-payments, including FAST funds transfers, should be far lower than that of cheques. •  Cheque processing is a resource intensive operation that is far from costless. •  Banks should not be reluctant to accurately reflect the true marginal cost of their various payment instruments. Acceptance of card payments – unified point-of-sale terminals (UPOS) Debit and credit cards are widely used by Singaporeans but the experience at the acceptance points in our retail outlets and restaurants needs to be enhanced. •  Not all cards can be used everywhere, and we often have to ask merchants if our card of choice is accepted.

Our vision is to create a bill payment experience where consumers and businesses can: •  electronically apply for GIRO bill payments;  •  seamlessly pay bills via a “request for payment” function that leverages off FAST fund transfers without needing to bank with the same bank as the biller; and  •  manage their standing payment instructions online or on their mobile phones. MAS is working with the banks and the payments industry to create seamless bill payments and collections. Mobile payments for public transport – account-based ticketing The way we pay for public transport is also due for a refresh. The Land Transport Authority has recently announced that by the end of this year, it will be conducting a pilot for its Account-Based Ticketing System. •  This system will allow commuters to use their existing contactless credit and debit cards to pay for train and bus rides. •  No longer will users have to queue to top-up their stored value transit cards. •  Users will even be able to use their mobile wallets to pay for public transport. An Account-Based Ticketing System will bring Singapore in line with other cities with worldclass public transport payment infrastructure such as London. Pervasive digitisation – maximising productivity gains from e-payments The fourth strategy is to help businesses to digitise their processes and integrate them with electronic payments solutions, so as to maximise productivity and efficiency gains.
A detailed review of the collection shows that both Spanish and foreign historians have collaborated in the project, covering an agenda that includes modern and contemporary issues. Although the collection is open to all kinds of quality research, monetary and financial topics predominate. Now, I would like to say a few words about our library, which has played a key role in our economic history studies and research. It was set up in 1931, and from the first half of the 1970s professor Rojo promoted the formation of a highly specialised library, stepping up the acquisition of new collections and the modernisation and expansion of its services. 3/4  The most prized section of the library, the so called Fondo de Especial Valor, comprising more than 16.000 pieces from the 14th to the 19th centuries (now in the process of digitalization), is a testimony to economic thought and practice in Spain and Europe; its content encompasses 16th century merchants’ instructions, writings of the School of Salamanca, the publications of the 17th century arbitristas and the works of 18th century Enlightenment thinkers. The collection of royal decrees and proclamations (around 4,000 documents, including the 1745-1796 compilation ordered by the Count of Campomanes), dealing mainly with fiscal, mercantile and monetary matters, enriches the library’s scope with the perspective of legislation topics. The fact that these collections are complemented by others, such as the Goldsmiths’-Kress Library of Economic Literature and the King’s College collection of the papers of J.M.

A few years later, a group of researchers: Rafael Anes, Carlos Fernández Pulgar, Diego Mateo del Peral, Pedro Tedde and Gabriel Tortella, undertook a far-reaching project on the history of the Spanish banking system. The result was La banca española en la Restauración, published in 1974. Since then, a number of books have been published by the Bank of Spain, sometimes in collaboration with commercial editors. To mention just two of these books: El Servicio de Estudios del Banco de España, 1930-2000; and Un siglo de historia del sistema financiero español (in Spanish and English). Moreover, the early history of the Bank has been covered by three volumes written by Tedde de Lorca: El Banco de San Carlos (1782-1829); El Banco Español de San Fernando, 1829-1856; and El Banco de España y el Estado liberal, 1847-1874. The Banco de España has also shown its interest in Spanish economic history through its annual research grants programme, financing the collection of Estudios de Historia Económica (or, in Banco de España parlance, “the red books”). There are now 72 of these studies, the first ones dating back to 1980. The aim of the Banco de España with this collection is to disseminate economic history papers written by its own staff or by researchers to whom it has awarded grants, in order “to enhance knowledge of Spanish economic history, paying particular attention to quantitative aspects”.
While the two services are not perfect substitutes, these preparations include, for example, ensuring that the Fedwire Funds Service has sufficient capacity to accommodate the full complement of Chips activity, even on peak volume days, and that CHIPS can support all CHIPS-eligible Fedwire Funds traffic. Arguably we have made greater progress advancing this body of work than in prior iterations, for which policy makers and supervisors deserve great credit. The application of critical thinking related to protracted outage has also yielded rich dividends in greater understanding of the endto-end transaction flow and identification of potential points of vulnerability. These benefits are not to be dismissed. But let us not delude ourselves: no matter how mature our framework for responding to protracted outage scenarios, no matter how sound our procedures, no matter how tested our protocol, we never want to rely on these measures from a contingency perspective. The ultimate lesson for any market infrastructure (and for their directors, governing bodies, and supervisors), is to so invest in resiliency and security in the core of its operation that it never finds itself in such a state. The unintended consequences of a systemic infrastructure invoking protracted outage procedures in the event of a severe disruption are unknowable, and potentially raise reasonable questions as to whether the remedy may prove more toxic than the disease.

Zeti Akhtar Aziz: Central banking in the 21st century – implications of economic and financial globalisation Opening remarks by Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz, Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia, at Central Bank of Malaysia’s High Level Conference 2009 “Central Banking in the 21st Century: Implications of Economic and Financial Globalisation”, Kuala Lumpur, 10 February 2009. *  *  *  Honourable Governors, Distinguished guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Bank Negara Malaysia Conference on "Central Banking in the 21st Century: Implications of Economic and Financial Globalisation" that is being held in conjunction with the 50th Anniversary of Bank Negara Malaysia. Indeed, the conference takes place at a time when we need to reflect on the many issues that are emerging from the current global financial and economic crisis and the new challenges and lessons it brings to central banks. We are most honoured by the presence of central banks from more than 50 countries who have come to be with us on the occasion of our 50th Anniversary. This gathering has also brought together distinguished speakers not only from the central banking community but also outstanding scholars and senior practitioners from the financial services industry. It is hoped that this conference will contribute to a greater understanding to the issues confronting central banks in the 21st century.