samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Beyond these unexpected headwinds, the key challenges have come from foreseeable sources. I am conscious I have adopted a number of lists today – but bear with me for one final one as I set out four key challenges we will need to overcome if we are to turn aspiration into action that advances the transition. And in the spirit of being solutions focused, not just a naysayer, I will also provide views on how to overcome each of the challenges. Challenges to advancing the transition The first challenge is that filling capability gaps in the transition finance infrastructure takes time, so we need to continue to take urgent steps now. Collectively we need to equip the financial sector with forward-looking information from the real economy to allocate capital effectively and mobilise finance at scale. That means the rapid implementation of ISSB standardsOpens in a new window, finalising the Transition Plan Taskforce's frameworkOpens in a new window for transition plans, and the adoption of innovations that reduce greenwashing such as product labels. The Government's 2023 Green Finance StrategyOpens in a new window sets out further detail on the timeline for Sustainability Disclosure Requirements and commits to reflect developments in international standards. It also commits to consult on the requirements for the UK's largest companies to disclose their transition plans. But, the responsibility for driving forward the transition to net zero is not only for governments and the authorities in building the frameworks. As NEDs, it includes all of your firms in using those frameworks.

But on account of communication barriers, Zambian businesses might not take advantage of our close proximity. This goes to show Your Excellency that our reliance on English as a lingua franca is detrimental to our national interest, especially in our quest to alleviate poverty in our society. In this regard, the need for us to speak, read and write French so that we communicate effectively at the regional and international level cannot be overstressed. BIS Review 5/2005  1  Furthermore, recent developments in the global economy dictate that we should be able to interact effectively at various international fora where appreciation of the cultures, values and customs of other people is important. Therefore, in view of the foregoing, we, at the Bank of Zambia, have realised that there is a compelling need to overcome our communication barrier by developing our employees’ multi-lingual skills, particularly, in French so as to, among other things: (i)  develop the required patience in their interactions with our non-English speaking counterparts;  (ii)  acknowledge the unique talents and contributions of others;  (iii)  uncover and show concern for the pressures and constraints which others face and modify the demands we may place on them;  (iv)  actively seek facts and data that explain and support others’ views and incorporate others’ feelings and values when restating their perspectives; and  (v)  reduce the cost of hiring external interpreters which impacts adversely on our limited resources.
Without clearly explaining the goals of reforms to the people, policymakers put at risk the necessary support for changes. This is a very challenging and long-term task as it is easier to get people out of communism than communism out of people. This problem is nothing new in history. It is not without good reason that it took Moses forty years to bring his people from slavery in Egypt to the promised land (simply to replace the entire generation), a trip that could be completed in weeks (Hillman, 1999). It is therefore our duty to make the journey in the transition desert as short as possible. 4. Summing up  Transition has been a tremendous and exciting project in the last ten years, as well as an invaluable experience for all of us who took part in it in one way or another. Out of it we have learned a lot, not only about how economic systems function or how to initiate economic changes, but we have learned about human nature as well. So, let us keep in mind that the transition process is done for the people and by the people. They happen at the same time: the main objective of transition (we have to increase their welfare), the main engine of transition (through human and social capital) and the main constraint to more rapid transition (rent-seeking behaviour and lack of political support).

Based on the experience in my own country, Croatia, I would say that we have unfortunately somewhat neglected the development of human capital in the last ten years of transition. b)  Social capital  New literature is trying to explain the complexities of various phenomena by social capital (Collier, 1998, Fukuyama, 2000). It is clear that for growth we need not only physical and human capital, but quality social capital as well. Social capital can be described as features of social organisation, such as norms, trust, networks, etc., that facilitate coordination and cooperation among the group for the mutual benefit of the group. A group can be anything from a household to the nation. In the production process it is an addition to physical capital (machines, tools) and human capital (accumulated knowledge). Social capital can enhance the benefits of both investments in physical and human capital. One may distinguish between government social capital and civil social capital. Government social capital encompasses government institutions that influence people’s ability to cooperate and get mutual benefit out of it. Examples are: the rule of law, enforceability of contracts, civil liberties. Civil  2  The original Latin saying is: Navigare necesse est, vivere non necesse est. BIS Review 43/2000  4  social capital includes: common norms, values, informal groups or networks that influence the ability of people to work together. Both of them resolve, i.e. overcome the collective action problem (the prisoner’s dilemma). Trust, as promoted by social capital, reduces uncertainty and thus reduces transaction costs.
It is this common view that I will present to you now as I have had occasions of presenting it, as the position of Banque de France, in the last G VII meeting, last April. I see five major points that are of systemic interest: –  the orderly liberalization of capital movements;  –  the question of reserve and debt management;  –  the key issue of transparency;  –  the question of the moral hazard associated with private sector involvement;  –  and finally the choice of the exchange rate regime. 1.1  Orderly liberalization of capital movements  The liberalization of capital movements benefits both individual countries and the world economy: it enhances long-term growth potential and improves savings/investments allocation. However, the two following principles need to be carefully taken into account in order to minimize risks: –  the restructuring of domestic financial systems and the strengthening of domestic regulatory and supervisory frameworks are preconditions of utmost importance: emerging economies should bring their domestic financial systems into line with regulatory and supervisory minimum requirements prevailing in mature economies. In that respect, the international community plays an important role through the Financial Stability Forum, the implementation of standards such as the “Core Principles for Effective Banking Supervision” or the Financial Sector Assessment Programs developed by the IMF in order to identify financial systems’ strengths and vulnerabilities. 1  BIS Review 52/2000  –  The liberalization process should be carefully sequenced, starting from the more stable capital flows (e.g.

This present economic recovery is taking place in a sound economic environment. Inflation level remains under control even though the balance of risks to price stability has recently gone up: some pressures have resulted from recent oil price rises or may result from some capacity constraints that could be encountered in the course of next years. Needless to say that the Governing Council of the Eurosystem has been and will remain vigilant in order to secure our primary objective of price stability. Besides, the current account is slightly in surplus and fiscal deficits are, in the euro zone as a whole, on a downward trend. It is worth stressing that European economies have never been creating so many new jobs so fast. The past two years (1998 and 1999) have seen very rapid job growth (about +1.5% a year) and a very big decrease in unemployment. In France, the rise has been sharper since almost 900,000 new jobs were created by enterprises (excluding Government administration) from December 1996 to December 1999 i.e. +6.6% over three years. With the economic growth speeding up, we can expect a further drop in the unemployment rate which is presently below 10%. Due to this economic recovery, the growth differential between the US and the euro zone is progressively to disappear. This gap between the two economic zones in terms of economic growth has resulted in the past years from the lag between their economic cycles.
Interoperability across systems and operators merits continued focus. Big technology companies, or BigTechs, have so far offered services to end-users overlaid on top of traditional payment infrastructures. They can also have an interest in offering their own currency and payment systems. One example is Libra, backed by among others Facebook. Regulation of such systems will be important if we as a society are to secure the benefits of these new solutions while limiting the associated risks. The European Commission recently presented legislative proposals for an EU regulatory framework on crypto-assets as part of its digital finance package. As an EEA country, Norway will also be affected by this framework. Globalisation is about more than BigTechs entering the payments market. Payment infrastructure providers are also undergoing structural changes. Global operators are taking positions in Norway and the Nordic region. Mastercard will be acquiring many of Nets’ services and will be an important provider for Norway’s payment system. Central bank digital currency Structural changes in the payment landscape raise questions around whether there is a need for Norges Bank to implement measures to ensure that payments can continue to be made efficiently and securely in NOK in the future. A central question is whether Norges Bank should provide central bank money to the public in digital as well as physical form. Central bank digital currency – CBDC – will be both a new type of money and a new payment system. CBDC, like cash, is a claim on the central bank.

The successful management of the so-called IT bubble at the beginning of the 2000s was regarded as an example of financial crises not needing to be particularly troublesome. What is clear today, but was not clear as recently as six years ago, is that this picture was far too optimistic. But then the crisis came along and turned most things upside down. Reassessment of the financial markets One obvious lesson from the crisis was that the financial markets were not functioning as well and as efficiently as we had believed. Instead of contributing to growth and stability in the economy through efficient risk spreading and credit allocation, they became a cause of  1  2  See for example Taylor (1998) and Bernanke (2004). BIS central bankers’ speeches  macroeconomic fluctuations. It became clear that the models on which policy decisions were based needed to be adjusted so that the financial markets no longer played the obscure role they had played prior to this. In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in research on what are usually referred to as “financial frictions”, that is, mechanisms through which the financial system affects fluctuations in the economy (see Figure 1).2 One might wonder why this interest in the role of the financial markets did not arise earlier. The crisis that we in Sweden and some other countries suffered in the early 1990s also revolved to a great extent around credit booms and property market crashes.
While monetary policy is guided by a quantified inflation target, the target of macroprudential policy comprises several different dimensions. For example, macroprudential policies can be about reducing and preventing excessive credit growth, reducing liquidity risks and maturity mismatches in the banking system, and increasing the financial infrastructure’s resilience to shocks. In all cases, it is hard to formulate a simple and clear target. Evaluating macroprudential policy decisions and holding the decision makers to account is therefore harder. It is therefore important to make sure the democratic control of macroprudential policy is guaranteed and regularly safeguarded. However, this can occur by developing the structures of democratic follow-up and control of the Riksbank that are already in place, chiefly through the General Council of the Riksbank. We can also benefit from what we have learned from how monetary policy is monitored, for instance through the publication of reports, minutes and regular questioning in the Parliamentary Committee on Finance. 9  Riksbanken (2013) Remissyttrande om betänkandet Att förebygga och hantera finansiella kriser (SOU 2013:6), DNR 2013-234-STA. 10  The recommendation regarding national macroprudential policy mandates issued by the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) in December 2011 states that the EU countries should give one authority or one council the responsibility of implementing macroprudential policies.

However, such time-varying regulation also contributes to stability by increasing the costs of borrowing when credit growth and other financial variables suggest that systemic risk has increased, and reducing the interest rate margin in financial crisis situations when the buffer can be used. We can illustrate the time-varying part by adding a time index also for the regulation variable ( z ):  itlending  it   t ( zt ) . If time-varying regulation is introduced, the variations of the interest rate margin will be different over time, which can affect the monetary policy transmission mechanism. At the same time, a central bank must, irrespective of macroprudential policy, understand how the financial sector determines various financial prices in order to understand how monetary policy affects the economy through the lending rate. Credit markets are often not entirely homogeneous, but consist of several different segments or sectors. The development within different sectors can vary tremendously. Although many other factors affecting the lending rate and other credit terms are of an aggregate nature, sector-specific factors are often important too. It is therefore important to have a macroprudential policy tool focusing on individual sectors. This is not least important in attempting to reduce the costs of leaning into the wind.
The chart confirms that historically, as one might expect, there has generally been an offsetting balance of these two policy components. I think, nevertheless, that there is a tendency to exaggerate the tightness of monetary policy at the present time. This happens because of too simplistic an approach to measuring real interest rates and assessing their influence. I can best illustrate this by reference to the illustration in slide 8. As at April last year, 12-month HIBOR was 8.0%. Looking back over the preceding 12 months (ie April 1997 to April 1998), inflation had been 4.7%, so at that  BIS Review 54/1999  2  time (April 1998) the commonplace measure of the real interest rate would have yielded 3.3%. A more sophisticated method would have been to take the forecast for inflation over the coming year (April 1998 to April 1999), which was then 4.2% (I have based this on an interpolation from the annual figures from the consensus of private sector forecasters at that time), yielding a somewhat lower real rate of 3.8%. But that forecast of inflation turned out to be wildly wrong; the actual outturn for the 12 months April 1998 to April 1999 was minus 2.6%, which means that the real rate actually realised, and thus experienced by someone borrowing or lending for twelve months at HIBOR, was, on the CPI basis, 10.6%.

Regional Developments: ASEAN – Grounds for Optimism 7 Đ Đ Within ASEAN, the picture is rosier. According to the IMF, the major ASEAN economies are expected to continue outperforming emerging markets and developing economies as a whole, with projected GDP growth of about 5.0% annually for 2019-2020 [2] . ASEAN has become one of the fast-growing regions in the world in the last few decades, and is home to eight of the world’s best performing developing economies [3] . Looking ahead to 2050, it is projected that ASEAN – with a population of close to 800 million people by then - could become the fourth largest single market, behind China, India, and the US [4] .Đ • In the next few years, growth in ASEAN will continue to be driven by intra and extra-regional trade as well as strong investment flows, even as domestic demand will play a more important role.Đ • ASEAN also has demographics on its side: we are for the most part a young region, with a rapidly growing middle class who is increasingly consuming higher value-added goods and services. • Asian wealth accumulation is also growing quickly. Assets under management in the Asia Pacific is expected to increase faster than any other region globally, almost doubling from 2017 to about $ trillion in 2025. This will result in increased demand for investment opportunities across a wide range of products like equities, fixed-income, and risk management tools.
The reality is that many Asian governments and corporations receive credit ratings that are lower than the minimum thresholds acceptable to institutional investors, including the managers of official reserves. There is certainly merit in strengthening the dialogue between the Asian issuers and the international credit agencies to facilitate a better understanding of the Asian situation by the rating agencies and improve the transparency and accountability of the rating process. There is also a case for considering whether it is advisable or viable to establish national or regional credit rating agencies, with or without support from the authorities. On top of these, I think there is a need to consider the introduction of market-based mechanisms for credit enhancement or guarantees. In Asia, I am aware of problems encountered by private sector initiatives in this field. It has proved difficult objectively to assess and manage the risks involved in such operations. Indeed, one feature of the recent explosion of international finance is market volatility that has been much higher than had been thought possible in the light of historical experience. But I think we have learnt from the recent years of financial turmoil and I hope we are now in a better position to identify and therefore properly price the risks involved in the provision of credit enhancements or guarantees.

But as markets attained a global dimension, encouraged by financial liberalisation and the advance of information technology, they became far less tolerant of weaknesses than before, and the markets responded to weaknesses with harsh punishments, which many considered grossly unfair. But this is the reality that we face. And if we are to continue to benefit from the greatly enhanced efficiency of global financial markets in international financial intermediation - a process that has contributed so much to development - we have to get on with the necessary reforms. These include the domestic structural reforms to the financial and corporate sectors, to make sure that we can manage the risks and cope with the volatility that are part of that efficiency. And, to the extent that consensus can be reached, they also include measures to strengthen the international financial architecture. Thus, with some encouragement from the Bank and from others, and more importantly, urged on by the brute forces of the market, significant progress has been made in the domestic structural reforms of individual economies in the region. I applaud the progress and the achievements; and I sympathise with the pain and suffering which they have entailed. With the economic recovery of the region now well under way and international funds flowing back into the region, I would also urge a continued commitment to structural reforms and caution against complacency.
Similarly, an economic slowdown cum banking crisis has severe effects on output and employment. But today we need not resort to those stories. The US has been accumulating a current-account deficit for quite some time that sooner or later would have to be corrected via deceleration and depreciation. But the financial crises that got in the picture will make adjustments much more expensive. BIS Review 124/2008  1  Global imbalances By the late 1990s, the US current account deficit began to soar: From 140 billion dollars in 1997 – equivalent to 1.7% of GDP – it climbed to 739 billion dollars in 2007, that is, 5.3% of GDP (figure 1). A first glance at the data requires screening the regional savings and investment balances to see how current-account deficits are distributed around the world. What we see is a dramatic fall in savings – both private and public – in the United States, but also a major increase in surpluses in Asia. This reflects increased savings in China, but also a post-crisis dramatic reduction in investment in the rest of Asia. 1 The recession of 2001 brought a slight relapse, but growth resumed briefly. Fiscal policy was of little help, although the fact that the international interest rate was so low – as opposed to the mid-1980s' twin deficits experience – is an indication that the cause of the deficit was not the drop in US saving , but rather Asia’s surplus.

Internationally, a wide consensus has been achieved between governments and economists that price stability is the most appropriate main objective of monetary policy. The Icelandic economy has witnessed turbulent times since 2001 and undergone major structural changes, particularly in the financial sector. Iceland moved on to an inflation target under conditions of strong macroeconomic imbalances, one result of which was a depreciation of the króna by one-third over a period of eighteen months until near the end of 2001. This development led to a shortlived inflationary episode which peaked in January 2002. Afterwards inflation slowed down sharply and moved below the 2½% target before the end of 2002. It remained below or close to the target into the second half of 2004, but has been above target since then. In the current episode, the twelve-month inflation rate peaked in August 2006 at 8.4%. Since then it has been decelerating and the twelvemonth increase in the CPI measured 7.4% in February 2007. However, the rise in the core indices remained above 8%. Cuts in indirect taxation will bring down headline inflation very rapidly over the next few months, although the reduction in underlying inflation will be slower. The Central Bank has explained in detail the reasons for the inflation target overshoot over the past two to three years. Suffice it to mention here that the episode of overheating that now appears to be coming to an end originated in large-scale investments [in the power and aluminium sectors] in east Iceland and elsewhere.