samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Chairman, the 2009 Finscope Survey highlighted a number of barriers to financial inclusion, which were broadly categorized into   The physical access or proximity to financial institutions    Affordability of financial products  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1    Appropriateness of financial products    Regulation barriers such as know your customer requirements  Chairman, we know, for instance, that the apparent high cost of providing banking services to a population that is largely subsistence and therefore financially challenged excludes many from accessing financial services. Brick and mortar establishments are expensive to set up and even when they are set up, distance to the nearest branch for many, particularly for those in the rural areas becomes a problem. The findings relating to the cost of providing financial services contained again of the Finscope™ Zambia Survey (2005) goes some way in underscoring the nature of the problem. The survey found that about 32% of the banked reported that it costs them between K5,000–K10,000 to get to their bank while about 26% spend between K11,000–K25,000. At these cost levels it is not difficult to see why certain segments of our population do not actively seek financial services. The mobile payment system does therefore address some of these challenges and consequently can be an important platform for expanding the delivery of financial services. In some respects it complements conventional financial services or products. In other respects it makes up for the weakness of the conventional financial service providers.

With mobile payments, the cost of travel to a financial service provider is reduced to pressing a button, the risks associated with carrying cash are managed by simply securing a pin number. Since the mobile telephone industry has seen tremendous growth in its coverage, mobile payments seems to be the inevitable retail payment method that reaches out to large segments of the population a way that the conventional ones do not. Chairperson, notwithstanding these advantages, mobile payment platforms are not without challenges. At the centre of these challenges is the need to protect the consumer or user of mobile payment platforms. Undoubtedly, the number of people with access to mobile payment services in Zambia has significantly increased since the early days of Celpay. However, for us at the Bank of Zambia, as regulators we have taken note of how growth has been accompanied by a change in the character of mobile payments. The line between a mobile payment product and a conventional banking product has now become a fine line. For this reason developing appropriate regulations that protect the consumer against fraud and such risks anti-competitive practices, is a critical and necessary response to the innovations brought about by the mobile telephone technology. But it is important to understand that by its nature technological innovation can achieve an overnight quantum leap by the sheer ingenuity of one person. Where this happens, there is a danger that the development of appropriate regulation can lag behind technological advancement.
I encourage you all to be engaged both at the individual and the firm level – to share your perspective and contribute to the process to help strengthen best practices, and to support adherence to such standards in this critically important market. Conclusion To sum up, the foreign exchange market is one of the most vital markets in the world. Individuals, institutions, and the global financial system as a whole rely upon the ongoing effective functioning of this market. The market is constantly evolving, and it remains imperative that the industry work to strengthen the foundation of the market, and help to ensure that its integrity is upheld. Particularly in the wake of recent scandals, there is a role for industry participants to restore and maintain market integrity through support and development of best practices. You all have a shared stake in this. As you move forward, always bear in mind the critical role that the FX market plays and think about whether your choices enhance or weaken the integrity of the market. I appreciate the work of those around the room to do so, as well as publications such as FX Week and others, for sharing their perspectives and providing continued coverage of these and other issues relevant to the market. Thank you. 15  See http://www.bis.org/review/r150213c.htm. 16  See http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/speeches/2015/speech821.pdf. 8  BIS central bankers’ speeches

2/3  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  At the same time, the conduct of monetary policy is not mechanistic. Models are useful, but they are simplifications and must be supplemented by other information. For example, loss functions in such models cannot be directly interpreted as the Committee's view of inflation costs. As the deviation from the target increases, we need to assess the risk of high inflation becoming entrenched in the expectations of households, firms and FX market agents. If this were to happen, we may find ourselves in uncharted territory, where the costs are far higher than when inflation expectations are anchored to target. As last year, Norges Bank Watch notes that Norges Bank's FX transactions related to tax payments to the government result in volatility in the money market premium. As long as the short-term money market functions well, Norges Bank will not seek to steer such risk premiums. But we do not want to contribute to needless volatility, which is why we seek to make FX transactions as smoothed and predictable as possible. The Ministry of Finance is now appointing a working group, in which Norges Bank will participate, tasked with examining various aspects of the government's liquidity management. The practical implementation of the petroleum fund mechanism is one of the topics for discussion. Among the matters the working group will consider is whether the number of due dates for petroleum tax should be increased. Let me conclude by again thanking Norges Bank Watch for an excellent report.
Companies’ management information systems can, and are, being used to track flows of workers, goods and services. And administrative data can, and are, being used to track people, money and goods. These micro-level data that could, with time, be pieced together to provide a macro – or micro-to-macro – model of the economy. Or that, at least, is the promise. Managing the Economy  If we can map and model the economy at a high resolution how, if at all, might this affect how economic policy is set? Can analysis of this granular type help when thinking about appropriate forms of policy intervention? Might it help in defining what might be a sensible geographic area for an economic strategy? And might it even help in defining what that economic strategy might be? 34  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  34  There is already a deep and rich literature on these topics. One strand looks at optimal currency areas.43 Another looks at optimal fiscal areas.44 And a third looks at optimal political or policy areas.45 This literature identifies a rich range of factors important for determining the optimal spatial dimension of policy. From that long list, let me highlight three factors which are commonly found to play a crucial role:  (a)  Heterogeneity and Specialisation  Other things equal, the greater are the differences in the economic characteristics of an area, the stronger is the case for recognising these differences in the setting of economic policy.

Jean-Pierre Roth: Central bank policy and developments on the real estate market Summary of a speech by Mr Jean-Pierre Roth, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements, at the 8th International Symposium of the Group of Fifteen, Zurich, 1 February 2007. The complete speech can be found in German on the Swiss National Bank’s website (www.snb.ch). *  *  *  The Swiss National Bank takes considerable interest in the real estate market for a number of different reasons. Movements in real estate prices, on which it focuses in particular, can have a bearing on private consumption, investments and bank lending in addition to directly influencing the consumer price index through the rent component. The SNB’s monetary policy is aimed at maintaining price stability, as measured by changes in consumer prices. Therefore, if it had reason to expect that developments in the real estate market could jeopardise price stability in the economy as a whole, the SNB would definitely adjust its monetary policy. The Swiss real estate market has shown a very positive performance over the last few years and has made a substantial contribution to the upturn of the economy. According to the National Bank's assessment, the housing market in particular is currently well-balanced. The present situation thus gives no cause for concern. The SNB will, however, continue to monitor developments closely, particularly those factors that might boost demand for residential space in the future.
For instance, if the Committee decides the interest rate on one-week maturity repo auctions is to be 16.25 percent, then it will remain as 16.25 percent unless the Committee changes this. b. In the case of liquidity shortage due to unpredicted reasons, thus leading to a decision for an intra-day repo auction, such auctions will be held at the interest rate set by the Committee via the quantity auction method. c.  Each bidder shall make an offer at most for the amount announced for that day and the funding amount to be raised via the auction will be distributed to participants according to the ratios of their bids to the auction amount..  d.  Other guidelines governing the auctions and transactions shall remain unchanged. (iv)  In the case of a temporary liquidity surplus, instead of one-week repo auctions, the Central Bank will hold reverse repo auctions with a one-week maturity subject to the same conditions and with the interest rate announced for the repo auctions. (v)  Fixed rates will be applicable only to repo and reverse repo auctions with a oneweek maturity. Repo and reverse repo auctions or other auctions with maturities longer than one-week that the Central Bank may hold within open market operations will continue to be held under the traditional method and the price/interest will be formed under market conditions.

These efforts have helped to avoid retrenchment of staff who might otherwise be displaced, and contributed to the steady decline in retrenchments in the financial sector, from the peak of 2,300 in 2016 to 1,300 in 2019.7 However, given the accelerated pace of digitalisation, we need to do more, and at scale. We are now experimenting an Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform with 13 FI partners to automate the process of identifying adjacencies in jobs and skills, so that more workers can benefit from reskilling and pivot into suitable roles. We hope to share more about the platform early next year. Creating Opportunities Our second priority is to expand opportunities for those aspiring to enter or reenter the financial sector workforce. 9. The National Jobs Council has been set up to mobilise tripartite partners’ resources to create opportunities amidst the weak labour hiring conditions. I am pleased to note that the financial sector is one of the top contributing sectors to 2/6  BIS central bankers' speeches  the jobs and traineeships programmes, offering a wide range of opportunities, including in technology and innovation, retail and corporate banking. Close to 60 FIs have offered about 1,300 SGUnited Traineeship positions for fresh and recent graduates in this challenging job market. As of end July 2020, 50 FIs have committed to hiring 900 Singaporeans over the next 3 years to be groomed for future leadership and specialist roles under structured talent development programmes supported by MAS.
It is actually fairer to focus on forecast errors as deviations from targets under a flexible inflation targeting regime may be deliberate on the part of the central bank. Evaluating the central bank's forecasts is thus important; that is investigating whether the forecasts systematically over- or underestimate outcomes and so on. It is also interesting to compare forecast errors for inflation, for the real economy – irrespective of the measure of resource utilisation used – and for the interest rate if the central bank publishes such a  9  10  The output gap in the figures is the output gap in real time. As the output gap is revised backwards when new data is published, the gap in the figures does not correspond to the gap published in, for instance, the Monetary Policy Reports. (10) A preliminary analysis is carried out in Svensson, Lars E. O. (2009), "Transparency under Flexible Inflation Targeting: Experiences and Challenges", www.larseosvensson.net. BIS Review 29/2009  forecast. Which forecast errors are most relevant for explaining why monetary policy, with the benefit of hindsight, could have been better? What were these forecast errors due to? A disadvantage of an ex post evaluation is that we have to wait at least a couple of years for the outcomes for inflation and the real economy for the full impact of the monetary policy measures to become apparent.

An effective implementation of monetary policy presupposes that there is a high level of private-sector confidence in the central bank with regard to both the inflation target and the monetary policy analysis. It also requires that the central bank is successful in communicating its analysis and intentions. In other words, a precondition for an effective monetary policy implementation is that the central bank is open and transparent. Most central banks use a short-term interest rate as the policy rate to implement monetary policy. However, the actual policy rate in the two months prior to the next monetary policy  BIS Review 29/2009  11  decision plays a very minor role in the economy. Expectations regarding future policy rates, on the other hand, do play an important role. They affect interest rates with longer maturities which in turn are the interest rates that have an impact on the economic decisions of households and companies. The Riksbank and a few other central banks have taken this seriously and publish their own policy rate paths to facilitate the formation of expectations regarding future policy rates and to influence these expectations more effectively. If the central bank is successful in its communication, the market participants should be able to predict rather well how new information or new shocks will affect the central bank's forecast for the policy rate. If the central bank's analysis is credible, the market's expectations regarding the future policy rate should also change in line with the revised interest rate path of the central bank.
For a long time, our economy has been facing very important challenges in this area, such as increasing productivity, boosting savings and investment, working on the incorporation of new technologies and developing new productive poles, among others. These are all matters where it is very important for the country to make progress, but which lie beyond the instruments managed by the Central Bank. The Central Bank can only contribute to welfare and growth precisely by stabilizing prices and the cycle, which helps reduce uncertainty and favors a better allocation of resources. Let me note that the efforts to bring down inflation has a clear focus on the welfare of households. Families have seen their purchasing power eroded; with the same amount of money they buy an ever shrinking basket for consumption. It is important to control it, stabilize the economy and offer stable conditions to grow and increase employment while protecting wages from the effects of this phenomenon. 10  In the present circumstances, for inflation to converge to 3% also means boosting our capacity to deal with a more adverse external scenario. Again, we cannot rule out the occurrence of a more adverse external scenario. For the same reason, we must prepare ourselves to address it and mitigate its impacts. A sound economy with no significant imbalances is key to this, as it gives us more policy slack to address adverse scenarios.

This has important effects on inflation dynamics and, as long as we do not succeed in completing the adjustment of the economy, inflation will not come down. Does this mean that the Central Bank is not worried about low growth or rising unemployment and is only concerned about inflation? Quite the contrary. Monetary policy is always aimed at achieving low and stable inflation, which is achieved by smoothing the business cycle so that the economy can sustain growth without generating price pressures in either direction. The problem we must solve is that, for several quarters, our economy grew beyond its possibilities. This led to enormous imbalances, which caused high inflation. Therefore, the correction of these imbalances is a necessary condition to return to the 3 percent target. In our projections, the cumulative growth over the next two years does not differ greatly from what we foresaw in the Report we presented to this Commission last December. However, there is a change in our forecasts for 2023 and 2024, which are raised for this year and lowered for next year. This still considers that the economy will undergo an adjustment, meaning that there are still some quarters ahead where activity will contract. In order to achieve sustained higher growth with stable inflation in the long term, as a country we must implement policies that expand the economy's growth capacity.
Admittedly, a lot of what was said in the much-quoted reports by international analysts is misrepresented, and some of it based on misunderstandings, wrong information and, occasionally, obvious antipathy towards the Icelandic  2  BIS Review 28/2006  banks and their activities. This is all regrettable and, in some cases, deserves to be condemned. But these cases are not the essence of the matter. The essential point is that the banking sector as a whole, or individual banks, are not in a position to refute this kind of coverage for once and for all. Another serious matter is that, at a certain time, these institutions are vulnerable to changes in supply or risk assessment in international banking and bond markets. For its part, the Central Bank reiterates at this meeting that the underlying financial position of the Icelandic banking sector is very solid, fulfils the most stringent requirements and has easily passed all the stress tests conducted on it. This of course is the crucial issue. However, the scenario that we have witnessed since November must be taken very seriously. The Icelandic banking sector must address the shortcomings that international analysts repeatedly stumble over, regardless of whether these are exaggerated and overestimated. Lending growth must be reined in as promised. Certain financial institutions need to improve their communications to a significant degree, and a joint effort by them all could be worth considering. Hype and empty phrases must be avoided.

BIS central bankers’ speeches  11  Chart 7: Sterling corporate bond yields Per cent 9  Per cent 40  8  QE2  QE1  7  35 30  6  Investment grade, non-financial (left-hand scale)  25  5 20  4  15  3  10  2 High yield (right-hand scale)  1  5  0  0 2007  2008  2009  2010  2011  2012  Source: Bank of America/Merrill Lynch. Chart 8: International equity prices(a) Indices: 4 January 2007 = 100 120 QE1  QE2  100 80 60 40  Euro Stoxx S&P 500  20  FTSE All-Share 0 2007  2008  2009  2010  2011  2012  (a) In local currency terms. 12  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Chart 9: Constraints on investment spending(a) Percentages of respondents 100 Recessions Uncertainty about demand Inability to raise external finance Cost of finance Internal finance shortage  90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0  2000  2002  2004  2006  2008  2010  2012  Sources: CBI, CBI/PwC and ONS. (a) Manufacturing, financial services and consumer/business services surveys weighted by shares in real business investment. Companies are asked for factors likely to limit capital expenditure authorisations over the next twelve months. Financial service companies are not asked to distinguish between a shortage of internal finance and an inability to raise external finance, so their single response is used for both questions.
Both increases in prices of consumer goods that are mainly imported – imported inflation – and increases in prices of domestically-produced goods – domestic inflation – have remained low for some time. There have probably been several different factors contributing to the low inflation in recent years, including rapid productivity growth, relatively low capacity pressures and a stronger krona. Imported inflation also appears to have been held down by import substation, i.e. a shift from imports from countries with relatively high prices to countries with relatively low prices. Clothing prices, for instance,  3/4  have shown unusually weak growth and over the past two years they have actually fallen. The EU’s new regulations for clothing and textile imports have contributed to keeping down the rate of increase for clothing prices. Furthermore, stiffer competition in the food industry has led to food prices falling. Inflation has recently been slightly higher than we had calculated on in the June Inflation Report. This is primarily due to the unexpectedly high price of oil. However, the domestic inflation rate was slightly lower during the summer than we assumed in our earlier assessment. As before, our assessment is that inflation will rise in the near future. Increased cost pressures and rising capacity pressures should contribute to an increase in domestic inflation. At the same time, the factors that have dampened inflation over the past year – rapid productivity growth and increased competition – will continue to hold back price rises.

We are therefore assuming that domestic inflation will rise at a slow rate over the forecast period. Regarding the forecast for imported inflation, our assessment is that the effect of the price-dampening factors will decline somewhat. Although it can of course be assumed that the substitution for cheaper goods in imports will continue, rising global capacity pressures are expected to lead to higher international price pressures. Nor do we expect the krona exchange rate to continue to have the same price-dampening effect as it has had in recent years. The fact that cost pressures and capacity pressures will rise in Sweden is also judged to affect consumer prices of imported products since these are processed and distributed before being sold on in the Swedish market. All in all, therefore, there is reason, in my opinion, to believe that imported inflation excluding oil will rise gradually over the coming year. However, I believe that it may remain relatively low. Future monetary policy The assessment is thus that inflation will rise over the coming years, but at a relatively moderate rate. Compared with the assessment we made in June, it now appears that inflation may turn out somewhat higher. In the short term, this is primarily due to the higher oil price. In the longer term, it is the higher growth rate that indicates a slightly higher inflation rate than we had forecast in June. However, this is partly counteracted by the fact that the underlying productivity growth in the economy may need some upward revision.