samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Should this trend continue, Thailand will not be able to maintain its competitiveness and output level. Fortunately, many technological advancements available at much lower costs today hold huge promises for raising productivity. Cloud computing, robotics and automation have allowed businesses to save significant costs. Big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities can now offer insights that enable more targeted services. I urge you all to seize this opportunity and leverage on new technologies to improve the productivity of your firms, your industries, and eventually our country. Second, on immunity: for growth to be sustainable we must have sufficient immunity to withstand unexpected shocks. We are living in a time of great changes, where outcomes can be sudden, unpredictable, and volatile, bringing 3  with them new forms of risks. Not only will firms face risks related to strategy, finance, and operation, but they will also face risks associated with driving digital transformations. Managing the transformation process in the digital environment requires fostering an organizational culture that is agile and nimble—to gain flexibility and speed that drives productivity and innovation. But, at the same time, a strong culture on risk management must also be instilled to safeguard firms’ resilience. As industries increasingly rely on data and data-driven technologies, cyber security must be considered a top priority. Globally, the number of threat incidents have been rising, with increased frequency, sophistication and scale of their impacts.

We must strategically adapt and adopt technologies now to remain relevant and competitive and provide support for sustainable improvement in the standard of living of the Thai people. 5  In closing, I would like to congratulate the IOD once again for fittingly organizing this Call for Action conference. Actions taken at the firm level can determine the direction of our country and whether we can efficiently catch up with rapid technological changes. These changes will also inevitably affect the whole ecosystem of Thailand. Therefore, I urge you all to think on a bigger picture on how your firms can help make Thailand’s digital transformation successful and fruitful. So, think big, stay informed, and act wisely. Only then we can be certain that together we could truly rise above disruptions. Thank you for your attention. *********  6
Over the period 2000 to 2007, the market penetration rate, measured in terms of the number of life insurance policies in force as a proportion to the total population, increased from 31.5% in 2000 to 40% in 2007. Notwithstanding its wider reach of the market, life insurance coverage remained relatively low compared with the more developed markets in the region such as Japan, Korea and Singapore, which have penetration rates of more than 80%. The relatively low market penetration coupled with rising household incomes and high savings rate suggest a very positive outlook for the Malaysian insurance sector to grow extensively and presents tremendous opportunities for financial advisers to serve the Malaysian consumers. With increased uncertainty prevailing in the global economic outlook and in the financial markets, effective financial planning will assume greater prominence at both the retail and corporate levels. Households, in particular, will benefit from financial planning in order to be  BIS Review 136/2008  1  more self-reliant and resilient against the increased volatility in the financial markets. It is envisaged that the financial advisers would be able to play a role in providing financial solutions to consumers on how best to manage their wealth efficiently and effectively. Financial advisers will help mobilise the country’s financial resources to generate growth and further develop our insurance and takaful sector specifically and the financial system generally.

According to the Ministry of Commerce, Chinese enterprises have already invested a total of $ billion in 49 countries along the “Belt and Road” in the first ten months of this year. The commencement of operations of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is expected to bring about more Chinese capital and companies “going out” over time. Hong Kong’s deep and mature financial markets will be an ideal place for corporates to raise funds for infrastructure projects and manage investments for their ‘Belt and Road’ developments. The capital investment projects are also expected to create new opportunities for the use of RMB in trade and investment activities, giving rise to new opportunities for RMB settlement, financing and asset management in the region. To ride on these opportunities, Hong Kong has been actively pursuing measures to develop into a hub for corporate treasury centres (CTCs) as Chinese corporates and multinational companies expand their footprints and increasingly demand centralised treasury management. The HKMA has been working closely with the Government to develop a concessionary tax regime to provide a more market-friendly environment for these companies to set up their CTCs in Hong Kong, and the relevant amendment bill was introduced into the Legislative Council last week. The third trend is that market developments, both in terms of turnover and product range, have picked up momentum in the past year. There is a rapidly growing list of products provided by our banks in Hong Kong to meet their clients’ liquidity, hedging and other business needs in RMB.
Andrew G Haldane: Curbing the credit cycle Speech presented by Andrew G Haldane, Executive Director, Financial Stability, Bank of England, at the Columbia University Center on Capitalism and Society Annual Conference, New York, 20 November 2010. *  *  *  The speech was prepared by Messrs David Aikman, Andrew G Haldane and Benjamin Nelson. The views are not necessarily those of the Bank of England. We are grateful to Piergiorgio Alessandri, Richard Barwell, Salina Ladha, Roland Meeks, Victoria Saporta and Alan Taylor for comments. Thanks to Vijay Balle and Clare Rogowski for excellent research assistance and to Moritz Schularick and Alan Taylor for making their data available to us. 1. Introduction  Credit lies at the heart of crises. Credit booms sow the seeds of subsequent credit crunches. This is a key lesson of past financial crashes, manias and panics (Minsky (1986), Kindleberger (1978), Rogoff and Reinhart (2009)). It was a lesson painfully re-taught to policymakers during the most recent financial crisis. This time’s credit cycle has been particularly severe and synchronous. In 2006, private sector credit across the UK, US and euro area rose by around 10%. During 2009, private credit in these countries fell by around 2%. 1 The knock-on consequences for real growth were equally severe and synchronous. Peak to trough, G7 real output fell by 3.6% during the Great Recession. In response, there have been widespread calls for remedial policy action. These proposals come in various stripes.

Some have proposed a more active role for monetary policy in addressing financial imbalances (Taylor (2010), White (2009)). Others have suggested using new macro-prudential tools to rein in credit excesses (Borio and Lowe (2002), Bank of England (2009), Kashyap et al (2010)). Others still have proposed a radical root-and-branch reform of the structure of banking (Kay (2009), Kotlikoff (2010)). Evaluating the merits of these proposals requires a conceptual understanding of the causes of the credit cycle and an empirical quantification of its dynamic behaviour. What is the underlying friction generating credit booms and busts? Are credit cycles distinct from cycles in the real economy? And how have they evolved, both over time and across countries? Answers to these questions should help frame public policy choices for curbing the credit cycle. To fix ideas, Section 2 sketches a model of the credit cycle. In this model, a lack of information provides incentives for banks to expand their balance sheets to boost profits and signal their ability to investors. This gives rise to a coordination failure, as banks collectively risk-up. That, in turn, generates a systematic credit boom and subsequent bust when risk is realised. Sections 3 and 4 present some empirical evidence on the credit cycle. Across countries and across a sweep of history, credit cycles are both clearly identifiable and regular. Typically, they presage banking crises. In their frequency and amplitude, credit cycles are distinct from the business cycle.
The increase in capital reflects a number of factors – a long period of low capital payouts relative to income, significant equity raises, as well as sizable asset dispositions that have shrunk the balance sheet and bolstered capital. The fact that credit losses have abated and this has enabled banks to release reserves has also been important. The second element is the international agreement to implement new Basel III capital standards. Not only will Basel III significantly raise the Tier I capital standard when it is fully implemented in 2019, but also it raises the quality of capital by putting the emphasis on tangible common equity. In addition, we and our partners in the international community are in the process of implementing capital surcharges for large, systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs),  BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  with the size of the surcharge dependent on size, complexity, and interconnectiveness. I appreciate that it is impossible to calibrate “SIFIness” precisely, but this is not a valid argument for no surcharge. The logic behind the SIFI surcharge is that the failure of a systemically important institution would generate a very large shock to the rest of the financial system. As a consequence, it makes sense to require higher capital for such firms to reduce their probability of failure. In addition, the Federal Reserve’s efforts to improve banks’ capital planning processes and evaluate their capital dispositions in the context of stress scenarios – the so-called Comprehensive Capital Assessment and Review (CCAR) process – is an important innovation.

This market for short-term credit evolved in the United States in a manner in which transactions between lenders and borrowers covered only part of each day – from late afternoon to early morning. During the middle of the day, the two large clearing banks supplied huge amounts of intraday credit to the major securities dealers. Borrowers’ assumed this credit would always be available to them, and did not appreciate the rollover risk to which they could be exposed if a clearing bank decided not to lend to them during the day. Similarly, triparty lenders underestimated their exposure to borrowers, believing that the clearing banks would always return their funds each morning. When triparty borrowers encountered funding pressures, these assumptions were starkly called into question. The private sector Triparty Repo Infrastructure Task Force, created in 2009, has made progress toward the objective of creating a more stable triparty market, but deeper change is needed to achieve real systemic risk reduction in this market. I will return to this subject later. As part of our financial stability effort, we also need to build in short-circuit mechanisms that help to dampen shocks and increase resilience. This is reflected in work underway in implementing the Basel III agreements relating to the capital conservation buffer and also on capital planning in our supervisory process. This includes requirements for financial intermediaries to cease paying dividends when economic circumstances deteriorate.
This would cause a slowdown of economic growth and put the prices of goods and services under pressure. If this downward pressure on prices were to continue for a prolonged period, price stability would be jeopardised. The low reference rate maintained by the SNB is therefore necessary from a monetary policy perspective in the context of the low interest rate environment worldwide and the strong Swiss franc. At the same time, the persistently low interest rate environment presents risks to financial stability. This applies first and foremost to the real estate and mortgage markets. Like global interest rates, mortgage rates in Switzerland have been on a downward trend for some 25 years. Consequently, significant imbalances have built up on the real estate and mortgage markets. This is evident when we look at the developments in both markets since 2000 (cf. slide 20). On an inflation-adjusted basis, prices for single-family houses have risen by more than 50% overall. The volume of outstanding mortgages has almost doubled over the same period. These strong rises on their own do not prove the build-up of imbalances – the increases can be partly explained by fundamentals such as solid population growth. Since 2000, this has amounted to approximately 18%. A growing population produces a demand for more housing. As land for building development is limited, this puts upward pressure on real estate prices. At the same time, demand for mortgage loans grows. 21  20  Both structural and cyclical reasons can cause this downward trend, cf., e.g., Danthine (2013).

In fact, its capital, Prague, lies more than 90 miles west of Vienna. In the words of a famous Londoner – the actor Michael Caine – “Not a lot of people know that”. What is more, the Czech economy is further west than you might think not just geographically, but also economically. This brings me to shocking fact number two. Despite tepid real growth averaging 3%, the Czech economy has grown by 10% on average in recent years thanks to appreciation of its exchange rate. Therefore, the Czech economy has multiplied in size more than 4.5 times since 1993 in nominal terms in euros. Consequently, it could have bought on average more than 7% p.a. of the core European countries’ real GDP over the last 18 years. And now for shocking fact number three. Despite, or maybe thanks to, our first-hand experience with financial crisis (bad loans exceeded 40% of GDP in the late 1990s), no bailout has been needed and no taxpayers’ money has been used to save any Czech financial firm in the latest turmoil. Finally, and a good deal less shockingly I’m pleased to say, the Czech National Bank has been not only the central bank, but also the integrated supervisor of the Czech financial industry since 2006. This set-up gives us many advantages in terms of dealing with the financial crisis and maintaining financial stability at national level, and it hopefully also enhances our understanding of the current events in the eurozone.
It’s important to underline that the unconventional measures that we used – all of them are now part of the ECB toolkit. So in the future, if ever we face again stressful situations in the euro area, the ECB would have no excuse not to use such instruments to stabilise the situation. That I wanted to repeat: it would be virtually impossible, if such a stressful situation occurred again, for the ECB to ignore that these instruments are effective, legal and part of the toolkit. People are important of course, but this transcends people. What are you going to be watching in the coming months, from outside the ECB, in terms of trying to judge the health of the eurozone economy? The real activity indicators [such as purchasing managers’ indices] are very important, but in view of our ultimate objective the way inflation will continue to react will be also very important. Our staff projections indicate that inflation could be subdued in the first part of the year and could increase a bit in the second half of the year. So we hope that this will materialise, in order to ensure that what we forecast in the projections for the years to come will really happen. What are your expectations for the June European Council meeting? I hope I am wrong, but unfortunately I am not expecting much from the next summit. The European economy is going through a good patch of growth. That, of course, always reduces government’s motivations to take bold decisions.

It depends on the timing of such an episode. By then, I hope that fiscal policy can become more active in reacting to such a development. It will be very important to have more fiscal space, and to use it. And that’s related to some of the reforms that are needed for monetary union to work better. Presumably, interest rates by then would not be sufficiently high for a reduction in rates to be a sufficient response. Other monetary policy tools, then, would have to be used. I think one possibility would be to go into yield curve control, meaning targeting specifically some interest rates for longer term maturities. That would require lower amounts of purchases to be achieved than we have at the moment under our asset purchase programme. It would work because it could lower medium to long-term interest rates, which are the relevant ones for expenditure decisions. Yield curve control is being used already in Japan – and it works. It has not distorted markets. [Former Chair of the US Federal Reserve Ben] Bernanke has a good answer to this issue of distorting the markets, which is to say that purchases by the central bank of government securities with different maturities have exactly the same impact as a change in maturities done by the Treasury itself. The public sector always impacts the yield curve, one way or the other.
The clearer it is to the bank’s creditors, counterparties and financial market infrastructure firms that a resolution comes with the expectation of access to public liquidity, if needed, the smaller the amount that may end up needing to be drawn-down. In contrast, doubts over whether and how liquidity will be made available to a bank upon its entry into resolution risk undermining a resolution, and leaving the authorities with a potentially far bigger problem. 8  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  8  So it is important to ensure resolution and liquidity strategies are aligned - whether they are delivered by a single institution, as in the UK, or by separate ones. The Purple Book, to be published next week will set out the Bank of England’s approach to providing a liquidity backstop in resolution, where required. To be eligible, a bank will need to be restored to solvency by the bail in of shareholders and debt holders. It will need to meet the PRA’s authorisation conditions, including capital requirements, so that it can continue to operate while in resolution. Solvent but illiquid banks in such a situation would have access to the Bank’s published facilities subject to meeting the necessary eligibility criteria. To supplement those arrangements, the Bank also has put in place a new, flexible Resolution Liquidity Framework providing the tools to lend to banks which are in a Bank of England led resolution.

This is key to allowing clearing members to measure and manage their exposures at a time of stress. It is therefore important that if the resolution authority intervenes it avoids disturbing the order of losses in the rule-book. 10  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  10  This requires a robust ‘No Creditor Worse Off’ (NCWO) safeguard which takes as its counter-factual the loss allocation rules in the CCP’s rule book. The issue of NCWO protection is the subject of current debate in the draft EU regulation on CCP Recovery and Resolution. One school of thought is that it is essential to have a weaker NCWO safeguard so that resolution authorities have flexibility to deviate from the way in which losses would fall under a CCP’s rules. This degree of flexibility puts particular focus on the objectives by which home authorities would exercise this discretion. Resolution aims principally to deliver financial stability. But in the case of a global CCP, whose financial stability will be given prominence? This uncertainty may leave participants located outside of the home jurisdiction fearing that they will be exposed to disproportionately greater losses in order to protect the home jurisdiction’s financial stability. The UK does not support that approach. As with banks, it is entirely possible to establish resolution frameworks for CCPs that ensure that interests are mutually aligned and that do not permit or require the home authorities to protect national financial stability at the expense of participants outside of that jurisdiction.
Scenarios with 0.25 percentage point higher and lower repo rate over 4 quarters from the Monetary Policy Report, July 2014 Alternative interest rate paths CPIF  Note. Per cent and annual percentage change respectively. Quarterly averages. Sources: Statistics Sweden and the Riksbank. 20 [20]

This conference series seeks to bring together top  1/2  BIS - Central bankers' speeches  researchers to present their recent work on topics of critical importance for the Spanish economy, and also distinguished policy-makers to discuss their views on these topics. But past successes are simply a good starting point. CEMFI has ambitious plans. It has a plan to implement a strategic vision for the future (underpinned by rigorous external evaluation), it has outstanding leadership (current and incoming) and it has plenty of talent. All these elements have been brought to fruition this year. In fact, the academic year that we are closing today has been full of good news for CEMFI, starting with the successful restructuring of the Master programme, the refurbishing of the new premises in Casado del Alisal 12, and the increase in the size of the faculty from 16 to 19 members, in line with the Board of Trustees' decision to have 25 faculty members by 2025. Even so, we should never forget, that all this – the premises, staff, faculty, strategic plans – are merely instruments. You, the students at CEMFI are the ultimate purpose. Your education and your future. They are at the core of our decisions. Apart from the Master in Economics and Finance, the other major academic programme at CEMFI is the PhD in Economics. In this respect, I would like to mention that 10 students have already defended their PhD theses or will do so in the near future.