samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Zdeněk Tůma: Statistics – investment in the future Welcome address by Mr Zdeněk Tůma, Governor of the Czech National Bank, at the International Conference “Statistics: Investment in the Future”, organized by the Czech National Bank together with the Czech Statistical Office and the Prague University of Economics, Prague, 14 September 2009. *  *  *  Dear Prime Minister, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues, I am very pleased that the Czech National Bank can host this conference in its premises. It is also our great pleasure to co-organize the conference together with the Czech Statistical Office and the Prague University of Economics – it is the evidence of good, I even would say, above-average relationships between these three institutions. The international conference “Statistics: Investment in the Future” we are opening by this plenary session is the second conference of this kind, organized five years after the first one. But this year’s venue is held in a rather different economic and financial environment compared to the previous conference. The whole world has been affected by the global financial crisis. Let me say a few words about the impact of the financial crisis on our economy. In autumn last year the first signs of the global financial crisis were detected in the inter-bank market. The main cause was a lack of confidence among banks spreading from abroad, resulting in their preference to keep more liquidity than usual.

Let me also touch upon a very important area of our statistical work – co-operation between statistical authorities, namely between the Czech Statistical Office and the Czech National Bank, not only in the preparation of this conference but on a regular basis. This co-operation is aimed at an effective arrangement of statistical processes in our country and minimizing the burden on respondents. Coordinated data collection and sharing of information are the key points in this respect. As we know, a formal arrangement is always a necessary but not sufficient condition for good results. It has become a standard between these two institutions to meet once a year at an annual summit devoted not only to the assessment of the past twelve months’ work and designing the tasks for the period ahead, but also to informal discussions in a friendly atmosphere. This is also an important feature of statistical work since statistics do not involve only figures, but also people who create and compile them. 2  BIS Review 107/2009  Having finished the description of our co-operation in this way, I would like to wish all participants of the conference the same friendly atmosphere at the conference and at the same time interesting presentations and fruitful discussions in addressing the above mentioned or other statistical issues. Thank you for your attention  BIS Review 107/2009  3
QE as an economic policy tool - what does it do and how should we use it? Speech given by Dave Ramsden, Deputy Governor for Markets and Banking  Peter Sinclair Town Hall lecture, University of Birmingham 17th February 2021  With thanks to Tom Smith, Amy Lee and Jon Bridges for their assistance in preparing these remarks, and to Bank colleagues including Andrew Hauser, Maggie Illingworth, Mike Joyce, Nick McLaren, Rhys Phillips, and Beth Blowers for their many helpful comments and suggestions. 1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  Introduction It’s a pleasure to be speaking today at the University of Birmingham, and an honour to be doing so at the third Peter Sinclair Town Hall lecture. My focus today is on quantitative easing – QE for short – and its use as an economic policy tool. The Bank of England’s internal Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) published its own evaluation of QE earlier this year, where it noted that “there remain open debates about how QE works in different states of the world, its broader interlinkages and its potential limitations”.1 What I want to use my lecture for today is to set out my own views on QE as a policy tool, as well as contribute some thoughts to some of those debates. Before I do that, though, I want to start with my own recollections of Peter.

During the last six months, my colleagues from the Governing Board and I have held frequent meetings with representatives of the business community; these discussions were very heated. It is therefore clear to me that adjustments to a strong currency do not happen just like that. On the contrary. Adjustment processes as a result of appreciation shocks are always very painful. Underlying these processes is a great willingness to take risks on the part of companies and investors, and a high level of commitment and flexibility from employees. In addition, our eight delegates for regional economic relations are constantly in touch with companies from different industries throughout Switzerland. The results of the special survey on the effects of Swiss franc appreciation conducted in the last two quarters show that a large portion (70%) of the companies surveyed are being negatively affected by Swiss franc appreciation. Many companies’ margins have come under pressure. However, the surveys also illustrate how quickly – and differently – companies have reacted to the challenges. The fact that our most current survey suggests a slightly improved economic outlook is encouraging. Economic developments abroad are even more crucial for Swiss exports than the exchange rate. The importance of global economic trends for our country can be clearly seen in chart 2. It shows that downturns in world trade and dips in growth in Switzerland occur almost concurrently. But the characteristics of demand from abroad differ in important ways.
I suspect, increasingly, we will have to take a more risk-specific approach and an activitybased approach with respect to FinTech. This means: Setting thresholds for when regulation kicks in; calibrating regulatory requirements to specific risks; and applying these requirements to activities rather than entities. A good example of our attempt to do this is the new Payment Services Bill, which we will publish for public consultation next week. Our aim is to right-size the regulations, to fit the various new developments that are taking place in electronic payments. Licensees will be regulated according to the activities they conduct, because different activities pose different risks. Finally, there are areas – be it new technologies or new business models – where regulators will never know enough. This is where the regulatory sandbox comes in – to facilitate experimentation in a contained environment. 4/9  BIS central bankers' speeches  Cyber Security Finally, cyber security. As we go more digital and online, cyber risks will mount. And if these risks are not managed well, public trust and confidence in technology will suffer. To fully harness the benefits of digital technology, we must build robust cyber defences and have effective remediation plans when things go wrong. First, cyber surveillance and information sharing. We are pleased to see the official launch in Singapore of the Asia-Pacific Regional Information & Analysis Centre by FS-ISAC. FS-ISAC, or the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Centre, is a global intelligence gathering and sharing initiative for the financial sector, with over 7000 members worldwide.

To quote Mr David Bailey, “data and Regtech go hand-in-hand and data must be at the heart of any Regtech conversation”. Good quality data means Regtech can be used to build effective models and generate decision-making insights. It is vital to build trust with your customers if you want to acquire sufficient quality data. You then need to store and transform that data according to a solid set of data governance rules, identify data which is relevant, and use it in an intelligent and responsible way. Third, proper risk management remains as important as ever. In Hong Kong, we are proud of our banks with their long histories, but we recognise that their legacy infrastructure can potentially hold back Regtech adoption. One key takeaway from today is the reminder that Rome was not built in a day. Banks can start on a small scale, for example by conducting a Proof of Concept (PoC) in a business unit or implementing Regtech in a Cloud-based environment in a newly established part of their business. As a regulator, I must point out that when navigating technologies and determining how to put Regtech to use, it is essential that banks adopt a robust risk assessment framework to evaluate and manage the associated risks. This resonates with Ms Jane Fraser’s suggestions that banks should be mindful of risks such as data security and third-party operational risks that come with new technologies, and that the sandbox provides a valuable means to test new Regtech solutions.
However, there are limits to what the Riksbank alone can do to prevent bubbles arising in the financial markets. Swedish authorities can only influence the markets’ risk premiums to a limited extent. The risk premiums on Swedish financial instruments are also largely determined by international factors. To avoid suffering deep crises in the future we therefore need more international cooperation, better supervision of the financial markets, better regulation and increased transparency in the financial system. 8  BIS Review 162/2009  BIS Review 162/2009  9  10  BIS Review 162/2009  BIS Review 162/2009  11  References Bean, Charles R. (2009), “The Great Moderation, the Great Panic and the Great Contraction”, Schumpeter Lecture, Annual Congress of the European Economic Association, Bank of England, August 2009, page 1 and page 16. BIS (2008), Bank for International Settlements, Annual Report 2008, page 138. Borio C., Lowe P. (2004), “Securing sustainable price stability: should credit come back from the wilderness?” Bank for International Settlements, Working Paper No 157, page 19. ECB (2009), Alessi, L, Detken C., “Real Time Early Warning Indicators for Costly Asset Price Boom/Bust Cycles, a Role for Global Liquidity”, European Central Bank Working Paper Series no 1039, March 2009, page 6. Giavazzi, F. and F. Mishkin (2006), “An evaluation of Swedish monetary policy between 1995 and 2005”, Reports from the Riksdag 2006/07:RFR 55 page 55, Committee on Finance. Greenspan, A. (2002), “Economic Volatility”, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Jackson Hole Symposium 2002, page 4.

It is thus also in the interest of the central banks to do what they can in various ways to avoid a situation where the economy goes into recession because of a burst bubble. The costs of the most recent financial crisis have been so high that it is difficult to claim that there would not have been any potential gains in preventing the financial bubble from arising. I mentioned at the beginning of my speech that the most recent financial turbulence is the greatest since the Depression and that the downturn in the world economy is the largest since the Second World War. Unemployment in the United States, for instance, has risen from around 4 per cent to more than 10 per cent in just over two years. The percentage of US households experiencing payment problems is the largest ever noted and millions of households have been forced – and probably further millions of households will be forced – to hand over their home to the lender for compulsory sale. In Sweden unemployment has risen much less during the same period, but it is now at just over 8 per cent, the highest level noted for more than 10 years. A further argument in favour of central banks preventing excesses in asset prices is the risk of what is known as moral hazard.
Rey (2016), “International channels of transmission of monetary policy and the Mundellian trilemma”, NBER Working Paper Series, Working Paper 21852; and Miranda-Agrippino and Rey (2020), “US Monetary Policy and the Global Financial Cycle”, Review of Economic Studies, Volume 87, Issue 6, November 2020. [9] Mano, R and Sgherri, S (2020), “One Shock, Many Policy Responses”, IMF Working Paper, WP/20/10. [10] Menon, R (2014), "Getting in All the Cracks or Targeting the Cracks? Securing Financial Stability in  the Post-Crisis Era," Opening Remarks at the Asian Monetary Policy Forum, 24 May. © 2021, Government of Singapore.

This means that the central bank has to take stronger action for monetary policy to have a stimulating effect. Some important questions are raised here: What are the fall in real interest rates and the downturn in inflation due to? Are these temporary or permanent changes? Are the central banks over interpreting their price stability task or have they not done sufficient to cure the low inflation? Some say that all things bad are mostly the fault of the central banks. I believe that part of the intensive debate on monetary policy conducted both here in Sweden and abroad is due to us economists tending to have different answers to these questions. These answers in turn affect the opinions on what is the best policy in both the long and the short term. How has Swedish monetary policy been conducted in recent years? Swedish monetary policy strategy entails stabilising inflation around the target and striving to stabilise production and employment around paths that are sustainable in the long term. If we look back two years, to the period before the April 2014 meeting, CPIF inflation had been around 1 per cent for some time, which is too low given that the Riksbank wishes to uphold confidence in the inflation target of 2 per cent as an anchor for price-setting and wage-formation. Another observation from April 2014 was that the more long-run inflation expectations had fallen below the 2 per cent level.
The focus has gradually shifted from strengthening intermediaries in the domestic Islamic financial industry to fortifying the regulatory, supervisory, Shariah and liquidity framework necessary for such a robust financial system. This has involved greater international cooperation and collaboration in this new environment. A further development has been the evolution of the domestic Islamic financial markets into international markets. This has manifested itself in the form of foreign participation in raising funds and in investment activities in these markets, thus generating increased cross border financial flows. This has drawn participation from both emerging and the developed world in Islamic and non-Islamic countries. Going forward, the Islamic financial system is envisaged to have an increasing important role in connecting the world economies – through the strengthening of financial linkages, it will in turn facilitate increased international trade and investment activities. This internationalisation of Islamic finance will require the intensification of international collective efforts to establish the international Islamic financial architecture, and the development of mechanisms for more effective cross-border liquidity management. Central to achieving this next thrust of development is to develop a high caliber and competent talent base to cultivate financial innovation. Therein lies the investment needed in human capital development to support the industry. While Malaysia’s own experience and aspirations is to evolve into an international Islamic financial centre, we also continue to promote a more inclusive financial system to support a more balanced growth. On the international front, the aim is to enhance our international connectivity and thus establish greater economic linkages with other economies.

Tackling climate for real: progress and next steps Speech given by Andrew Bailey Governor of the Bank of England  BIS-BDF-IMF-NGFS Green Swan 2021 Global Conference 3 June 2021  I am grateful to Thomas Viegas, Chris Faint, Zane Jamal, Theresa Löber, Timothy Rawlings, Matthew Trott, Michelle van der Merwe, and Karen Jude for their assistance in helping me prepare these remarks. 1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  It is a pleasure to be participating today, at such a unique event. Over recent decades, our global economic system has faced multiple shocks or swan events, ranging from the Covid-19 pandemic to the global financial crisis of 2007/08. But if we turn our eye to the future, we can see another swan lurking in the reeds, and it’s green. That green swan is why we are here today, the threat posed to our economies and our financial system by climate change. Central banks, regulators and policymakers came together in the aftermath of the financial crisis to reform the system so that it could better weather future shocks. Like before, we must come together again to address the threat of climate change. But unlike before, we cannot wait until the aftermath to do so.
These are necessary to help countries achieve their economic growth targets in an equitable manner, resulting in job creation and other positive social outcomes. The real economy, financial sector and public sector players all have complementary roles to play. Conferences such as this are an excellent opportunity to bring together stakeholders in order to foster the exchange of ideas. On that note, I wish you all fruitful discussions today. Thank you very much. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches

Management of the Petroleum Fund The Petroleum Fund is currently one of the world’s largest institutional investors, on a par with the largest pension fund in the US and the largest European fund. With the rate of growth that can be expected, the Petroleum Fund will be larger than these two funds in the next year or two. Norges Bank manages the Petroleum Fund on behalf of the Ministry of Finance. This is a challenging task that has been given high priority within the Bank. We have established what we believe is a professional management organisation. Performance is measured against the benchmark portfolio defined by the Ministry of Finance and the results are published in a quarterly report. So far, Norges Bank has achieved an excess return every year. Management costs have been low. In terms of net earnings, Norges Bank has added close to NOK 15bn to the Fund. The total return for the Fund is largely determined by the benchmark portfolio. Since 1997, the real return has averaged 4.2 per cent. Of this, 0.4 percentage point can be attributed to active management, for which Norges Bank is responsible. The Fund has become a large investor in international equity markets. Norges Bank recently established a group dedicated to actively supporting best practice corporate governance in companies where the Fund has ownership interests. Norges Bank already makes extensive use of its voting rights and has voted in about 17 000 cases this year.
The rate for New York State, which has been improving since the first quarter, is noticeably lower at 8.3 percent. Puerto Rico, which has had much higher unemployment than the mainland for the past several decades, saw a modest decline in its jobless rate, but at 15.6 percent is still showing little evidence of a recovery. Regional housing trends in New York and New Jersey We focus on housing at today’s briefing because it represents the most important asset that many households own, provides a substantial number of high-wage jobs and is often a key driver of regional as well as national business cycles. I’ll start with a key observation: During this recession, the housing sector contributed less volatility to the regional economy than it did in much of the nation. We have, of course, seen painful losses of homes, construction jobs and housing equity in New York and northern New Jersey. This pattern can be seen quite directly in the construction sector, where many jobs were created during the housing boom, but then were lost as the housing market deteriorated. However, our housing markets tend to be less influential in our economy because we are a relatively mature region. That is, we are not adding population as rapidly as some other parts of the country, so housing construction – which tends to be very cyclical – and associated purchases account for a smaller share of aggregate activity here than it does in faster growing regions.

BIS Review 137/2010  5  Nevertheless, several risks to home prices in the City remain. These risks include the ongoing completion of a considerable number of new apartment buildings – ones that were started at the end of the boom. Another risk comes from the slow pace of job growth in highpay sectors (including the securities industry) in New York City. Finally, during the boom, prices rose substantially faster than rents. Going forward, this disparity could exert downward pressure on home prices as renting has become a more affordable alternative. Conclusion In sum, after a recession that was milder than in many parts of the country, the region is showing signs of a modest recovery in New York, but little growth elsewhere. The housing sector played a pivotal role in the recent national downturn. In the region, the fact that housing activity has a smaller weight in the regional economy helped to limit the recession’s impact on many communities. Going forward, given housing’s significance to the well-being of people in our region and beyond, the New York Fed will continue to focus on the sector as we monitor regional and national economic conditions. Thank you for your kind attention. I will now ask James Orr to provide more details on current regional economic conditions. 6  BIS Review 137/2010