samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
A study from Rogalandsforskning1 shows that there are more newly established businesses in the Trondheim area than in any other urban centres in the country. The business sector in Trondheim is technologically highly advanced. Norges Bank’s regional network reports firm growth in the retail sector and the household service sector. Both manufacturing and corporate services report that the trough has been reached or passed. Activity in the construction industry has also stabilised and the number of new orders is edging up. There is considerable uncertainty about the strength and duration of the upturn. The decline in employment is slowing, but few in the public or private sector report plans to increase employment. The supply of qualified labour is still good and is increasing somewhat in all sectors. The regional network also reports that cost reductions in the business sector, especially in services, are now generating results in the form of improved profitability. The focus appears to have shifted to some extent from cost cutting to strategies for boosting income. Both the public and private sectors appear to be somewhat more positive about investment plans, but are still not signalling significant growth in investment over the next year. Lower interest rates have contributed to more positive expectations concerning future developments. Few market participants believe that there has been any real impact yet, but many expect an improvement in the near future.

The appreciation of the krone and high wage growth led to a considerable deterioration in the competitiveness of Norwegian enterprises - and made imported consumer goods cheaper. Norges Bank has no set target for the level of the exchange rate. Developments in the krone exchange rate are nevertheless important in interest rate setting. The response to a change in the exchange rate will depend on its expected impact on inflation. This requires an evaluation of the reasons for and the duration of the change. Short-term fluctuations in the krone exchange rate tend to have very limited effects on economic developments, while long-lasting changes can have an impact. High wage growth over several years has eroded the competitiveness of the Norwegian business sector. Last year, the effects of high wage growth on export industries were amplified by the changes in the krone exchange rate. The krone has now reverted to around the level prevailing in the mid-1990s, while labour costs in manufacturing have increased by almost 15 per cent more than among our trading partners in the same period. The appreciation of the krone proved to be reversible, but the loss of competitiveness and jobs caused by relatively high domestic wage growth is difficult to recoup. A precondition for a considerable improvement in competitiveness is that real wage growth is lower than productivity growth in the business sector for a period. Experience shows that this only occurs in periods with low resource utilisation.
24. See Fornaro, L. and Wolf, M. (2021), “The Scars of Supply Shocks”, Barcelona School of Economics Working Paper, April. 25. This argument does not deny historical examples of central banks over-estimating potential and setting policy inappropriately. There is strong evidence to suggest that part of the reason the Federal Reserve lost control of inflation in the 1970s is that it missed a slowdown in productivity growth and did not realise that the economy was overheating. However, the lessons learned from that period indicate that when uncertainty is high, it is safest not to base policy around large, real-time revisions in potential output or any other unobservable variable. Indeed, those central banks that best navigated the 1970s energy shock – such as the Deutsche Bundesbank – reacted to changes in the output gap rather than estimates of levels. This was a more robust strategy because changes are less subject to mismeasurement and are therefore revised less ex post. Current output gap estimates by major institutions point to the output gap in the euro area becoming more negative in 2023 and only partly recovering in 2024 (see Chart 8). In other words, historical experience supports the case for waiting for stronger evidence on potential output and proceeding prudently. 8). See Orphanides, A. (2003), “The Quest for Prosperity without Inflation”, Journal of Monetary Economics, Vol. 50, No 3, pp. 633-663, Orphanides, A. and Williams, J.C. (2002), “Robust Monetary Policy Rules with Unknown Natural Rates”, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Vol.

The economy is experiencing large, negative supply shocks pushing output and inflation in opposite directions. The correlation between estimated output gaps and inflation has become more blurred and uncertain than in the past. And the trade-offs facing monetary policy have become more complicated. In other words, monetary policy has become significantly more complex. In designing the appropriate monetary policy response, central banks need to make two key judgements: one on the origin of the shocks hitting the economy and another on their persistence. I will argue today that euro area inflation has been driven by soaring energy prices and enduring supply constraints even as the economy reopened after the crisis phase of the pandemic, unleashing pent-up demand. But the boost to demand from the reopening is fading, and we have no evidence as yet that supply shocks are having large and permanent effects on output potential. And if supply shocks durably lowered potential, our policy response would have to consider that they also affect demand by depressing current and future real income. Against such a backdrop, monetary policy has to ward off the risk of a de-anchoring of inflation expectations, which could lead to second-round effects in the form of excessive wage and price-setting dynamics. That implies adjusting monetary conditions and frontloading rate hikes. But so long as expectations remain anchored, the calibration of our policy adjustment should take into account the unprecedented uncertainty of the post-pandemic world.
In order to prepare for the meeting with John Global, I suggest that we take a closer look at his daily routine. Let us take a sunny day of September 2026. Time: 5 a.m. Place: somewhere in the city of Poznan. John Global is still asleep, but the world is already getting ready to wake him up. The news aggregator is ready to provide him with a set of most recent news in line with his interests. As John Global tends to look through newspapers before 07:00 CET when he is in Poznan, and before 16:00 CET when he is in Hong Kong, the aggregator is already preparing a ‘special edition’. And Global always begins his day with looking through online newspapers and drinking well-brewed coffee. Coffee is one of his indulgences, a look back to recall past events, as coffee has been his morning ritual for more than 20 years. As far as other things are concerned, our Global tries to be more flexible and not to fall into any habits. It's 6:30 a.m. John Global wakes up. He enjoys the view from the window – the forest and lake. It is indeed different from the one he saw two days ago in Hong Kong – skyscrapers and smog blotting out the sun. He left Warsaw for Poznan 20 years ago, in 2006, when he realized that administrative issues are too timeconsuming and generate negative emotions.

The lunch was excellent, and the ambience was fostered by a holographic show of pictures from the trip that Global stores on a photo server accessible via the Internet. They were watching the pictures on a display fixed in the restaurant. Global is a regular here, so his bank will take care of the bill. On his way home, Global buys flowers paying e-money by accepting the receipt in his communicator. As the weather is stunning, he takes a walk home. Passing by a sweet shop, he gives in to temptation and indulges in a big portion of ice-cream. He pays by his communicator, which includes a RFID payment card. (It is worth pointing out that the communicator is one of the most useful gadgets, as it plays many roles, e.g. that of electronic signature, ID card, driving license, passport, global tax ID, social security ID, season ticket in domestic and international transport, to name just a few. It is biometrically protected. This means that in order to activate it, Global touches a scanner which needs only a fraction of a second to read his papillary ridges). Afternoon At home, Global finds his son in front of the computer. He is preparing to go to Warsaw to take part in a workshop. Moving and communicating is easy, so Global has more time to spend with his son than his parents had for him. Even during his business trips, he can have eye contact with his child.
There has over the last 30 years been a shift in the pensions industry towards defined contribution schemes – away from defined benefit schemes, because of the latter’s unsustainability. But this shift towards defined contribution schemes has also led to a fragmented market place in many countries, and one where responsibility is placed on the individual to manage his or her funds and take on the risks. It is also by and large a landscape of funds that actively manage investments, rather than passively. So it’s a fragmented marketplace, people have to choose between different funds to invest in and take their own risks, and the funds are largely actively managed. It’s the case in the US, several countries in Europe, and in the UK and Australia, for example. That combination of factors, particularly the fragmentation of the pensions market and active management, has meant higher costs than are sustainable in the long term. 27. The solution has to be greater pooling of funds and a greater reliance on passive investment management. Active management is not all it has been cracked up to be: it has not proven its worth for most ordinary savers preparing for their retirement. We do have to move towards a system, in a whole range of countries, of helping people save for the long term through passive investment funds, and pool savings to avoid fragmentation and excessive marketing costs.

The data has not been transparent, especially for privately-held investments, it has not been put together, and this is what EDHEC  4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  is doing. So that’s one dimension of it. Getting the data together to allow institutional investors to allocate a desired portion of funds to infrastructure as an asset class. 35. Second, the regulatory treatment for insurers has to evolve so as to make possible long term investments, including infrastructure investment. Some rethinking is already underway globally on the design of capital frameworks for insurers. It has to be aimed first of all at ensuring that individual insurers are on a sound prudential footing, not just for the short term but for the long term. It should also support efforts to ensure that our economies are able to grow and to remain healthy, which is also in the interests of every player. This means we have to support long term investment. •  The European regulators are already in close consultation with the industry, on providing some measure of capital relief for long term investments. Globally too we have to do this. We need lower risk charges for equity held by insurers for the long term, including infrastructure. I hope globally regulators will arrive at an understanding that makes this possible. •  Here in Singapore, MAS is engaging closely with the industry in this regard.
Over the past two years, the Banque de France has therefore been looking into a wholesale CBDC with a view to contribute to Eurosystem’s efforts in designing and developing it when the time comes. And this time could come sooner than expected, with the upcoming entry into application of the European Pilot Regime  Page 5 sur 5 in early 2023 - only six months from now. This new regulation provides a framework for market players to experiment the use of blockchain in real-life conditions to issue and trade tokenised securities. It also offers a unique opportunity for the Eurosystem to conduct its own “pilot regime”, in close cooperation with private players. Without overpromising on that pilot wholesale CBDC, we have to seize the opportunity to try out various solutions from 2023 onwards. Learning by doing is the best way to acquire knowledge. In that spirit, since 2020, the Banque de France has been conducting experiments with a wide range of partners to develop its expertise, with the aim of providing that expertise to the Eurosystem. Our first nine experiments have already delivered key insights, shared in a report published in November last year. Considering these promising results, we have decided to launch a new series of three experiments. You will learn more on them in the coming weeks, but let me already give a few insights today.

Regarding the euro area, a digital euro would also contribute to supporting monetary sovereignty and strategic autonomy, by preventing the use of external digital assets – such as private crypto assets and non-euro CBDCs – as settlement assets, and by facilitating the emergence of a pan-European payment solution at the point of sale, which could serve as a vehicle for the use of a digital euro. But such a digital euro could and should be decentralised in its implementation, in the spirit of public / private partnerships mentioned earlier. On the other side of a mountain, you will obviously always find a side that is less exposed to the sun; here, this northern face is wholesale CBDC. It currently attracts little public interest, although it poses relatively less complex legal issues, and has two strong business cases. First, a wholesale CBDC could significantly contribute to improving cross-border and cross-currency payments, a topic on which we have made progress over the past year. Following a first report delivered to the G20 in July 2021, the Future of Payments Working Group of the BIS has recently finalised a new report outlining options for access and interoperability of CBDCs for cross-border payments. Second, a wholesale CBDC could accompany the tokenisation of securities as a safe and liquid settlement asset for them on a blockchain technology. Failing to offer market participants a wholesale CBDC could open the door to an extensive use of socalled stablecoins, which would pose a systemic risk.
The relative dearth of such moves may help explain the lack of technological trickle-down to the long tail. Taken together, the evidence here points to a two-tailed labour market. The upper tail in-crowd attracts the most skilled managers and the best-connected boards, amplifying their strengths. And in-crowd workers swim mostly in the pool of in-crowd companies. By contrast, out-crowd companies in the lower tail have less-skilled managers, less connected boards and workers who swim largely in less productive company pools. This bifurcated labour market seems unlikely to support technological diffusion to the long tail. (d)  Institutional Infrastructure  There is a well-established school of thought linking improvements in the quantity and quality of institutions to rises in living standards. Countries with high-quality institutions tend, on average, to grow more rapidly and to have higher levels of productivity and living standards. Those without tend to be subject to larger and more frequent breakdowns in economic, financial and social order, which holds back significantly their growth, productivity and living standards. 42  Institutions matter. One of the channels through which institutions support growth is by nurturing investment and innovation. For example, upholding the rule of law and enforcing property rights is typically found to be crucial in supporting business investment and innovation. 43  Having those rights well-established reduces concerns among firms  that their assets might otherwise be expropriated, either by the state or another company. Security of 44  property rights encourages a mass flourishing of investment and entrepreneurship.

The aim in doing so was exactly in line with the May Inflation Report – to reduce modestly the degree of monetary policy accommodation, given a tight labour market and gradually mounting pay pressures, to return inflation to target sustainably. Some context is important here. Voting for a 25 basis point rate rise, a full decade after monetary policy was first placed on an emergency setting, is hardly either surprising or radical. A Bank Rate rise of 25 basis points would still leave monetary conditions in the UK extraordinarily accommodative by any historical metric. And the aim in doing so is to lower the risk of needing to tighten policy less gradually in future and cause a sharper adjustment in the economy. Truth be told, I would have voted to raise Bank Rate at the MPC’s May meeting had data on the economy held firm. What we saw ahead of that meeting was a string of weak data suggesting consumer spending might be faltering. I believed there was option value in waiting to see if these data signalled the start of a lasting retrenchment by households, or were instead a temporary snow or statistical blip. With only a modest policy tightening needed over a number of years to return inflation to target, there was “no rush”. In the event, data on the consumer since the May MPC meeting has, virtually without exception, bounced back strongly. That includes measures of retail spending, consumer confidence and consumer credit.
In this period, there were a total of ten devaluations or "technical adjustments" that entailed devaluation, often with the aim of bringing costs back under control. The objective of keeping inflation stable was set aside. Repeated devaluations eventually led to expectations that the authorities would not in the future stand by their promise of a fixed exchange rate, and that if price and cost inflation became too high, it was expected that the krone would be devalued again. The social partners began to take higher inflation into account in wage demands and price setting. The last devaluation came in 1986. Subsequently, the interest rate was used to maintain a fixed krone exchange rate in order to bring price and cost inflation under control. We again chose a fixed exchange rate and other countries' inflation as a nominal anchor. Economic policy was influenced by the experiences of other countries that had dealt with the problem of inflation earlier, such as the US and Germany. The decline in inflation in Norway thus came in the wake of the fall in inflation abroad. Historical data seem to suggest that after turbulent periods, inflation gradually reverts to a low and stable level and that over time domestic inflation is determined by external inflation. However, inflation in a country with its own national currency is not something that just drifts in with the wind from abroad. It is the monetary policy choices we make in Norway that determine price developments here.

The growth rate after having recovered the initial output level was also different. Considering the first six quarters after having reached this point, in the beginning of 2000, the economy grew at an average annual rate of 4.4%, whereas between the first quarter of 2010 and mid-2011 the economy grew an average annual rate of 6.3%. The behavior of the unemployment rate was totally different as well. After having risen from around 7.5% in mid-2008 to levels close to 11% in mid-2009, it began a period of fast decrease, returning to levels around 7% to 7.5% at the beginning of this year. The policy regime was crucial in this result. Fiscal policy implemented a sizeable economic stimulus package. Monetary policy also added a significant impulse to the economy, as the Bank took the monetary policy interest rate to its minimum and implemented additional measures to ensure the effectiveness of its actions. The effects of the 2008–2009 crisis were very significant, but the resilience of the Chilean economy and the effectiveness of its macroeconomic policies were even stronger. Over time, inflation targeting regimes have evolved to what is now known as flexible inflation target (FIT). In this scheme, the central bank sets an inflation target, which is intended to be achieved in a given time horizon. As shown by Svensson (1997), inflation targeting implies inflation forecast targeting.
In other words, their balance sheets look much worse than they had anticipated. Households who have found themselves in this situation in many other countries have reduced their consumption and begun to save to achieve a better balance between assets and debts. Not only the supply, but also the demand for credit thus declines. The consolidation of households’ balance sheets gives a fall in demand that tends to be fairly long-lived. 4 The fall in the economy can be reinforced if the weaker economic activity means that borrowers, households and companies, experience difficult in meeting their obligations and the banks suffer loan losses. This process often leads to a substantial weakening in public finances, too, partly because of the rapid decline in economic activity and partly because the banking system may in a worst case scenario require support. In this way, one can say that the credit cycle and the economic cycle pull one another down. Sometimes one uses the expression “credit boom gone wrong” to describe this kind of development. 5 Of course, not all credit cycles look like this, but history shows that it is difficult to avoid it happening now and again. There is fairly good empirical evidence to support this description.

Luis M Linde: The internationalisation of the Spanish economy Testimony by Mr Luis M Linde, Governor of the Bank of Spain, before the Special Senate Committee for the Development of Internationalisation, Madrid, 2 June 2014. *  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, Allow me to begin by thanking Mr. Pío García-Escudero and the Chairman of this Special Committee, Mr. Iñaki Anasagasti, for the opportunity to participate in your work. First, today, I shall set out some matters relating to the internationalisation of the Spanish economy and capital flows between Spain and the rest of the world. Next, I shall detail the main characteristics of the international trade financing structure and of the funding of longerterm projects. And finally, I shall review the characteristics of, recent developments in and regulatory treatment of such trade in respect of the remit of the Banco de España. Recent developments in the external sector of the Spanish economy In the second half of 2013 a scenario of recovery began to take shape in our economy. A combination of several positive factors, both at home and abroad, has contributed to a situation in which Spain is beginning to overcome its second recession since 2008. The gradual improvement in GDP growth figures has been accompanied by a sustained correction of the main imbalances built up during the previous upturn.