samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
On the other hand, the U.S. is less dependent on oil imports than the European Union, let alone Switzerland. Structural characteristics of an economy can also affect the economic impact of an oil price shock. Rigid labor markets, for instance, can lead to asymmetric effects on output. The output loss in the event of a rise in oil prices can exceed the output gain in the event of a corresponding decline in oil prices. It is generally assumed that the overall impact of an oil shock is somewhat less pronounced in the U.S. than in Europe. Finally, exchange rates can play a role. As a result of the substantial decline  3  See eg M A Adelman (1995): “The Genie out of a Bottle: World Oil since 1970”, MIT Press, Cambridge. BIS Review 69/2004  3  in the U.S. dollar against most non-Asian currencies, the recent increase in the price of oil in local currency has been less pronounced in Europe. For a central bank concerned with maintaining price stability as the bedrock condition for sustained economic development, the crucial question is how a level shift in the equilibrium price range of oil would impact longer-term inflation rates. Oil prices have a direct impact on inflation because the price of crude oil immediately impacts gasoline and heating oil prices. The inflation effect depends on the weight of oil based products in the CPI. In Switzerland, heating oil makes up 1.2% of the CPI. Total oil based products represent 3.8% of the CPI.

Panel 1 shows a summary of the Fed’s assets and liabilities, as they are today. Substantially all of the $ trillion of assets consist of Treasuries and agency MBS. On the other side of the balance sheet, the Federal Reserve has three main categories of liabilities: $ trillion of bank reserves and other deposits, $ trillion of paper currency, and about $ billion of reverse repos. Before the crisis, the balance sheet was much smaller, at around $ billion. It reached its present size as a result of the FOMC’s large-scale asset purchase programs. Those programs were undertaken to support the economic recovery by easing financial conditions to a greater extent than could be achieved solely through reducing the federal funds rate, once that instrument became limited by the zero lower bound on interest rates. These asset purchases 2/7  BIS central bankers' speeches  greatly increased the size of the asset portfolio, and equally increased the size of the Federal Reserve’s liabilities, largely through growing the stock of bank reserves.5 The composition of the balance sheet also changed. On the asset side, the most important compositional changes were the addition of agency MBS and a substantial increase in the maturity of the Fed’s Treasury holdings. For many years, the FOMC has made it clear that it did not intend for these changes to the balance sheet to remain forever.
This makes the physical distance to service points and ATMs important. The average distance for a shopowner to the nearest service point to deposit his daily takings is 6 km for Sweden as a whole and more than 10 km for Jämtland county, which has the longest distances. The distances for cash withdrawals are less; around 4 km for the country as a whole and around 7 km in Norrbotten county. For electronic payments, access to the Internet is the equivalent of geographical proximity. It is also becoming increasingly important for both households and companies to have good Internet connections to be able to make and receive payments. In Sweden as a whole, around 500 households and companies are unable to have access to the Internet. Given that we are a sparsely-populated, but geographically large, country, this is nevertheless an impressively small figure. Of course, what I have just said does not mean that individual shops and households may have much longer distances, that the fees paid by a shop-owner for card payments or for handling daily takings can be perceived as high or that it is not a problem for those who are unable to have access to the Internet. I shall shortly return to the challenges we have identified on the market, but before I do so I would like to say a few words about current trends and developments.

Cecilia Skingsley: Changing payments market Speech by Ms Cecilia Skingsley, Deputy Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, 24 November 2014. *  *  *  I would like to express my warm thanks to Björn Segendorff for his help with this speech. The market for payments is changing rapidly. Sweden is in the forefront with regard to the development and use of electronic payments. Cash has therefore met with tough competition from new, innovative methods of payment. This development is positive in many ways, but changes also entail challenges. The Riksbank is taking an active part in the work on managing these challenges to make things easier for economic agents. Why is it important that our payments function? We rarely think about it when we are paying for a product or service. Often we pay in the same way as we have always done and we assume that this will work. It is rather like walking or cycling – we can think about something else while we are doing it. Nevertheless, all of the day-to-day payments are very important to us – they give us access to the goods and services we need in our daily lives. But all payments mean that we are using highly-specialised services. Behind every non-cash payment we make there are intermediaries mediating the payment from payer to payee. This is done within an infrastructure of various technical systems that are necessary to make the payment.
As woe became the popular narrative, depressed expectations may have become selffulfilling. In their recent book, Animal Spirits, George Akerlof and Robert Shiller emphasise the role of popular psychology – “stories” – in shaping people’s perceptions and actions. Depression is a psychological state as well as an economic one. Perhaps the best explanation we have about events following the Lehman crisis is that these two states merged. Adroit communications by the authorities, like counselling, might help head-off future bouts of clinical depression in the financial system. This is undoubtedly an ambitious agenda. But experience after the Great Depression suggests grounds for optimism. That crisis brought about a revolution in thinking about macroeconomic theory and macroeconomic policy. In many respects, it marked the birth of modern macroeconomic models – in the form of IS/LM analysis – and modern macroeconomic policy – in the form of activist monetary and fiscal policy. 27  Newman (2002). 28  Haldane (2009). BIS Review 53/2009  13  Though less heralded, it also resulted in a revolution in macroeconomic data. Despite attempts in the 1920s and 1930s, it was from the 1940s onwards that national accounts data emerged for the main developed economies. This was largely a response to the evolution in macroeconomic thinking and policy-making following the Great Depression. Crisis experience led theory which in turn led data. That is the evolutionary path finance now needs to be on.

I’ll start with retail lending. It is important that we see balanced growth in retail lending. I said at the beginning of my speech that it is important not to reach dangerous levels of household debt burden. We are now being forced to pay attention to unsecured lending again. Here 2/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  are some figures: in March of this year, debt on unsecured lending increased by 1.9% in just one month. According to preliminary data, it grew by another 1.6% in April. If such rates persist, then the annual growth will be about 20%, which is much higher than the growth of household incomes. We are already seeing an increase in debt burden. Now households are directing almost 12% of disposable income (11.9%) to servicing loans. This is 1 percentage point more than it was pre-pandemic, when we were already rather concerned about unsecured lending. We do not want this trend to grow, so we have returned to the macroprudential policy we pursued before the pandemic. This involves the following requirement: more capital on loans granted to borrowers that already have loans. But we understand that such macroprudential measures ‘eat away’ at banks’ capital, which could be used to expand lending in other segments and cover losses on restructured loans. What’s more, these measures affect different banks in different ways, that is to say, they almost don’t have a discouraging effect on banks with a large capital reserve, while they seriously impact those banks that have a small capital reserve.
Singapore will do well to prepare for a future where CBAMs cover a significant part of world trade. CBAMs are likely to be a reality, especially if several major economies agree on a global minimum carbon price. The EU has already proposed a CBAM. A well-designed CBAM that does not raise barriers to trade, is compliant with W TO rules, and gives some relief to the poorest countries who are also small emitters, is not a bad outcome. CLEANER ENERGY The second imperative for the net zero transition is a decisive shift towards cleaner energy. According to the IPCC, to have a good chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, global consumption of coal, oil, and gas must start declining immediately and steeply. This is unlikely to happen. The growth in renewable energy has been spectacular but not sufficient to meet growing energy demand. Despite a 50-fold increase in the supply of new renewable energy in the last two decades, fossil fuels continue to account for more than 80% of global primary energy consumption. One of the reasons is that about 750 million people in the world still lack access to electricity. For them, the priority is having the lights on at an affordable price, not how much carbon dioxide is emitted in its production. Most of the people living in sub-Saharan Africa in 2020 consume no more energy per capita than the people of France and Germany did in 1860.

Ravi Menon: What does it take to get to net zero Keynote speech by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Economic Society of Singapore Annual Dinner 2022, Singapore, 17 August 2022. * * * ESM Goh, Dr Euston Quah, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. It is both an honour and pleasure to speak to you. There are many pressing issues I could talk about today. The world is just emerging from the most devastating pandemic in over a century, with far-reaching changes whose effects will be felt for years to come. A major war has broken out between the two largest countries in Europe, heightening geopolitical risks and setting off a food and energy crisis across the world. The global economy is facing the sharpest surge in inflation and fastest pace of monetary policy tightening in 40 years, with highly uncertain consequences. Instead, I want to talk about what I think is the mother of all challenges facing the world today, and for the next few decades – climate change. Long after our conjunctural challenges of war, disease, and inflation are behind us, the climate crisis will still be with us, only more intense, more urgent, more disruptive. CLIMATE CHANGE Climate change is already happening. Over the last three decades, the number of registered severe weather events has tripled. Over the last two decades, the rate of increase in sea levels has doubled.
Perhaps the main concern was the strong domestic inflation trend with price and wage spirals that collided with attempts to maintain a fixed exchange rate, and therefore led to recurring cost crises and devaluations. Another concern, which was partly connected to this, was that fiscal policy was often too expansionary, with rapidly rising public spending and tendencies toward structural deficits as a result. In addition, there was a deregulation of the credit market in the mid1980s, which would lead to far greater problems than were anticipated when the reform was implemented.21 In the early 1990s, these and other ingredients contributed to another domestic cost crisis, which also coincided with a financial crisis largely caused by excessive lending to households and companies. Unemployment rose sharply and public finances deteriorated dramatically. The krona was put under strong pressure by investors who expected Sweden to devalue again soon and, in November 1992, the Riksbank was forced to give up its defence of the fixed exchange rate. It had become clear that the type of policy Sweden had pursued for a number of decades had reached the end of the road, and needed to be fundamentally reshaped. Instead of defending a fixed exchange rate, the task of monetary policy from now on would be to keep inflation low and stable around 2 per cent. For its part, fiscal policy would focus considerably more than previously on keeping public finances in good condition so as to maintain market confidence. Looking back now, around thirty years later, the restructuring was successful.

Should it now be the case that we are entering a longer period of persistently higher inflationary pressures – which we do not know yet, of course – then my assessment is that the framework of wage-formation we have today will act as a built-in and useful brake in the system. Thirdly, a stricter and more robust fiscal policy framework was introduced after the crisis in the early 1990s. This has contributed to public finances now being in a much better shape than they were in the 1980s and 1990s. A large and growing sovereign debt may raise inflation expectations, if agents suspect that the government may eventually try to solve the problem of by inflating the debt away. This means is that the central government reduces the real value of the debt by letting inflation rise. However, unlike in the 1970s and 1980s, we have now a number of control mechanisms in place, which means that this potential source of excessive inflation has in practice been eliminated. My reflections on the current situation So, in conclusion, how do I view the current situation more specifically? And what can we learn from history? During many of the periods of high inflation in connection with war, the effects of monetary policy have been heavily dependent on the expectations of companies and households regarding future economic developments. There is an example of a deflation spiral after the First World War when expectations of lower prices in the future led to falling aggregate demand.
If our monetary policy impulses are not transmitted uniformly to all of the area’s countries because of the bank-sovereign link, it undermines the very foundation of Europe’s monetary union; remember that three quarters of the financing of the euro area’s economy consists of bank loans. By breaking this link, a banking union would restore the federal dimension of monetary policy. Today the first pillar of the banking union is being constructed: the Single Supervisory Mechanism. We are currently working on legal issues, on identifying systemically important banks within the euro area, on the supervisory model, on the future data reporting and, of course, on the asset quality review that will be undertaken before we take on the responsibility of supervision. The governance structure we have adopted will guarantee that, while the Governing Council will keep the decision power, there will be no conflict of interest between monetary policy and banking supervision. On the contrary, more consistent supervision across the euro area should allow for the early detection of potential risks and imbalances and, ultimately, improve the transmission of monetary policy. This is a fundamental first step and its rapid implementation will be a major success for the euro area. But, alone, it cannot achieve the objectives of a banking union. That is why we must rapidly construct its two other pillars: a supranational bank resolution authority and a unified deposit insurance system.

Second, regulation and crisis management were handled at the national level, despite the rapid internationalisation of the financial markets. Third, surveillance focused on individual institutions and if these were stable separately it was often concluded that the system as a whole was stable. An important reason for these shortcomings was that there was an unclear allocation of roles and no organisation with an explicit mandate to oversee, identify and analyse risks in the global financial system. The IMF was also criticised for its actions in the run-up to the financial crisis. The IMF’s own independent review body, the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO), has said that before the crisis the IMF, like many others, was convinced that the risk of serious crises was practically non-existent.2 This was apparent, for example, in the overconfidence in the health and resilience of the major financial institutions. Risks that are generally related to construction booms and financial innovations were toned down, as was the need for strong regulations to prevent such risks. It was not until the spring of 2008 that the IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report warned against emerging vulnerabilities among the major financial institutions, but by that time the crisis was already a fact. In response to the crisis, more distinct frameworks for the oversight and supervision of the financial system at the national and regional levels are now being developed.
In addition to the EEC Act, various legal amendments and process improvements were implemented over the past couple of years to improve the ease of doing business in Thailand and ensure that laws can be adjusted to accommodate new business practices in a timely manner. With these reforms, Thailand’s position in the World Bank’s Doing Business Ranking improved from 46th in 2017 to 26th in 2018, and we should continue to see further improvements in the ease of doing business in Thailand going forward. Another important development, which provides a strong foundation for digital economy, is the nationwide broadband internet project. Over the past years, the project has brought fiber optics network to almost 25,000 villages in remote parts of the country, enabling access to free-WiFi hotspots as well as home broadband at affordable prices. As such, human capital development can improve greatly through better access to online information, remote education, and online healthcare services. Business opportunity can also be greatly expanded with greater access to online marketing platforms and more cost-effective communication tools. This new and expanded online connectivity is a critical milestone which will bring economic opportunity and productivity to people in the rural area whose potential has been limited by the previous lack of supportive infrastructure to connect with the modern world. Ladies and gentleman, Let me now turn to Bank of Thailand’s initiatives to help uplift Thailand’s longterm competitiveness.

In particular, I want to focus on Bank of Thailand’s roles to help transform the Thai economy into one that is more efficient, more productive, and more inclusive. But before doing so, let me give you a quick summary on a broader perspective regarding the new economic platforms in Thailand which have emerged over the past few years. Chief among them is the new investment platform in the Eastern Economic Corridor or the EEC in short. The EEC, as many of you know, is an economic zone specifically designed to bring about large infrastructure upgrades and provide extensive investment incentives for high value-added industries. The continuity of this investment platform is ensured regardless of any political changes now that the EEC Act has come into effect since May. Last year, we have seen the value of net investment applications under the Thailand Board of Investment privilege program 5/10  grew by 23 percent, almost half of which are investment in the EEC. The high speed train project to connect U-Tapao Airport with major cities within the EEC and two main airports in Bangkok has been announced with the TOR of this project now available for potential bidders. The TOR for Laem Chabang seaport upgrade will also be announced in a few months’ time.
BIS central bankers’ speeches  7  The first is that one must of course have regulations in a monetary union that enable one to avoid a crisis of the proportions we are seeing now. This was what the creators of the union were thinking when they initiated the Stability and Growth Pact. However, the pact did not work very well and intensive discussions are therefore underway as to how it can be supplemented with new regulations that will guarantee that no members have excessive budget deficits or can build up excessive debt burdens. Hopefully these discussions will bear fruit. However, it is far from certain that the developments we are seeing now could have been avoided even if the Stability and Growth Pact had been upheld. Low interest rates have meant that not only governments, but also companies and households have built up their debt. But an efficient regulatory system would probably have made the crisis more manageable. A second conclusion is that when one refrains from the crisis resolution mechanism inherent in a national currency, one must replace it with something else. Because crises that entail concern over a member state’s creditworthiness are always a risk. One must have an institutional framework to manage the investors’ concerns regarding rising bond yields in, for instance, Italy now that there is no Italian currency that can depreciate and the Banca d’Italia cannot create the necessary liquidity.

It is thus no exaggeration to say that those present at a similar dinner six years ago felt quite optimistic about the prospects for the European economy, within Monetary Union, although the Union had only just taken its very first steps and euro banknotes and coins had not even begun to circulate. We now have the benefit of the experience built up in the intervening period. The euro has meant tangible benefits in terms of savings on transaction costs for citizens, eliminating exchange rate risks within the area, facilitating market integration and it has provided an environment of economic and monetary stability. The ECB has attained high credibility in a short period of time which is undoubtedly a result of the clarity of its objectives, the effectiveness of its strategy and the soundness of its decisions. Nevertheless, it is a fact that the European economy has not managed to repeat growth figures close to those seen in 2000. It has been prone to bouts of notable sluggishness, highlighting - in addition to the effect of an unusual series of adverse shocks - the structural shortcomings holding back activity and employment. We have therefore seen that, despite the favourable effects a monetary policy unequivocally geared to price stability has on economic prosperity, the full effectiveness of its contribution requires an ambitious reform agenda in other economic policy spheres.