samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
After five years of independent conduct of monetary policy, the Banque de France has earned a high degree of confidence, as witnessed by the solidity of the franc and the relative level of French longterm interest rates. The Bank is proud to have been able to transmit this confidence to the euro, along with other central banks forming the core of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. Nineteen ninety eight was a successful year for European integration: the remarkable convergence of European economies enabled the historic decision by heads of state and government to commit eleven countries to the road to the euro. The date of 4 January 1999 marked a first technical success in the changeover from national currencies to the euro. The major challenge now facing the euro area as a whole is to permanently guarantee good economic and financial performances. It is no longer a question of victoriously overcoming an obstacle, but of efficiently managing the monetary, fiscal and structural areas over the long term. This is naturally indispensable in order to ensure cohesion, stability, prosperity and consequently a reduction in unemployment in the euro area, i.e. in an area with 291 million inhabitants. And this is also a contribution necessary for the stability and prosperity of the world economy, within which Europe will play a central role, like the United States.

In this respect, one may note that the policy mix in the United States is based on the conviction that the resolute policy of public deficit reduction has been one of the main engines of the vigorous growth enjoyed by the US for many years. Structural reform 3  BIS Review 62/1999  The effectiveness of economic policies is not simply the result of the right mix of fiscal and monetary policy. Structural policies themselves have a major part to play. This is particularly true in France and throughout the euro area, where around three quarters of unemployment is structural. As with the level of public expenditure, European public opinion is again not sufficiently convinced that mass unemployment is very largely the unfortunate result of structural defects. When the public is convinced, it is likely that the problem will be easier to resolve since European leaders will then more readily find the support essential for the successful completion of reforms that as a rule are hard to implement. The enhanced coordination between economic policies, decided at the end of 1997 by the European Council meeting in Luxembourg, relates in particular to “the surveillance of the structural policies implemented by the Member States”. This coordination should make it possible to identify and promote the best measures in the fields of education and training, the labour market, welfare protection, etc. The Monetary Policy Council readily suggests implementing three principles of action for structural reform in the euro area.
The case there for moral hazard is not entirely obvious to me at least as long as (1) such a reduction is a measure used to steer short-term inter-bank rates close to the target level and (2) as long as the rate of the borrowing facility is in any case close to the target rate – e.g. one percentage point or less – so that a reduction has no substantial impact on the profit and loss accounts of banks. In this regard, the recent money market tensions have confirmed the importance for the effective liquidity management of banks of enjoying unimpeded access to borrowing facilities. The fourth potential moral hazard issue is a widening of the set of eligible collateral in a central bank’s monetary policy operations. Admittedly, this type of measure could have moral hazard implications, particularly (1) if the general widening of the collateral set in fact targets a small number or, say, even a single bank under liquidity stress, which is rich in the specific type of additional collateral; and (2) if the central bank offers facilities, for instance a standing borrowing facility, to effectively refinance such collateral. This type of action invites moral hazard as it may indeed be decisive to establish whether the single bank fails or not, while at the same time sparing to the banks’ management and shareholders the substantial costs associated with resorting to real emergency liquidity assistance.

This would hit the regions impacted by the crisis hardest and the number of industrial jobs would decline more rapidly. Another important question concerns the implications of the division of the economy for the Industrial Agreement’s normative role in wage bargaining, a role which has been very important during the most recent agreement periods. The Industrial Agreement has been a restraining force, contributing towards retaining the competitiveness of that part of the Swedish economy exposed to international competition and keeping inflation at a low and stable level at the same time as real wages have risen and growth in the Swedish economy has been strong – until the financial crisis. In the period ahead, a drawn-out recovery, weak labour markets and low price and wage increases are also expected internationally. The sector exposed to international competition is the area of the Swedish economy to be most tangibly and directly affected by these external conditions for wage developments within Sweden. This suggests that this sector should also play a normative role in this year’s collective bargaining. The service sector is not as sensitive to cost increases, but finds it easier to pass these on to prices. If the service sector plays a normative role in this year’s collective bargaining, it is likely that wage increases, and thereby inflation, will be greater than would be the case if the sector exposed to competition were to be normative. Another issue that may play a major role is uncertainty concerning the future.
Public Debt Stock Indicators (Billion YTL) Public Debt Stock Indicators  The Analysis of the Change in the Central Government’s Overall Debt Stock 60  400  120 334.4 100  350  40  300 Percent  80 60  20  250  68.2  200  55.8  0  150  40  100 20  50 0 2006/03  2005  2004  2003  2002  2001  0  Central Government Total Debt Stock (Right axis) Central Government Total Debt Stock/GNP Total Public Net Debt Stock/GNP  -20  2003  2004  2005  P arity Effect**  6.2  3.0  -4.8  2006/03* 0.7  Exchange Rate Effect***  -18.8  -4.6  -0.8  0.0  Fo reign Debt Net Increase  4.0  4.1  -0.6  0.7  Do mestic Debt Net Increase  48.8  31.2  21.1  1.4  * It shows the change compared to 2005. ** It shows the external debt changes resulting from movements in USD/Euro and USD/SDR parities. *** It indicates the changes resulting from movements of New Turkish Lira against USD. Note: It represents the growth in the net increase in debt stock excluded from exchange rate and parity effects. The parity effect is calculated merely for the external debt. Each component of the change in debt stock is calculated as billion YTL. The sum of components corresponds to the nominal change in the overall debt stock expressed in terms of YTL. Source: Treasury, CBRT.

Although the correction started with a bursting property bubble in the US, it has expanded into a global financial crisis and brought on recession throughout the advanced economies and a sharp deceleration of growth elsewhere. The immediate priority is to deal with this downswing. The extraordinary measures we have taken in this country and others are having a positive impact but we may need to do more. We must also learn  6  BIS Review 145/2008  some lessons for policy in the medium term including the need for far better coordination of policy internationally and the need for some new policy instruments alongside interest rates to dampen the financial cycle. Chart 1: GDP and employment  Source: ONS (including Labour Force Survey)  BIS Review 145/2008  Chart 2: House prices and earnings  Source: Halifax, Nationwide, ONS and Bank calculations  7  Chart 3: Major UK banks’ customer funding gap, household saving ratio and foreign interbank deposits  Source: Bank of England, Dealogic, ONS, published accounts and Bank calculations. Chart 4: CPI and households’ inflation expectations for the year ahead (scaled to match CPI on average)  Sources: The AlphaMonitor: consumer, YouGovAlpha, Bank of England, Barclays Capital, Citigroup, GfK NOP, research carried out by GfK NOP on behalf of the European Commission and YouGov.
China and India's emergence as economic powerhouses have driven cross-border trade and fuelled economic growth in Asia. Japan has rediscovered its vigour. Many Southeast Asian economies are enjoying vibrant economic growth. The resultant wealth creation will increase demand for insurance. To increase our competitiveness as a regional insurance and reinsurance centre, and retain a greater share of the Asian business that traditionally flows outside Asia, it is important for Singapore to deepen its pool of underwriting and broking expertise, especially in the more specialised risks, and to increase the capacity to underwrite such niche risks. We also want to encourage greater specialisation and new techniques in the industry, for example by having specialised service providers to support the industry, and by facilitating access to a wider variety of risk and capital management tools for insurers. Let me share with you some ideas and initiatives we have to help catalyse such developments. Insurance expertise and capacity Firstly, regarding insurance expertise. The industry needs to accelerate its efforts to provide more regional and international exposure, and advance training across a broad range of business lines, to raise the level of technical competency and experience of its staff. The industry should take advantage of MAS' Financial Training Scheme (FTS) which provides co-funding for training. Such efforts should not be focused only on developing the existing talent stock, but also cultivating the talent pipeline. The insurance industry faces strong competition for intellectual capital from other economic sectors.

How much of this business will resist the current period of stress remains an open issue, but euro area monetary statistics have shown no sign of a major decline in these money holdings so far. -  In terms of new products, the recent emergence, at least in France, of high-yield liquid deposits that are accessible via direct banking on the internet is very likely to have reduced the interest elasticity of money. Of course, monetary policy, in the euro area and elsewhere, is not committed to react mechanically to monetary developments. Nevertheless, to make the best use of the informational role of money, central banks must be able to filter out the noise that affects current monetary data, disentangling temporary factors from shifts in trends, supply shocks from demand shocks, with the latter possibly resulting from certain financial innovations in the context of globalisation. Fully assessing the effects of financial innovation is thus a real challenge for monetary analysis. Considering the practical difficulties ahead, this seems to me to offer a fruitful field for applied research. Challenges for communication in times of stress: disentangling monetary and financial stability objectives Financial market disruptions that may follow times of exuberant financial innovation may pose significant risks to macroeconomic stability. However, by their very nature and notably the highly non-linear dynamics they may trigger, such events, as well as the magnitude and speed of their macroeconomic consequences are uncertain.
Zamani Abdul Ghani: Reinventing retirement strategies in the new world of risks Keynote address by Mr Zamani Abdul Ghani, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia, at the 4th Asian Conference on Pensions & Retirement Planning: "Reinventing Retirement Strategies in the New World of Risks", Kuala Lumpur, 26 November 2007. *  *  *  Introduction It is my great pleasure to be here today at the 4th Asian Conference on Pensions and Retirement Planning. Let me first extend a warm welcome and Selamat Datang to all the participants from abroad and fellow Malaysians here today. During this "Visit Malaysia Year", which is also the year Malaysia celebrates its 50th year of independence, I do hope our foreign participants will make time to enjoy Malaysia's diverse culture, and experience the many unique sights, sounds and flavours, as well as discover why Malaysia is “truly Asia”. I am indeed very pleased to be invited by the Asia Insurance Review to address this major Conference. This Conference brings together both experts and learners who all share deep interests in the development of the pension and retirement planning. I was told that we have amongst us today distinguished market practitioners and participants from the insurance and banking industry, regulators, pension providers, consultants, and investment managers from 17 countries. I wish to congratulate the Asia Insurance Review for bringing together such a gathering here in Kuala Lumpur , and organizing this Conference for the fourth consecutive year.

But for the dampening impact of the external influences on aggregate demand and on costs and prices, this could already have resulted in accelerating inflation. The complication for monetary policy, in this situation of external/domestic imbalance, has, of course, been that a tightening of monetary policy to slow the pace of the domestic economy would have been likely to aggravate the appreciation of the exchange rate, intensifying also the restraining external demand and price effects, and putting even more intense pressure on the internationally exposed sectors. Now, there is no question but that the strength of the domestic economy must moderate further - as indeed we expect that it will. But the external influences - which we can anyway not do much about, but which will in time wear off - made this moderation of domestic demand growth less immediately urgent than it would otherwise have been. In these circumstances, with some evidence that growth in the domestic economy was in fact slowing, and given the evident pressures on the internationally exposed sectors, we needed, in my view, to be more than usually confident in our judgement as to the need to tighten policy further. The questions with which the MPC has been struggling this year then are: just how much shelter the external situation would in fact give us, and for how long; and just how much time, therefore, we had to bring about a sufficient slow down in domestic demand to prevent inflation accelerating and the economy from overheating.
Conventional mortgage rates have dropped from around 6 percent in early 2004 to around 5 percent recently. Other factors could also be raising housing’s fundamental value. For example, recent changes in tax laws may be having an effect. In 1998, tax rates on capital gains were lowered and the exemption from capital gains taxation for housing was raised to $ Both of these changes would reduce the potential tax bite from selling one home and buying another. Another development, which may be making housing more like an investment vehicle, is that it’s now easier and cheaper to get at the equity—either through refinancing, which has become a less costly process, or through an equity line of credit. Both of these innovations in mortgage markets make the funds invested in houses more liquid. So there are good reasons to think that fundamental factors have played a role in the unusually high price-to-rent ratio. But the bottom line here is fuzzy. It’s very hard to say how big a role these factors have played, so we don’t know how much remains unexplained. Frankly, even the best available estimates are imprecise, and they don’t definitively answer the question: Is there a bubble, and if there is, how large is it? Given this uncertainty, my focus as a monetary policymaker is on trying to understand what kind of risks a drop in house prices would pose for the economy. One of the classic ways to do this is to ask “What if…?”—in other words, to pose a purely hypothetical question.

8  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Table 2 Domestic scenario (annual change, percent)  2014  1.9  GDP  2015 (e) Dec.15 Report 2.1  2016 (f) Dec.15 Report  Mar.16 Report  2017 (f) Mar.16 Report  Mar.16 Report  2.1  2.0-3.0  1.25-2.25  2.0-3.0  Domestic demand  1.1  2.0  1.3  2.5  1.5  2.3  Domestic demand (w/o inventory change)  -4.2  0.7  -1.5  1.7  0.5  1.0  Gross fixed capital formation  2.8  2.4  2.2  2.7  1.8  2.7  Total consumption  1.1  -1.7  -1.9  1.0  0.6  2.40  Goods and services exports  -5.7  -1.4  -2.8  1.6  -0.6  2.10  Goods and services imports  -1.3  -1.7  -2.1  -2.6  -2.5  -2.0  Current account (% of GDP)  20.9  20.0  20.4  19.1  19.9  20.2  Gross national savings (% of GDP) Nominal gross fixed capital formation (% of GDP)  23.0  22.0  22.7  21.9  22.6  22.1  23.0  22.0  22.7  21.9  22.6  22.1  (e) Estimate. (f) Forecast. Source: Central Bank of Chile.
The Riksbank’s management of information about the repo rate cut came in for market criticism. We were said to have been indistinct and to have changed our inflation assessment too abruptly. Some players used big words, claiming that the lack of clarity had damaged confidence in our policy and would make it difficult to conduct an effective policy in future. I think that was overdoing it. But the Riksbank should still have been able to make the market more prepared for what the future could have in store. It should also be underscored, however, that the tendencies during the spring were difficult to assess. We certainly changed our opinion but not so abruptly and for a long time it was highly uncertain what the next step would turn out to be. In such a situation, with a high degree of uncertainty, communication is difficult. One reason for not reacting to the faulty pattern of market expectations was that the forecasts of market players were in line with our own. Thus it was not that we differed in the assessment of inflation prospects but that, even though the path of inflation was below the target, market prices did not represent a view that the Riksbank would lower the repo rate. To put it bluntly, market players seemed to share the Trade Union Confederation’s view that the Riksbank acted with a “bias”.

International economic activity may result in inflation being even lower than in our main scenario, at the same time as a lastingly weak exchange rate that has no counterpart in poorer economic fundamentals could lead to upward pressure on prices. Increased financial unrest Financial unrest has grown since the September Report was published. It is difficult to foresee to what extent the crisis that began in Thailand almost a year and a half ago will affect the real industrialised economies in the West. The direct real economic effects via foreign trade will probably be relatively small. For economic activity and inflation in Sweden, the effects that could arise from decreased general confidence are more important. Share prices in Sweden have gone on falling since the September Report was published, wiping out not just the gains during 1998 but also a part of last year’s increase. Since the high in July, the Stockholm Exchange1 has dropped nearly 30 per cent, giving a fall of about 8 per cent from the level at the beginning of the year. Since the Inflation Report was published, share prices have fallen nearly 6 per cent. 1  Affärsvärlden’s general index. BIS Review 81/1998  -6Continued unrest and falling asset values would affect the behaviour of firms and consumers. If households and firms postpone investment and consumption decisions, economic activity will be lower.
Placing an excessive focus on monetary policy in this context could easily lead to the underlying problems on the labour market – and the solutions to them – not receiving the discussion they deserve. The target of monetary policy is to stabilise inflation at around two per cent. Without prejudicing this target, monetary policy should also strive to stabilise production and employment around long-term sustainable development paths.1 Put very simply, this is a matter of trying to steer demand so that resource utilisation is balanced but inflation does not deviate too far from two per cent. It’s easy to describe, but it’s a difficult balancing act in practice. Unlike inflation, resource utilisation is not observable; instead, its level must be estimated. The Riksbank has put a lot of work into estimating various so-called gap measures that show how strained resource utilisation is, compared with a normal situation (examples of these include the GDP gap, the hours gap and the unemployment gap). Using these various measures as a basis, we make an overall assessment of resource utilisation. What these gap measures have in common is the comparison of the various quantities actually measured to unobservable quantities. For example, the unemployment gap is calculated by comparing actual unemployment to estimated equilibrium unemployment. So all of these calculations are uncertain.

3  The unemployed also includes people who have been offered work starting within three months, assuming that they would have been able to work on the date of the survey or to start within 14 days. 4  Open unemployment is a definition used by the Swedish Public Employment Service to refer to jobseekers who are actively looking for work, who are able to enter the labour market immediately, and who are not participating in a labour market policy programme. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  However, it is not certain how actual unemployment is to be defined if the intention is to measure the spare capacity of the labour market. Youth unemployment can be taken as an example. In October 2007, Statistics Sweden went over to reporting unemployment according to an internationally-established standard. Full-time students who have looked for work and could have worked were now reported as unemployed. This change meant that unemployment in the age group 15–24 increased strongly, even though this group’s main activity was studying. The number of people unemployed in relation to the number of people in the labour force in the category young people was about 25 per cent in 2010. Using the previous reporting method, unemployment would have been 15 per cent.5 For total unemployment, the changed method meant that measured unemployment increased by about 2 percentage points. Neither is it clear how individuals participating in labour market policy programmes should be classified.