samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Moreover, an increase in short and long-term interest rates 100 bp higher than that envisaged under the above-mentioned scenario adds a further 1.7 pp by 2024.24  24  Given that business income may be expected to fall under this scenario, the increase in the weight of interest expenses should be considered to be the lower bound of the total impact of the rise in interest rates. 13  The effects of rising energy prices25 on firms’ financial vulnerability are moderate on average, albeit very uneven across sectors.26 Thus, while the impact on firms overall stands at just over 2 pp, among the three most affected sectors it is expected to top 5 pp.27  25  The price rises considered are those observed between our December 2021 and March 2022 projections. This is an increase of 22% and 25% in their average level for 2022 and 2023 compared with the December projections. 26  These effects would be partially mitigated by the recent temporary measures approved to reduce the cost of oil products. 27  Specifically, the sectors most affected include some whose profit margins are likely to be more severely hit, such as wholesale and retail trade and repair of motor vehicles, land transport, fishing and agriculture. An above average rise in financial vulnerability is also expected in some sectors where the impact on profit margins is comparatively smaller, such as basic metals manufacturing, or publishing, cinema, television and radio.

29  These percentages should be considered as the lower bound of the total impact of the interest rate rise, as this would also reduce agents’ income, through its negative impact on economic activity, and would curb the accumulation of wealth on account of the higher net interest burden. 30  Moreover, these were the households whose energy expenditure increased the most, as a proportion of their consumption, in 2020 and 2021. 15  High debt levels also mean that public finances are more sensitive to interest rate movements. However, the low interest rate levels of recent years have led to a continuous decline in the interest burden as a percentage of GDP, while at the same time, longer average debt maturities have limited the short-term impact of higher issuance costs. Under a scenario of gradual interest rate rises consistent with the latest projections, the debt burden is expected to stabilise as a percentage of GDP. Under that same scenario, an additional 100 bp increase in short and long-term interest rates, with all other variables remaining constant, will drive up interest payments by 0.4 pp of GDP by 2024. 16  In the Spanish banking industry stress tests, two potential stress scenarios – dubbed adverse and severe – were simulated for the period 2022-2023.
But consumer spending appears to be weak, nominal wage growth remains relatively muted and once we strip out the impact of rising commodity prices, output price inflation has been steady. To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, if expectations have become detached, it is curious that those dogs haven’t barked. So in my view the news on that front has been encouraging. The impact of the credit crunch And of course, we have been balancing that upside risk to inflation from the commodity price shock against a downside risk that the credit crisis would drive down activity too far and push inflation below target in the medium term. And the news on that front remains worrying. The headlines are about the drama on Wall Street but the failure or rescue of even big and well known financial firms matters mainly because of their knock on impact on the wider economy. The last year has brought home once again why central banks have to be concerned with financial stability as well as monetary stability and inflation. For the biggest risk to the financial sector is also the biggest downside risk to the economy: namely that damage to bank balance sheets would lead to tighter credit conditions, lower asset prices, lower consumption and investment and to a severe feedback loop into more losses for banks and so on down a spiral. That feedback is already working to some degree not just in the US but in the UK too.

Second, the uncertainty regarding future consumer behaviour remains. During the quarantine and long self-isolation period, a lot of people abandoned some services, formed new consumption preferences, and changed their mode of life. We do not know whether they will become steady and how they will be influencing price trends. Third, after the boundaries are reopened, it is natural to expect that the demand will shift towards outbound tourism services. As labour migrant flows and logistics chains restore, this will become  a disinflationary factor. Finally, as the restrictions are eased, companies will be able to reduce their costs for the sanitation of their premises and the anti-pandemic protection of their staff and customers, which will ease pressures on businesses’ costs. In conclusion, I would like to comment on monetary policy prospects. The accommodative monetary policy and the Government’s package of anti-crisis measures have been promoting economic revival after the acute phase of the crisis. According to our estimates, we consider that the potential for monetary policy easing has been exhausted. Its further easing could additionally increase proinflationary risks. Nonetheless, monetary policy will remain accommodative on average throughout 2021, supporting the recovery of the Russian economy. The baseline scenario provides for a gradual return to neutral monetary policy. We will assess the timeline and pace for this return taking into account our goal to maintain inflation at our target. 3/3  BIS central bankers' speeches
Those technological giants (Alipay and WeChat pay) grew so big to build their own ecosystems, a walled garden where fragmentation of the market happened. The terms platformisation and super-apps were coined there. The state then intervened to retain control over the system and to build a one, common, integrated payments system accessible to everyone. To level the playing field. In countries where cash is almost out of use, and the private sector provides digital payments at scale, the financial stability concerns paved the way for the CBDC entry. This is why Swedes started it - to provide a backstop to private payment rails and to render it as a central point of conversion between private digital currencies – a monetary anchor. But what are the main drivers for developing the CBDC here in the eurozone? What drives the ECB and the CNB to follow this path? Because, in essence, and let me be honest here, if we want to pursue our monetary goals, we do not need a new form of money. By affecting the cost of funds, we can do our monetary job well. So, what is it that drives us towards the CBDC, or better to say, towards the digital euro? THE DIGITAL EURO The main reason behind the digital euro project is the declining use of cash. Cash was the most frequently used payment method at the point of sale (POS) in the euro area in 2022 and was used in 59% of transactions, down from 79% in 2016 and 72% in 2019.

We need to let money evolve and be an important leader of change in its evolution. This is the least that any citizen should expect from governments or public institutions. Finally, similar to what all of you here in this room have to decide, to become competitors or to coopete, it is also on us to make strategic decisions. And we choose to coopete. To coopete with the digital industry. To meet this end, we will continue to work on a basic, back-end solution for the digital euro and leave it to you to lay the foundations for the rest. STRONGER TOGETHER And as regards the doubt between cash and the digital euro, our vote goes for both: the cash and the digital euro. We see them both in the future, standing together. Stronger together. Thank you. 1. https://www.bis.org/publ/work976.pdf ↑ 2. https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/224448 ↑  3. https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2022/09/kiff-taking-digital-currencies-offline ↑ 4. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/ecb_surveys/space/html/ecb.spacereport202212~783ffdf46e.en.html#toc17 ↑ 5. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/Eurosystem_report_on_the_public_consultation_on_a_digital_euro~539fa8cd8d.en.pdf ↑ 6. https://www.fsb.org/2020/10/enhancing-cross-border-payments-stage-3-roadmap/ ↑ 7. https://www.bis.org/about/bisih/about.htm ↑ © CROATIAN NATIONAL BANK
32  18  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  18  For much of the first few hundred years of the Bank’s history, its public communication largely took the form of an annual speech by the Governor of the day to the bankers and merchants of the City of London at the Lord Major’s Mansion House Banquet, literally a stone’s throw from the Bank. The public audience for this singular act of public communication was about as diverse a set of white, male, middle-aged, slightly-pissed financiers as it is possible to assemble. Body language can sometimes substitute for the spoken word. So it was at the Bank of England in the 1920s, when the Governor’s “eyebrows” famously became one of the Bank’s means of externally communicating. The Governor’s eyebrows were, in a way, a primitive form of emoji: sterling crisis – sad face, bad pre-MPC presentation – very sad face. Nonetheless, for even the most malleable-faced Governor, the eyebrows were an imperfect communications medium. Beginning in the 1960s, a sea-change began in central bank communication practices, at first slowly. Speeches by the Governor and other officials increased, by the 1960s averaging around five per year. They were matched by other communication innovations. December 1960 saw the first edition of the Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin, which is still going strong. There was roughly a doubling in the number of speeches by Bank officials in each subsequent decade.

26  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  26  Stamp, J (1931), ‘The Report of the Macmillan Committee’. The Economic Journal, 41(163), 424-435. Stock, J H and Watson M W (2002), ‘Has the business cycle changed and why?’, NBER Macroeconomics Annual, 17, 159-218. Schularick, M and Taylor, A M (2012), ‘Credit Booms Gone Bust: Monetary Policy, Leverage Cycles, and Financial Crises, 1870-2008’ American Economic Review, 102 (2): 1029-61 Woodford, M (2012), ‘Methods of Policy Accommodation at the Interest Rate Lower Bound’, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Symposium, Jackson Hole. 27  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  27
1 Today, many advanced countries and emerging economies have adopted a flexible exchange rate regime. 2 By this I understand a regime in which the exchange rate is basically left to fluctuate in response to market pressures. True, the central bank can, and in some circumstances will intervene to mitigate extreme exchange rate fluctuations. But the main objective of the central bank is domestic price stability, not exchange rate stabilisation. This is the system that Switzerland has chosen to pursue. It has served us well. Exchange rate flexibility allows national budgetary and monetary polices to diverge from one country to another. It confers monetary authorities more room to adapt policies to domestic economic realities. A different strategy has been followed by many European countries. Abandoning their domestic currencies, these countries have fully insulated themselves from intra-zone exchange rate fluctuations by adopting the hardest possible peg, which is a monetary union. Monetary policy is the responsibility of a supranational institution, the ECB. Towards the rest of the world, the euro is allowed to float, and the necessary adjustment of prices in member countries, rather than taking place via movements in the exchange rates, is expected to occur by means of changes in wages and product prices in an increasingly integrated economic area. Thus the Bretton Woods system has been replaced by an order of sorts, in which there are two extreme choices which increasingly dominate national strategies. At the one extreme, countries have opted to let their currencies float and be determined by market forces.

The SNB’s loan to the StabFund stood at USD 20.8 billion at end-October 2009, a reduction of USD 5 billion – almost one-fifth – on the initial figure. The funds to repay the loan came from repayments and earnings on the assets, and from proceeds of asset sales. The StabFund came to the market for the first time in June 2009. The market’s more positive performance made it possible for occasional sales to a total value of USD 1.5 billion to be conducted by the end of October 2009. Contingent liabilities declined by USD 4.7 billion, mainly as credit default swaps (CDS) expired or were prematurely terminated. At the end of November 2009, non-funded assets totalled USD 4.1 billion. Total risk exposure fell by USD 10.2 billion to USD 24.5 billion. Changes in the SNB’s risk exposure with respect to the StabFund are summarised in table 1. One effect of the recovery in the financial markets that began this spring was to trigger rises in the market values of most of the investment categories held in the StabFund. This development, together with the results of a comprehensive cash flow projection for the entire portfolio, confirm the SNB in its view that it has unimpaired prospects of receiving repayment of the loan in full. However, these calculations are bedevilled by great uncertainty – and the risk to the SNB remains substantial. As the StabFund values much of its portfolio at amortised cost, the recovery in the financial markets has only modest effects on its financial reporting.
Denis Beau: Ten years after Lehman, is the financial system safer? Speech by Mr Denis Beau, First Deputy Governor of the Bank of France, at a Conference at Sciences Po Bordeaux, Bordeaux, 18 October 2019. * * * I would like to thank the Financial Stability Unit for their contributions to this speech, and particularly E. Rocher and S. Frappa. A little over ten years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and with the financial system facing new challenges, how successful have the reforms undertaken after the 2008 crisis been? Is the financial system now safer? In view of the magnitude of the work carried out by regulators and supervisors and the efforts of intermediaries to adapt to the resulting renewed regulatory and supervisory framework, at the international, European and national levels, the answer is undoubtedly yes. I would like to devote the first part of my presentation to developing the reasons why I believe this is the case. But I think we need to take a more in-depth look, which I propose to do in the second part of my presentation by asking the following question: is the financial system now safe enough? In view of the development of the sources of vulnerabilities in the financial system, it does not seem to me to be a given that the strengthening we have observed is sufficient and efforts therefore need to be pursued. 1.

World growth is slowing and is overshadowed by major uncertainties. According to the latest forecasts, world GDP should expand by 3.0% in 2019, down from 3.8% growth last year (IMF), largely as a result of the slowdown in emerging countries, especially China, and to a lesser extent in certain advanced economies. In the euro area, our forecasts are for 1.1% growth in 2019, down from 1.9% in 2018. The main uncertainties weighing on growth are the risks of an escalation in protectionist measures and of a no-deal Brexit which could lead to a tightening of financial conditions in Europe. The rising tendency in macroeconomic risk is helping to maintain and reinforce accommodative monetary policies, as well as the “low-for-long” direction of and expectations for interest rates. This low interest rate environment is fuelling an increase in household and corporate debt, in both advanced and emerging economies. In France, private sector debt reached 132.3% of GDP at end-2018 (+45 percentage points since 2000). Household debt has risen by 8 percentage points of GDP since the end of the crisis (59.8% of GDP). In Europe, bank profitability is coming under increasing pressure from a number of risks: The first of these is the maintenance of a low interest rate environment for a long time. This is not just the fault of the central banks: an accommodative monetary policy is justified in light of the euro area’s economic situation; but beyond this, low long rates also reflect a structural weakness in growth.
David Bailey: Operational resilience - next steps on the Prudential Regulation Authority‘s supervisory roadmap Speech (virtual) by Mr David Bailey, Executive Director for International Banks Supervision of the Bank of England, at the UK Finance Webinar “Operational Resilience: Beyond", 28 April 2022. * * *  Introduction Good morning everyone and I’d like to thank my colleagues at UK Finance for inviting me to speak today, the first opportunity I have had to speak at a UK Finance event since I took up my post as Executive Director for UK Deposit Takers Supervision at the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) last September. Given that, I’m going to focus on one of our highest supervisory priorities at the moment, Operational Resilience (Op Res). It is a particularly timely moment to be discussing the topic as it has been just over 12 months since our Op Res policy was published. Since then firms have been on a journey towards the end of March deadline that recently passed to identify their Important Business Services (IBS), set impact tolerances, and start mapping and testing to ensure they can remain within those impact tolerances. From our initial Discussion Paper in July 2018, through the follow up to our Consultation Paper in December 20191, and the close and collaborative work on implementation last year, I’d like to thank UK Finance and its members for their open engagement on this policy.

A detailed review of the collection shows that both Spanish and foreign historians have collaborated in the project, covering an agenda that includes modern and contemporary issues. Although the collection is open to all kinds of quality research, monetary and financial topics predominate. Now, I would like to say a few words about our library, which has played a key role in our economic history studies and research. It was set up in 1931, and from the first half of the 1970s professor Rojo promoted the formation of a highly specialised library, stepping up the acquisition of new collections and the modernisation and expansion of its services. 3/4  The most prized section of the library, the so called Fondo de Especial Valor, comprising more than 16.000 pieces from the 14th to the 19th centuries (now in the process of digitalization), is a testimony to economic thought and practice in Spain and Europe; its content encompasses 16th century merchants’ instructions, writings of the School of Salamanca, the publications of the 17th century arbitristas and the works of 18th century Enlightenment thinkers. The collection of royal decrees and proclamations (around 4,000 documents, including the 1745-1796 compilation ordered by the Count of Campomanes), dealing mainly with fiscal, mercantile and monetary matters, enriches the library’s scope with the perspective of legislation topics. The fact that these collections are complemented by others, such as the Goldsmiths’-Kress Library of Economic Literature and the King’s College collection of the papers of J.M.
It comes from drawing on social skills every bit as much as cognitive skills. Other professions offer an object lesson here. Why are doctors top of the trust league table? Studies show that what matters for doctors’ patient satisfaction scores is not just their clinical competence. Indeed, their knowledge of the latest Lancet article is irrelevant. What matters every bit as much, or more, to patients’ trust in their doctor is their social skills, their listening skills, their personal touch, their bedside manner. 47  Few people would want an economist at their bedside. An economist with strong social skills is one who stares at your shoes, rather than their own, when engaged in polite conversation. And conversation does not appear to come easily to the economics profession. A recent study of Twitter behaviour found that economists were the least likely discipline to engage in general conversation, on topics such as Fluffy 48  Labradors. Their conversations are technical in nature and narrow in reach. The Bank has recently re-oriented fundamentally its outreach programme to improve its engagement with non-expert audiences, with a less technical focus and a longer reach. The Bank’s Agents around the UK have for many years collected intelligence on the economy and financial system, largely from companies. Recently, the Bank’s Agents have placed greater emphasis on meeting charities, community and faith groups and trade unions, widening its non-expert contacts and expanding its intelligence pool. Over a number of years now, I have been reorienting my own regional visits towards these groups.

The fraction of students from London studying economics between ages 14 and 18 is roughly twice the national average. A student from the North-East of England, where I was born, is around five times less likely to study economics than one born in London. The fraction of the population of the North-East who is likely never to have had any education in economics could be as high as 98%, similar to levels in Wales and Northern Ireland. This is a “good news/bad news” story. There are encouraging signs that economics is gaining in popularity in the upper tiers of the educational pyramid. But this pyramid is widest towards the top and narrow at the bottom, with a pronounced (societal and regional) slant. Such a structure is unlikely to be a strong and stable educational foundation for most people. Little wonder economics is perceived as remote and elitist. Perhaps a reasonable question to ask – and even if it is unreasonable I am going to ask it anyway – is why the essentials of the economy and finance are seen as so much less essential than literacy and numeracy. Is financial literacy so different than general literacy, in its impact on people’s lives and everyday decision-making, that it justifies such a different educational pyramid? Gandhi is often claimed to have said: “Be the change you want to see in the world”. I love that quote. 59  Through its public understanding role, there is change the Bank can effect in the area of economics education.