samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
•  Credit conversion at a monthly average rate (from the credit agreement date to present) would generate losses worth around lei 3.2 billion for the entire banking sector, while two credit institutions would see their solvency ratio fall below the minimum regulated threshold. The solvency ratio across the banking sector would diminish from 17.1% to 15.3%. C.  Conversion of CHF- and EUR-denominated loans into lei at exchange rates other than the market exchange rate applicable on the conversion date. •  Assuming the cumulated conversion of CHF- and EUR-denominated loans at the historical rates in the month of extending the credit, banks would incur losses (calculated as the difference between historical rates and the exchange rates on 23 January 2015, when the CHF/RON was 4.58 and the EUR/RON was 4.49) estimated at lei 9.8 billion. The solvency ratio across the banking sector would diminish from 17.1% to 11.7%. Four credit institutions would see their solvency ratio fall below the minimum regulated threshold and would require recapitalisation. •  Cumulated credit conversion at the historical rates + 20% would generate losses worth around lei 5.5 billion for the entire banking sector. The solvency ratio across the banking sector would diminish from 17.1% to 14.1%. Four credit institutions would see their solvency ratio fall below the minimum regulated threshold and would require additional capital injections. •  Cumulated credit conversion at monthly average rates would generate losses worth around lei 4.5 billion for the entire banking sector.

The main proposals by the Ministry of Public Finance to enhance Government Emergency Ordinance 46/2014 refer to: (i) rendering the rescheduling mechanism and the maturity more flexible vis-à-vis borrowers’ financial capacity, (ii) extending the scope of eligible debtors, (iii) simplifying the administrative procedures for loan rescheduling, (iv) strengthening borrower protection in relation to banks, which remain bound, during the rescheduling process, not to tighten contractual terms regarding the interest rate, the level of commissions, or fresh collateral. With a view to tailoring banking prudential regulations to the new financial market conditions, the NBR has initiated several legislative changes to facilitate the conversion of foreign currency-denominated loans into lei and to ensure the effective enforcement of Government Emergency Ordinance 46/2014 with the amendments proposed by the Ministry of Public Finance. Summing up, we at the National Bank of Romania remain open to dialogue for clarifying the issue of CHF lending, finding solutions and getting involved in accordance with the legislation in force. 10  BIS central bankers’ speeches
Willem F Duisenberg: From the EMI to the ECB  Speech by Dr Willem F Duisenberg, President of the European Central Bank, at the Banque de France’s Bicentennial Symposium, Paris, on 30 May 2000. *  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, it is a great pleasure to address such a distinguished audience on the occasion of the Banque de France’s bicentenary. Surviving for two hundred years in a sometimes turbulent economic and political environment constitutes a notable achievement. I am pleased to be able to congratulate my French colleagues and the Bank itself on this significant accomplishment and look forward to their continued success in the future as part of the Eurosystem - our name for the European Central Bank (ECB) and the eleven national central banks that introduced the euro in January 1999. The long history of the Banque de France stands in stark contrast with the youth of the institution I represent today. Tomorrow the ECB will complete its first two years of existence. During this time, the introduction of the euro and the subsequent conduct and implementation of the single monetary policy have, in my view, been a remarkable success. Most importantly, the basis for lasting and credible price stability throughout the euro area has been solidified. Price stability has, in turn, helped to create an environment where economic activity and employment can flourish. Economic prospects in the euro area are better now than at any time for more than two decades.

Furthermore, many NCBs in what is now the euro area were pursuing exchange rate targets within the context of the European Monetary System. In several cases, central banks adopted various combinations of the above approaches. This rich and varied experience provided the context in which the ECB’s strategy was designed. I should like to make two observations. BIS Review 44/2000  2  First, the range of approaches employed by NCBs in what is now the euro area was considerable. Nevertheless, once the commitment to price stability was affirmed, each of these approaches achieved a large measure of success. The convergence of inflation rates to low and stable levels across the euro area in the 1990s was a significant - and, in many quarters, unexpected - achievement. In my view, this experience offers a powerful illustration that there are several ways to achieve and maintain price stability. The strategy adopted by a central bank should reflect the circumstances that it faces, including the initial conditions and consequent need for transition. Those who claim that there is only one acceptable or efficient way to operate monetary policy fly in the face of history and experience. Second, on the basis of our investigations of these various approaches conducted at the EMI, we concluded that the differences among various central bank strategies - differences which are often highlighted in the academic and journalistic debate - are much less important than the similarities.
For this audience of bankers and financiers, it would be appropriate to illustrate this point by reference to the institutional framework governing macroeconomic policy in the euro area. Although new members cannot join the euro area immediately upon accession, they are expected to participate in EMU eventually and, therefore, to show a commitment to a stable macroeconomic framework even before accession. Whatever the outcome of the current debate about the Stability and Growth Pact, fiscal discipline will continue to be an important policy ingredient of such a framework as it is a necessary condition for the success of any monetary union. In addition, the obligation to fulfil the Maastricht criteria provides members of the euro area with the impetus to safeguard the sustainability of their economies, not least because deficiencies in the real sector of the economy would ultimately weaken the ability of a Member State to fulfil the Maastricht criteria on an ongoing basis. The euro adds an important dimension to these disciplines. First, through its effects on price transparency it will increasingly compel dominant players in the market place to reconsider their behaviour. This also applies to the financial sector, because a growing number of savers and borrowers will be offered a larger selection of euro-denominated financial instruments that will in time be tradable without limitation across the EU. This will have the added advantage of causing interest rates to converge to low levels.

Furthermore, the CET is foregone in the case of all those non-EU countries which benefit from preferential access of the EU market, especially in the case of raw materials. This means that imports can be purchased from alternative sources, possibly from the enlarged EU market, or from non-EU countries which enjoy access to the EU market. Finally, the CET is also suspended when the imported raw material is re-exported outside the EU as a finished 19 product . So while the costs of production for some sectors of the economy may increase, and this in turn could have implications for inflation, at least in the short-run, this impact is likely to be minimal in practice. As a member Malta would also assume the EU’s commitments under the non-reciprocal agreements with developing countries. Whereas this could have negative implications for specific sectors, for the economy as a whole these effects are unlikely to be significant or enduring. This is because the proportion of imports from these countries in Malta’s import bill is marginal. Second, the Cotonou Agreement, which is the EU’s most relevant agreement in this regard, will expire in 2008, by which 20 time it is expected to be superseded by Economic Partnership Agreements based on reciprocity. If anything, therefore, the EU network of reciprocal trade agreements will increase. Within a few years importers and consumers should thus have more and not less access to duty-free imports, and any short-run increases in inflation should be more than neutralised.
3 / 10  BIS central bankers' speeches  Current monetary policy stance remains appropriate for an extended period in view of the stable inflation and growth prospects for 2017. The neutral policy stance should anchor inflation on a gradual ascent towards its historical norm and ensure medium-term price stability. This policy is of course predicated on domestic inflation and growth prospects keeping to their projected trajectories. PROPERTY MARKET AND MACROPRUDENTIAL POLICY The government has implemented macroprudential policy measures – commonly known as property cooling measures – since 2009 to promote a sustainable residential property market and financial prudence among households. The property market has substantially stabilised over the last three years. Private residential property prices have declined by nearly 12% over the last 14 quarters. This follows an increase of close to 60% over 17 quarters. Growth in housing loans, which used to be about 20% year-on-year in 2010, has moderated to 4% in Q1 2017. The risk profile of housing loans has also improved, as borrowers now tend to have lower loan-to-value (LTV) and total debt servicing ratios (TDSR). Only a negligible share of housing loans is in negative equity. It is, however, not time yet to ease the cooling measures. They remain necessary. First, underlying demand for private residential properties remains firm amidst a continued low interest rate environment. Recent project launches have seen relatively good take-up. Transaction activity in Q1 2017 increased by close to 40% compared to average quarterly transactions since the implementation of the TDSR in 2013.

Ravi Menon: MAS' Annual Report 2016/17 Remarks by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at MAS' Annual Report 2016/17 Media Conference, Singapore, 29 June 2017. * * * Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Welcome to MAS’ annual report media conference. GLOBAL ECONOMY The global economy is in better shape than it has been in a long while. Economic growth is on a positive momentum. IMF has projected global GDP growth for 2017 to hit 3.5%, a marked improvement from the 3.1% last year. Growth is more broad-based, across both advanced and emerging economies. Growth in the major markets — the US, Eurozone, Japan and China — is experiencing a synchronised upturn. For the first time since 2014, all the major regions of the global economy — making up more than 90% of world GDP — are poised for a stronger growth outturn compared to the previous year. Global trade is recovering, on the back of a pick-up in manufacturing activity and bottoming of commodity prices. World merchandise trade volume is projected to grow by 2.4% this year, almost double last year’s growth rate. The JP Morgan Global Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) has been registering readings of above-50 for 15 consecutive months now. Economic expansion in the US is becoming more entrenched. The IMF has forecast GDP growth of 2.1 %. This is a credible projection, based on the resilience of private consumption and an incipient pick-up in private investment; it does not assume a large fiscal stimulus.
Jacqueline Loh: Technology and innovation as the next phase of growth Keynote address by Ms Jacqueline Loh, Deputy Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Opening of Metlife LumenLab, Singapore, 16 July 2015. *  *  *  Mr Blair Hall, Deputy Chief of Mission of US Embassy of Singapore Her Excellency, Ms Heather Grant, High Commissioner at the High Commission of Canada Mr Chris Townsend Mr Zia Zaman Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, I am very pleased to join you this afternoon at this wonderful location for the official opening of MetLife’s LumenLab. MetLife and LumenLab Lumenlab represents a significant milestone for MetLife and Singapore. As MetLife’s first and only global innovation centre established in Singapore, LumenLab will shine the light forward on innovative and impactful solutions in health, wealth and longevity that are developed in Asia, for Asia, and for the rest of the world. Technology and innovation trends in the global insurance industry Technology and innovation is fundamentally changing the game for many industry verticals. The insurance sector is no exception. Specifically, new innovation and disruptive technologies are expected to transform the insurance industry in three areas: Distribution, Data Analytics, and Dynamic Products. Firstly, distribution. Today, the agent-broker paradigm is being challenged by the digital consumer, who is empowered by technology to conduct research and purchase directly from the product provider online. Here in Singapore, MAS started this journey ourselves with CompareFirst, which allows consumers to compare and purchase simple life insurance products over the internet.

LumenLab is an enlightened response to Asia’s healthcare and retirement needs in the next decade, and is well aligned with MAS’ strategy to have innovation-led growth drive our next phase of development as a global insurance market. Conclusion Congratulations to MetLife and LumenLab. I look forward to continued partnership with you in Singapore. Thank you. 7  Transcript of Speech by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at Founders Forum Smart Nation Singapore Reception, Prime Minister’s Office Singapore (2015). BIS central bankers’ speeches  3
In addition, our financial system has become more global in its orientation, in turn lifting Malaysia’s economic potential. The strategic importance of human capital has been central to this transformation. The quality of human capital has become a key driver and enabler of the change in this recent decade, with greater emphasis on productivity, and on elevating the skills and competencies of the talent pool in the financial industry. Today, the financial sector workforce in Malaysia has the highest total-factor productivity growth relative to other sectors of the economy. Employment growth in the financial sector has also been in the higher skilled roles. This accounts for the higher level of wages in the financial sector which is more than one and half times the national average. Financial services employees are also generally educated to a higher level, with higher expectations for individuals in key and senior-level positions within the industry to hold post-graduate or professional qualifications, in addition to relevant work experience. Going forward, the human capital imperative will increase in importance – for the financial industry to sustain and reinforce the strong foundations that have been built, and to take the industry to a new level of depth and maturity, with greater resilience. Accreditation has an important role in meeting this imperative. Although it is only being officially launched today, I am greatly encouraged by what FAA has already been able to achieve in just slightly over a year of full operations.

Zeti Akhtar Aziz: Strengthening Malaysia’s financial system Speech by Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz, Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia, at the launch of the Finance Accreditation Agency, Kuala Lumpur, 6 September 2013. *  *  *  It is my great pleasure to join you this morning on the occasion of the launch of the Finance Accreditation Agency. The establishment of the Finance Accreditation Agency (FAA) is part of the efforts to strengthen the financial system as it continues to evolve in a rapidly changing environment. The change in our financial system in this recent decade since the Asian financial crisis has been transformational. It has encompassed major structural reforms in the banking sector, the development of a deep and vibrant securities market which has now assumed a key role in financial intermediation, the growth of Islamic finance and the modernisation of the insurance sector. The regulatory and supervisory structure and approach has also evolved to become more risk-focused, more aligned with efficient capital and financial markets, and less reliant on prescriptive and direct controls. This has fostered greater innovation and competition in our financial system, while preserving strong incentives for prudent risk-taking. This has been reinforced through the supervisory oversight and increased market transparency. The evolution of business and distribution models has followed, with significant gains achieved in efficiency, greater financial inclusion and a more dynamic and responsive financial industry to better serve the economy.
What the Riksbank can do, in a complex world, is to influence resource utilisation and economic activity so that inflationary tendencies are kept fairly well in check, at the same time as a host of other factors affect employment in parallel and interact with the monetary policy effects. In this work we try to avoid unnecessary fluctuations in output and employment, but we are not able to fine-tune the economy exactly. The fact that the Riksbank’s power to influence employment is both short-term and relatively limited is not inconsistent with our ability to keep inflation in check. The latter is normally achieved by affecting inflation expectations. As long as our monetary policy is credible, it is enough to make small interest rate adjustments to keep inflation close to target. In this way, the Riksbank sends out a signal that it is keeping a close eye on inflationary tendencies and everyone knows that stronger measures await if inflation expectations take off in either direction. So, there is no simple relationship between monetary policy and employment. Nevertheless, for the sake of argument, let’s go along with our critics and assume that such a relationship exists. In that case, estimates merely show that even if the repo rate had been a full percentage point too high for a whole year, the effect on today’s employment situation would at most have been a few thousand jobs, and not the tens of thousands claimed by the Riksbank’s critics.

Even growth theory was sometimes based on demand analysis rather than on the growth of the factors of production and on technological progress. During this period, full employment was the top priority of Swedish economic policy, as is evident in every fiscal plan from the 1950s and 1960s. The idea was that full employment involved a small rate of frictional unemployment of around 2.5 per cent, even though the level was never stated explicitly in policy documents. That level was assumed to correspond to people that at the time of each measurement were in the process of changing jobs or in the process of leaving the education system to enter the labour market or similar. According to the prevalent view, higher unemployment could always be explained by insufficient demand. It was generally accepted among professional economists and the public that the government could fine-tune the economy with the aid of fiscal policy - expenditures, tax receipts and tax structures. It was a question of bridging the cyclical slumps. These ideas prevailed on both sides of the Atlantic, even though there was a school of sceptics both in Europe and the United States. BIS Review 65/2004  1  This policy was highly successful for a long time. For the greater part of the post-war period, unemployment in Sweden remained clearly below 4 per cent. On an annual basis it did not exceed 4 per cent at any time between 1950 and 1990. Why didn’t the successes last?
This is equally true of monetary policy communication, the presentation and explanation of monetary policy. Monetary policy communication is simpler when it is possible to ignore the exchange rate apart from its effect on inflation, but an imminent systemic change such as financial account liberalisation adds to the complexity. Yet it is important to realise that the problems inherent in such a systemic change will be solved only to a limited degree with improved communication. The uncertainty is real, and the Central Bank cannot create more certainty than it faces itself. Experience shows as well that the market can get ahead of itself even if monetary policy communication is in good order. A number of factors indicate that, to some extent, the market misunderstood the Monetary Policy Committee’s August statement. We must learn from such occurrences, of course, and try to do better in the future. Some appear to have interpreted that statement to mean that plans to lift the capital controls have been abandoned temporarily – even for a period of years – and that this is why interest rates were lowered as much as they were. But to my mind the interest rate cut had more to do with rapidly declining inflation than increased uncertainty about financial account liberalisation, although such uncertainty did of course exist. The statement was made before the September Supreme Court judgment on exchange rate-linked loans and before it came certain that the third review of the IMF programme was not going to be unduly delayed.

Interestingly, the main reason cited is improved staff well-being. Among workers the picture is much the same, with surveys suggesting more than a quarter expect to spend more time home-working after the pandemic has abated. My own experience since March has mirrored trends in the wider economy. I am one of the lucky ones who has been able to work from home, as have virtually all other Bank of England staff. I have been back into the office only twice in the past six months. Full-time home-working has, for me, been a radical shift. For the past 30, my working week has been 5-0, office versus home. Nonetheless, like many others, if you asked me how my future working week might look, I think it unlikely I will revert back to the 5-0 model. 2  APSCo (2020). ONS (2020a). 4 Milasi et al (2020), Mongey et al (2020). 3  3  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  3  The Effects on Productivity and Output Given these shifts, some of which seem likely to prove durable, what impact might they have had on workers’ and businesses’ economic contribution – that is to say, their productivity (the amount done per hour worked) and their overall output (productivity multiplied by working hours)? In short, how has this shift in working practices affected working capacity of the economy?