samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Structural vulnerabilities and the need for reform A useful lesson that the Bank of Albania has learnt from the crisis is the need to continue and deepen the structural reforms in the economy. These reforms, not only will create a more appropriate environment for promoting the private entrepreneurship, but will also increase the economy’s resilience to shocks. They also help to absorb foreign direct investments, which are the best support to the country’s development in the medium and long run. However, as stipulated even in the EBRD’s report, Albania is among the few countries that have continued structural reforms even during 2009. In this regard, Albania has lagged behind the regional countries, attracting in total only about USD 1100 per capita of FDI during the 20 years of transitions. In the entire broad framework of reform-related problems, I would like to dwell today upon the need for investments in education and infrastructure. A well-known business maxim is that: Employees are a company’s most precious asset. To the Bank of Albania it signifies that the higher the professionalism, the higher our institutional independence. To a broader sense, this is also relevant for the national economy. Our country’s progress, the convergence with the developed countries of East Europe and even beyond, with the European Union countries, will depend on our level of education. Competition in national and international markets is above all based on the generation of ideas and their use in the final products.

Both these problems restrain the attraction of foreign investments and impede the country’s development. Third, efficiency in using the economy funds should be improved even at micro level. This implies the need for improving private businesses’ management and control systems, enhancing analytic and forecasting capabilities, as well as transparency. Allow me to further deal with some of the above-mentioned issues. Stable economic development of the country As we have continuously underlined in our periodical reports, the economic growth over the recent years has been strongly supported by the banking system lending. The growth of banking lending has provided an impulse of about 7 percentage points of GDP in the last five years, making a pronounced and evident contribution to the growth of consumption and investments in economy. Their growth has provided room for expanding the production basis and improving the welfare. However, it has also generated macro and microeconomic imbalances. At macroeconomic level, the high consumption and investments were followed by increasing inflationary pressures and higher trade and current account deficit. These signs of overheating were clear signals that that level of consumption could not be kept for a long time, hence calling for controlling measures by the monetary authority. This is also the key to understand our prudent monetary policy during the period 2006–2008. The institutional investment we have made during these years in terms of consolidating macroeconomic and financial stability was rewarded with a much more moderate and milder impact of the global crisis than in the regional countries.
The US economy has not returned to pre-crisis levels of output, the Eurozone remains in recession, and emerging economies are starting to show more signs of weakness. Against this backdrop, Asia has been resilient but remains vulnerable to external shocks. Nevertheless, given the region’s strong fundamentals, we continue to be confident about Asia’s longer term growth potential. 5. One bright spot is demand for financing in Asia. Demand for almost every segment of Asian finance is also growing – trade and structured trade finance, cross-border corporate lending, infrastructure finance, capital-raising in equity and bond markets, corporate treasury services and wealth management. Trade finance is driven by burgeoning Asian trade, which is projected to grow at about 8.3% per annum. By 2020, 60% of global trade will have an Asian component.2 Corporate funding needs in Asia are also growing, with 57% of Asia Pacific business leaders expecting their funding needs to increase over the next 2 to 3 years, compared to 32% in Europe3. On infrastructure finance, we are familiar with ADB’s estimates that Asian infrastructure spending is expected to amount to $ trillion from 2010 to 2020. 6. To meet this strong demand, there is scope to broaden and deepen financial intermediation in Asia. However, this is likely to take place against some headwinds caused by (i) European bank deleveraging (ii) banks’ diminished ability to provide long-term financing  1  According to Bloomberg Markets, DBS is 8th in the second annual ranking of the world’s strongest bank in 2012.

Tharman Shanmugaratnam: Opportunities in Asia for long-term growth and a look at the role of Singapore’s local banks Speech by Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the Official Inauguration of DBS Asia Central, Marina Bay Financial Centre (MBFC) Tower 3, Singapore, 17 October 2012. *  *  *  Mr Peter Seah Lim Huat, Chairman, DBS Bank Limited Mr Piyush Gupta, Chief Executive Officer, DBS Bank Limited Distinguished Guests, 1. It is a real pleasure to be here with you for the official opening of DBS’ new headquarters at the MBFC – DBS Asia Central. 2. Established in 1968 as the Development Bank of Singapore, DBS played a key role in helping to drive Singapore’s industrialization efforts. As Singapore moved to develop into a key financial centre in the Asian timezone, DBS also evolved into a full-fledged financial services group, offering a comprehensive range of products and services. 3. Over the last few decades, DBS has also expanded strongly into Asia, and has established a strong regional footprint. Apart from its key markets in Singapore and Hong Kong, DBS is strengthening its franchise in Southeast Asia (SEA), China, India and Taiwan. Today, with its network spanning 12 markets in Asia, DBS is not only a leading bank in Asia Pacific but also ranked by some as one of the strongest banks in Asia1. Leveraging on opportunities in Asia to anchor long term growth 4. The global economy continues to face many risks and uncertainties.
Economic theory tells us that the introduction of the euro should have led to real convergence as capital flowed towards so-called “catching-up” economies where the marginal product of capital was higher. Yet, while capital growth was indeed higher in catching-up economies, it did not lead to underlying productivity convergence. In my view this was because two structural and institutional conditions were missing. First, there was an incomplete single market in goods and services, and a general lack of competitive processes in the non-tradable/services sector, which allowed some firms in socalled catching-up economies to extract excessive rents and distort capital allocation. Second, there was an incomplete single market in capital, and lack of common approach to supervision and resolution of banks, which allowed the financial cycle to take hold too strongly in these countries in the upswing, and limited the potential for risk-sharing between jurisdictions in the downswing. This “Minsky” cycle in turn masked the underlying lack of productivity convergence in the pre-crisis period. The reform process in the euro area today is essentially a process of filling these two lacunae: improving the functioning of national economies through structural reforms; and creating a well supervised, integrated financial market through Banking Union. This should provide the conditions for efficient resource allocation and hence sustainable convergence in the future. The illusion of convergence before the crisis In its simplest form, economic convergence can be understood as the process of narrowing income gaps between lower and higher income countries, achieved through faster relative growth in the catching-up economies.

Indeed, one criticism we could perhaps make of Optimal Currency Area theory is that is does not take account of the financial instability that may arise when capital reallocates across regions, both in terms of inflows and outflows. Banking Union goes some way towards redressing this, which is why it is essential for the longer term stability of the euro area. In terms of improving incentives, the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) should in principle be better placed to prevent credit misallocation as supervision will be decoupled from national economic conditions. The shift towards bail-in ability under the new EU resolution framework should also, over time, increase the quality of scrutiny over allocation decisions by shareholders and creditors. And by removing supervisory barriers to retail banking integration, the SSM should provide the pre-conditions for greater foreign entry into national banking markets, which research suggests could improve capital allocation by increasing the distance between the main shareholders and management of a bank and the vested interests in the country where the bank operates.21 These same factors also provide stronger channels for risk-sharing within the euro area. A more integrated retail banking market would imply that losses from local banking crises would be shared across multiple jurisdictions, thus acting as a shock absorber as we see, for example, in the United States.
The financial sector will have to push ahead with regulatory adjustments and manage the transition to new business models, while in manufacturing, digitalisation is going to be a particular focus of attention. Our country’s future welfare depends critically on how well we master these challenges. Page 3/5  Berne, 15 December 2016 Thomas Jordan  News conference  Exchange rates, interest rates and inflation expectations  I will now review changes to monetary conditions since the middle of the year. The last half year has been shaped by the surprising outcomes of a number of political events. The Brexit decision led to a significant devaluation of the pound sterling and generated upward pressure on safe-haven currencies. Thanks to our willingness to intervene in the foreign exchange market, we were able to cushion the effect of the additional pressure on the Swiss franc, which can often build up in such phases of increased market volatility. Equally, neither the US elections nor the Italian constitutional referendum caused any significant changes in the value of the franc overall. On a trade-weighted basis, the real external value of the franc hardly changed over the course of the year. An analysis of nominal exchange rates since our last assessment in June shows that the franc has appreciated slightly against the euro. Against the dollar, meanwhile, it has depreciated somewhat.

Perlindungan Tenang is intended to reach 8 million working-age Malaysians and over 700,000 micro enterprises that currently need insurance and takaful protection against key risks. Products that meet the three criteria of being: Affordable, Accessible and Easy to understand. This product will carry the Perlindungan Tenang logo and benefit from regulatory flexibilities and co-branding and promotional initiatives. The aim is to address ‘pain points’ that commonly hold consumers back from purchasing insurance and takaful products. To-date, four insurers and two takaful operators have developed products that will be introduced under this initiative and we expect many more to come on board. Secondly, the industry needs to embrace digitalisation to revolutionise the customer experience. Many of the factors that make digitalisation possible in other sectors, such as a high mobile penetration rate of 134% and the proliferation of new technologies, are also available to the insurance and takaful sector. The banking industry has made significant strides towards enhancing the take up of financial services delivery through the use of technology. In 2016, there were 22.8 million Internet banking subscribers which represents over 70% of the total population. The insurance and takaful sector needs to catch up. Today, online insurance distribution still accounts for less than 0.1% of business volume. A very poor achievement. With consumers already enjoying benefits of digitalisation in many other daily activities, they should expect better levels of personalisation, responsiveness and reliability from their insurance and takaful experience. This includes shorter time-to-compensate for insurance claims.
In the last Inflation Report the Riksbank viewed that growth would be around 4% this year and average almost 3.5% in the next three years. This seemed to be a higher rate of growth than the economy could sustain in the long run. As available resources are utilized, price pressure will grow. The task of monetary policy is to ensure that growth does not deviate too far from a rate that is sustainable, thus causing shortages and price pressure. Diagram 6. The task of monetary policy  Function of the monetary policy Growth New economy Potential growth Real growth  Time  The Riksbank was of the view that, in the next few years, the inflation rate would be lower than what might be expected with such strong growth. One reason for this was that the modest increase in underlying domestic inflation anticipated in our forecasts was offset by a stronger krona and lower oil prices. Our assessments also took into account the fact that in recent years domestic price pressure had been lower than expected. We do not know exactly why domestic inflation has been so low in the last few years. Deregulation of the electricity and telecom markets is one important factor. But competition has increased in other product sectors too, due to globalization in general and to membership of the EU in particular. Our forecasts are also strongly influenced by our estimates of capacity utilization in the economy and of potential growth. There is some uncertainty in both cases.

BIS Review 39/2000  2  Let us make a comparison between the period starting with the recession of the early 1970s up to 1989, when annual inflation averaged over 9.5%, and the period from 1993, ie the end of the last recession, up to now, with an average inflation rate of just over 1.5%. Broadly speaking, the latter period presents a brighter picture. The total rate of investment, measured in terms of year-on-year changes, is higher on average during this period, especially if investments in housing are excluded. The average productivity of the economy as a whole is broadly the same during the two periods. However, behind the average during the first period lay some years of very strong growth in productivity in the early 1970s, offset by poor productivity growth during the 1980s. The Swedish economy has grown by 2.3% on average since the start of 1993. This is only slightly higher than growth during the period 1971-1989. However, the composition of growth is different in the two periods. During the second period, growth in industry has been just under 3.5%, which is about 1% higher than during the previous period. The difference in growth would also be more marked if the latter period were to start only six months later. Average growth from mid-1993, when the recession levelled out, to the end of 1999 was 2.9%. Diagram 2. Gross investment, total and excluding housing  Gross capital formation 7 6  7 Total Excl.
I see there being three main initiatives, namely: 1.  deposit protection;  2.  deregulation and other market reforms; and  3.  the credit reference agency. 3. On deposit protection, we are now coming to the end of the consultation period on the consultants report – in fact there are just two days left, so if you want to make a submission, you will have to hurry! Once we have collected in everyone’s comments we will carefully review them and determine whether to recommend going ahead with such a scheme and, if so, exactly how it should be structured. As you will be very aware, the views of the banks on this issue are mixed, whereas LegCo has given a clear endorsement, and most other parties are also in favour. But, assuming we do go ahead, this is really only the beginning, and there will be a lot of work to be done on the design features. For example, should coverage of the scheme be limited to $ or should it be $ Should funding be ex-ante or ex-post? Should premiums be risk-based? None of these issues have been decided yet, so we welcome any constructive comments and will certainly consider them carefully. 4. One particular question that has been raised is whether deposits with RLBs and DTCs should be covered. The consultant suggested not, primarily on the grounds that excluding them would be consistent with the institutional coverage of the current priority claims provisions.

Such an option would not only be extremely costly, but also strike a serious blow at the very heart of European integration – the single market. Restrictions on operating abroad through branches has been proposed as a possible way forward, since this would then make all foreign bank affiliates subject to local supervision. 20 It should be noted however that the distinction between branches and subsidiaries is becoming increasingly blurred. To be as efficient as possible, banks often organize themselves along business lines rather than along legal and national lines. As a result, foreign subsidiaries have become less self-contained. This means that we can no longer take for granted that a subsidiary will be able to continue its business much longer than a branch, if the parent bank defaults. Therefore, even if all foreign affiliates were operated as subsidiaries, the national authorities of the home and host countries would still have to be prepared to deal with a crisis in a cross-border setting. Consequently, finding ways to deal with banking regulation and supervision at the EU level is the only sensible long-term solution. However it is not a simple task. It would involve a supervisory regime that can coordinate national supervision, cross-border crisis management and resolution arrangements that address any conflicts of interest. This will require governments to give up some of their sovereignty – and that is a painful process.
If the Bank aims for a low but positive rate of inflation, and imported goods prices are falling, the prices of other goods and services will have to rise faster to compensate. So for example, the prices of imported goods and services fell by 13% between 1995 and 2004, while the prices of other consumer goods and services rose, on average, by around 20%. To produce this result, and keep overall inflation close to target (as it was), the Bank was probably able to keep interest rates lower than they might otherwise have been. That’s why people sometimes say that the falling world prices resulting from globalisation have acted as ‘favourable tailwinds’ for central banks over the past decade. And why, over the last couple of years, there have been worries that high and volatile energy prices would provide ‘strong headwinds’. Second, there have been important innovations in the practice of monetary policy over the past decade. These have not been confined to the UK - there is an international traffic in good monetary policy ideas, as in almost everything else. So while the UK was a pioneer in some respects, our current approach to policy is more fairly described as close to international best practice. There’s been a widespread move to give central banks more independence, with clear objectives and a strong commitment to transparency and accountability.

Nevertheless, many developed countries seem to have been experiencing increases in their long- and short-term immigrant workforces, both skilled and unskilled - notably the US, where the foreign-born work force is now around 15% of the total, and a number of Southern European countries. Italy and Spain both had increases in their foreign-born workforces of over a million in the five years to 2004. There have been smaller, but still sizeable, increases, in Germany, Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the UK. 1 It is too soon to assess the full impact of these developments on the performance of industrial countries. A few obviously important effects have been identified but they may not turn out to be the most significant in the long term. Most comment has focused on the direct effects of the emergence of China on relative prices, especially the price of manufactures relative to other goods and services. The emergence of an economic superpower with abundant supplies of labour and a relatively poor natural resource endowment has probably had several effects. First, it has pushed down on the price of manufactured goods over a long period of time. Across the world’s industrial countries the real price of goods (adjusted for general inflation), fell by over 10% between 1995 and 2005. Second, in the last couple of years it has helped to fuel a sharp surge in world prices for energy and other commodities.
Conference “Frontiers of climate and nature in macroeconomics and finance” Paris, 24 October 2022  Central banking in the Anthropocene: How to re-embed our economic and financial systems within planetary boundaries? Speech by Sylvie Goulard, Deputy Governor of the Banque de France  Page 1 sur 12 Ladies and Gentlemen, I am very pleased to open this conference, as nature is a topic close to my heart. I would like to start by thanking the organizers from the Banque de France, the NGFS, the Sustainable Macro initiative and the INSPIRE research initiative for putting together this important event on the frontiers of macroeconomics and finance with regard to climate and nature. In addition, I truly appreciate the presence of many young researchers. It is key to transform the study of macroeconomics and finance for a new ecological era. I would also like to use my time with you this morning to pay tribute to the next speaker at today’s conference, Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, who published an incredibly powerful report last year.i The introduction of the so-called Dasgupta Review makes it clear that (and I quote): “My reader is the concerned citizen. She is someone who has watched television documentaries on the state of the biosphere and has read reports in newspapers and magazines on the extent to which Earth is being degraded and biodiversity is being lost.

What she wants now is an explanation for how and why we have come to this pass, and she wants to know how to translate that explanation into recommendations”. When I read this sentence (maybe in part because of the “she” used by Professor Dasgupta), I recognized myself. I am not an ecological expert, I am just “a concerned citizen” who does her best to understand what is happening and what I could do in my current position. So please allow me, as a non-expert, to adventure myself into three lines of thought today: -  (i) what scientist tell us about the current situation of the biosphere;  -  (ii) what this means for central bankers and supervisors;  -  (iii) and what may be required to address the situation. The situation is challenging, to say the least. Urgent action is needed. 1  Page 2 sur 12 1. Welcome to the Anthropocene: from climate change to biodiversity loss,  and  toward  a  comprehensive  assessment  of  our  interconnected ecological crises The scientific evidence tells us that while a lot of focus has been on climate change in recent years, it is only the “tip of the iceberg”, to quote a famous study by Will Steffen and co-authors.ii Other risks exist that are not only higher than climate change but also interact with it.