samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
This can be compared with the 1970s and 1980s, when inflation was approximately 8 per cent and growth was on average 2 per cent. Contributing to this positive development was the fact that  BIS Review 37/2002  1  there was good access to free resources in the economy after the crisis years at the beginning of the 1990s. An important part of the Riksbank’s monetary policy strategy is clarity and openness with regard to the bases for monetary policy decisions. The purpose of this is to create support for the price stability target and understanding of what governs the interest rate decisions among the general public. This is also the reason why we Executive Board members often travel round making speeches. Openness and clarity on our part can contribute to stabilising inflation expectations in society and reduce the risk of unnecessary tension on the financial markets. As monetary policy has an effect with some time lag, interest rate decisions are based on forecasts of price developments one to two years ahead. If the forecasts show a rate higher than the inflation target, the interest rate is raised, and vice versa. In other words, the instrumental rate is adjusted so that the total assessment of inflation 1-2 years ahead, taking into account the risk scenario, is in line with the target. The assessments are described in the Riksbank’s Inflation Reports, which are issued 4 times a year.

The decline in the average working hours over the past year is partly due to the economic downturn, as overtime has fallen. However, there also appear to be structural factors, such as a rising level of absence due to sickness and central agreements on shorter working hours, behind the decline. This indicates that the reduction in the labour supply could be at least partly of a more lasting nature. The decline in productivity during 2001 was limited in comparison with the declines in 1977, 1980 and 1990. Greater openness towards the world around us, a higher level of education during the 1990s and certain improvements in competitive pressure indicate that productivity will continue to be higher than in the 1970s and 1980s. However, this also presupposes that productivity in the information and telecommunications sector will return to a good level. There are also other risks: Inflation rose more than expected last spring, which was only partly due to price increases of a more temporary nature. The rest was primarily due to wage developments in the services industries. When employment begins to rise once again, while the labour market is strained, there is a risk that the new central wage agreements signed over the coming years will be affected by the fact that others have previously received high wage increases. To summarise: low inflation and consolidated central government finances have meant that there was room for manoeuvre to meet the economic downturn.
The growth of exports in 2010 was fuelled by the recovery of global economy and the favourable conjuncture of prices in the global markets, the depreciation of the exchange rate, the Albanian entrepreneurship efforts to expand the market and by some other factors of transitory nature. Therefore, promoting exports in a stable and long-term fashion requires undertaking structural reforms, which will in turn enhance the competitiveness of the Albanian economy. This would ultimately serve to the transition to a more stable economic growth model and, at the same time, to curbing the reliance on foreign financial sources. Our analysis of monetary indicators concludes that the growth of money in economy is concurrent with the economic agents’ demand for monetary assets, hence creating no room for inflationary pressures in the future. BIS Review 170/2010  3  Aggregate M3’s average growth was 11.2% in July and August, being in line with the nominal economic growth and the enhanced confidence in the banking system. Its growth during this period was mainly determined by the increase of the banking system’s net foreign assets. Private sector credit grew by 9.8% y-o-y, close to the previous quarter’s rate. Although the better liquidity figures and the improved banks’ balance sheets led to higher banking supply and provided greater room for lending, the latter has progressed at moderate rates. Our analyses on lending in economy show that demand remains contracted and the number of worthy projects to lend is still low. The foregoing remains a constant concern for the Bank of Albania.

To this purpose, alongside the banking system, we are considering the required measures that may lead to the growth of lending in line with the cyclical and structural needs of the economy. Economic and monetary developments elaborated above yielded an environment of contained inflationary pressures. Average annual inflation marked 3.4% in the third quarter. Against a background of below-potential economic growth, and given the absence of monetary-related inflationary pressures, inflation was largely affected by the rise in administered prices. The contribution of the latter’s rise to headline inflation is 1 p.p. In the absence of second-round effects, the effect of the rise in administered prices is expected to be transitory, while the inflationary pressures arising from domestic demand remain well contained. On the other hand, the depreciation of the national currency has been declining, hence offsetting the rise of primary commodity prices in the world markets and the increase of inflation in Albania’s main trading partners. The absence of inflationary pressures in the medium run and the contained fiscal policy provided room for pursuing a stimulating monetary policy that sustains economic activity. In July, the Supervisory Council of the Bank of Albania cut the key interest rate by 0.25 p.p. bringing it to the historical low of 5.00%. In addition, the Bank of Albania continued to supply the banking system with the required liquidity in order to ensure the smooth operation of the money markets and to enhance financial intermediation in economy.
In the view of this process, we stand ready to adapt them to the economic and financial developments, or support them with other measures. The stability of the financial system shall be at the foundation of each action of the Bank of Albania in this regard. Finally, I would like to remind all the representatives of the private sector, whether in production or financial industry, that under the effects and impact of the crisis, the public authorities, lawmakers, fiscal and monetary authorities, have made important changes in terms of philosophy, objectives and decision making, far from traditional considerations. These temporary changes aim at mitigating the crisis effects, stabilising the economy, consumption and private investment. The package I introduced today is a good example to illustrate this change. It is necessary, therefore, for the private sector to adopt such a temporary adjustment. Ms. Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, appealed that in the current situation, the goal of the private sector cannot be only profit; it must also be to add value, create jobs, develop the new ideas that drive an economy forward and provide stability. Boosted employment and higher income from employment means more consumption and investments, higher consumer demand for goods, services and lending instruments. The private and financial sector should be accountable to the real economy: a private sector that supports employees and consumers, and a financial sector that adds values instead of destroying them.

Willem F Duisenberg: Perspectives on EU enlargement Speech by Dr Willem F Duisenberg, President of the European Central Bank, on the occasion of receiving an honorary doctorate from IMADEC University, Vienna, 14 October 2002. *  *  *  Dear Klaus, Ladies and gentlemen, It is a great privilege for me to be awarded an honorary doctorate today by such a distinguished institution, IMADEC University, in Austria. It is also a great pleasure to hear the kind words of my colleague and friend, Governor Klaus Liebscher. When listening to Klaus Liebscher, who has indeed studied my curriculum vitae in great depth, Shakespeare's words came to my mind and I thought for a moment he had come to bury me, although he has actually come to praise me. I am afraid that this is the fate of anybody whose retirement comes within sight. Nothing but good should be said of the dead, they say. Considering that I am still alive, it is even more gratifying to hear nothing but good things about myself; perhaps with the exception of my addiction to tobacco - an addiction that Klaus and I happen to share. There is one thing I should like to emphasise in the laudation. As Klaus Liebscher has just said, my career has benefited from a “Summe von Zufälligkeiten” that I have been lucky enough to encounter throughout my professional life.
There is a quiet revolution underway in the UK’s macro-economic policy framework. Conclusions On its 20th birthday, it is clear that the Commercial Property Forum has never been more important. The boom-bust cycle in the sector is simply too damaging to be left to free-wheel. It is high time to develop some properly functioning gears and brakes. That is now being done, as a shared effort between the industry and the authorities – in Pen’s words, “to bring all sides of the industry together”. If this is successful, the Forum could not ask for a better birthday present. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Chart 1 Long-run UK commercial property capital values(a)  Sources: Scott (1996), Investment Property Database and Bank calculations. (a)  The vertical dotted lines indicate the discernable booms and busts. The attached labels indicate peak years. Chart 2 UK commercial property debt and valuations  Sources: Association of British Insurers, Bank of England, Investment Property Databank, ONS and Bank calculations. (a)  Based on end-year data  (b)  End-year stock of outstanding lending  (c)  in 2010, 2011 and 2012 this includes an adjustment to include CRE loans transferred to the Irish National Asset Management Agency  BIS central bankers’ speeches  5

Jaime Caruana: Basel II progress Remarks by Mr Jaime Caruana, Governor of the Bank of Spain, at the Institute of International Bankers Breakfast Dialogue with Government Officials, Washington DC, 26 September 2005. *  *  *  Thank you very much. It is an honour to be here once again for a productive dialogue with members of the Institute of International Bankers, and it is equally an honour to be on a panel with such distinguished colleagues from the United States and the United Kingdom. I will keep my remarks as brief as possible so that we can have plenty of time for your questions and comments. It will probably come as no surprise that I will focus my remarks this morning on the same topic that I discussed with you last year: the new framework for capital adequacy, or Basel II. As you are probably aware, the Basel Committee published the Basel II Framework in June last year. At that time, the Committee indicated that while the Framework was mostly complete, several important technical matters still needed further work. Specifically, the Committee determined that more work was necessary with regard to (1) elements of the trading book and the treatment of so-called double-default effects for hedged transactions; and (2) the estimation of loss given default during periods of economic downturn.
5  BIS Review 98/2000  The inflation target is necessary Transparency stimulates debate both about the monetary policy strategy we have adopted and about the way in which the Riksbank carries it out. We have recently been criticised for not slavishly complying with the simple decision-making rule that I have just described. However, debate has also taken place on the suitability of having an inflation target as a guide for monetary policy. The alternative would be a monetary policy based on discretionary decisions resting on assessments of the monetary policy that would best favour long-term stable growth. As will be evident from what I have said, while monetary policy is guided by a simple decision-making rule, the rule serves as a guide and not a straitjacket. We can depart from the rule if we make the assessment that the costs of complying with it will lead to unnecessary fluctuations in output and employment provided that inflation expectations and the credibility of monetary policy are not affected. Monetary policy decision-makers are always confronted to some extent by having to strike a balance between price stability and output variability in the short term. The balances must be struck so as to maintain confidence in price stability. It is easy to see that a central bank with a good reputation and many years of successful combating of inflation has more freedom than a central bank in a country with many years of negative experiences of high inflation.

Since inflation is at the same time lower, the differences in the real interest rate are less, however. An important reason for inflation being so low is the broad agreement on the price stability target that now seems to exist. An expression of this is that inflationary expectations remain at a stable level despite expectations on a continued very strong upswing. The Riksbank’s most important duty in future is to ensure that expectations remain at around 2% inflation. The very low inflation which is now registered has, however, surprised many people, including us at the Riksbank. An important explanation as to why GDP growth has now been able to exceed the growth in output that is possible in the long term for many years without threatening the inflation target is, of course, that the upswing started from a level of output that was greatly depressed after the years of crisis, where a lot of resources had been made redundant. When unemployment was at its peak, there were many who feared that it would persist permanently at a considerably higher level than we were previously used to. There was also opposition to the inflation target policy just for that reason. Examples were pointed to in Europe where unemployment had been over the Swedish for a long time, but where there had been greater success in combating inflation. The labour market is performing better than expected It is difficult to determine the rate at which GDP can increase in the long term.
Some shifts in demand may stick (if significant numbers of people continue to work from home, for example). Some re-allocations of supply may be harder than others. If the lasting shifts in demand are towards sectors and activities that need more digital skills, for example, the corresponding increase in labour supply would take time and expense. We can’t all become IT experts overnight. Nor could one easily dismantle an office or restaurant in a city centre and transplant it elsewhere. I exaggerate, of course. Market economies face re-allocative shocks all the time and can very often absorb them without any visible effect at the macro-economic level. But this shock has been bigger than most. And 14  The DMP was only set up in 2016. Chart 21 extends this backwards using annual company accounts. Excess reallocation is calculated as the sum across firms of the absolute value of changes in employment or sales, less net change in employment/sales, expressed as a percentage of total employment/sales. The historical data from annual company accounts are calculated based on changes in employment/sales over the previous three years. The DMP data are based on realised employment/sales growth over the last two years plus expected growth over the next year. Annual excess reallocation data from the DMP are averages of monthly data. Sales and employment growth are calculated using Davis, Haltiwanger and Schuh (DHS) growth rates. This is the change between two periods, divided by the average of those two periods.

We aim to: reduce risks to the portfolio across different climate scenarios; seize investment opportunities from the transition to a lower carbon future; and support the transition of portfolio companies. MAS has analysed the potential impact of climate change on the OFR over a 20-year horizon. This was done across three plausible climate scenarios that incorporated both physical and transition risk factors. The exercise informed us that climate change will dampen expected returns – especially for 5/9  BIS central bankers' speeches  equities – and will present risks that will need to be managed. For scenarios assuming faster decarbonisation, companies and assets will be exposed to higher transition risks such as the stranding of fossil fuel-related assets. For scenarios assuming slow progress on climate action, there will be greater physical risks due to climate hazards and changes in climatic conditions. We are developing a climate sign-posting toolkit to help us understand the most likely transition pathways. Government policies to manage climate transition will have the greatest and most immediate impact on company earnings and their distributions to investors. Our initial efforts on building a climate-resilient reserves portfolio are therefore focused on equities. MAS is developing a climate risk overlay programme for its equity portfolio. Such an overlay programme will reduce exposures to carbon intensive sectors, such as energy, materials and utilities. But instead of simply avoiding carbon intensive sectors, we will maintain some exposure to companies within these sectors that are likely to make a successful transition.
But we also have to remember that we need to work with the staff of the bank, to help them to deal with the shock of the resolution taking place, usually following a very difficult period in which the bank has been under great stress, and through all of that ensure that the doors open on Monday morning. I am lucky to have very talented colleagues in the Bank and the other authorities and advisors who don’t mind the stress and the risk, or at least that’s what they tell me. Issues arising The resolution of Dunfermline was in my opinion a success: on Monday morning depositors knew their money was safe. But it illustrated well the difficulties of resolving banks. Resolution is after all invasive surgery on a bank. I want therefore to highlight a number of areas where in my view more work is needed to hone our regime further. The first concerns funding of the FSCS. In my view we should be doing everything we can to minimise the reliance of the industry on public money, this is just not an acceptable state of affairs. One thing that can be done over the coming years, but gradually, is to pre-fund the FSCS with industry contributions. This would reduce the need for the FSCS to borrow from government and would provide a larger bulwark before the use of public money has to be contemplated. It is welcome that the Government supports pre-funding.

The Central Bank candidly expressed these concerns in its financial stability reports, most notably in the spring of 2001. At that time the IMF also issued its Financial Stability Assessment which questioned the strength of the financial system in Iceland in view of the tremendous imbalances in the economy and what was perceived to be an underlying weakness in the banking institutions. The IMF identified a potential risk of a rapid depreciation of the currency, which it felt could further weaken the banks and pose a threat to them. Early on in the upswing, amidst a rapid expansion of lending and external indebtedness of the banks, particularly their short-term foreign debt, the Central Bank imposed a liquidity requirement on the commercial banks. Its purpose was to stem the growth of foreign borrowing and to shift the weight of foreign indebtedness from the very short end of the maturity spectrum. Another prudential rule set by the Central Bank concerns the foreign exchange exposure of commercial banks. This sharply limits their scope for taking direct foreign exchange risk. Beyond these prudential regulations, the means which the Central Bank has to affect the practices of the banks are through public pressure, for example in its semi-annual financial stability reports or in other public or private statements. The Bank has used all these methods with varying degrees of success. In line with the traditional role of central banks, the Central Bank of Iceland can serve as a lender of last resort if a domestic bank experiences a liquidity shortfall.
The SNB has taken care to ensure that the fallout from this crisis does not lead to an undue tightening of credit conditions. The increase in the risk premiums we saw last autumn has resulted in a de facto tightening of financing conditions for banks and companies. By exerting a moderating influence on interest rates, monetary policy can prevent risk premium hikes from triggering a slowdown in economic activity. The great advantage of the SNB’s operational objective – i.e. a target range for the three-month Libor – is that it takes account of the risk premiums banks face in their refinancing transactions. Since the banks pass on these risk premiums to their customers via their lending conditions, the Libor reflects the degree of restrictiveness on the lending market. Fully aware of this fact, the SNB has been aiming for a Libor at around the 2.75% mark in recent months. Given the current circumstances, this is a rate which we deem necessary to ensure price stability in the medium term. Resurgence of inflationary risks The financial storm should not make us forget that it is our mandate to ensure price stability in the medium term. In this regard, 2007 saw a worsening in the situation due to the sharp increase in commodity prices. The indicators reflecting these price rises registered a growth rate of between 15% and 40%, while the price for crude oil shot up nearly 50% in one year. Even food prices rose by more than 20% on the international markets.

How should we ensure the integrity of the advisers and avoid groupthink? I welcome more research on these and other issues related to the role of the staff. Good decisions require qualified people, an appropriate incentive structure, and a good decision-making process. In addition, good decisions become more effective if they are communicated well. Transparency generally improves both the quality of communication and the decision-making process. My ambitious goal is that Norges Bank shall be at the forefront in terms of communication and decision-making processes. Thank you for your attention. 8  BIS Review 132/2008  BIS Review 132/2008  9  10  BIS Review 132/2008  BIS Review 132/2008  11