samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The housing supply is stable, however, in the short term because building new dwellings takes time and because housing construction in any case will be low in relation to existing housing stock. Therefore, in the short term, prices for resale homes will generally be determined by demand. The demand for owner-occupied dwellings depends primarily on the interest rate level, household income and household expectations concerning future income growth. Lower interest rates mean lower borrowing costs connected with the dwelling and thus higher demand for housing. This pushes up house prices. Developments in the labour market are important for house prices because they affect household income. Increased unemployment leads to expectations of lower wage growth and increased uncertainty concerning future income growth. Thus, demand for owner-occupied dwellings falls. Banks may also be more reticent about providing loans when unemployment increases. If expectations about future house price inflation rise, it will be relatively more favourable to purchase a dwelling now rather than later. The result is increased housing demand and higher house prices today. Price expectations depend both on observed developments in interest rates, income and house prices and on household expectations of future interest rates and income growth. 2  BIS Review 39/2005  Housing demand also depends on population movements and demographic conditions such as cohabitation patterns, population size and the number of individuals in the start-up phase. Net migration to central areas has been positive in recent years. This has affected regional house prices in different ways.

In the same report, we assessed the capacity of the seven largest banking groups to absorb losses by measuring how large the losses would have to be over a three-year period before their capital base fell below the minimum requirement of 8 per cent. We based our assessment on the accounts for 2003 and assumed that banks do not raise new equity or supplementary capital, that the size and composition of the balance sheet does not change, and that the banks do not pay a dividend. In the first example, we assumed that banks have the same results as in 2003 in each of the three subsequent years. In the second example, we assumed a result before losses of zero for these three years. With the same result before losses as in 2003, the most solid of the seven largest bank conglomerates will have the capacity to absorb an average loss per year over a three-year period of 3.1 per cent of gross lending before the capital falls below the minimum requirement of 8 per cent. If the result before losses is zero in the three years, this group will have the capacity to absorb an average loss of 1.4 per cent of gross lending. The least solid of the seven banks will have the capacity to absorb average  BIS Review 39/2005  5  losses per year over a three-year period of 1.7 per cent and 0.8 per cent of gross lending, respectively, given these two assumptions concerning results.
Despite Asia’s diversity in people, culture and traditions, the region has been able to come together as a group to achieve greater integration in the areas of trade and investment. While trade remains an important contributor to growth in the region, of importance is that the pattern of trade of the Asian economies has changed significantly. This decade has seen the rise in intra-regional trade. Intra-regional trade in Asia has risen from 32% of total exports in 1995 to an average of 50% in 2008. Increasingly, as incomes rise in Asia, intra-regional trade will increase to meet the rising domestic demand of regional economies. More than half of the world’s population resides in Asia that has a favourable demographic structure that comprises of a significant young and dynamic segment. The growing middle class has altered the consumption and savings patterns in the region, providing the region cumulatively with a huge growing consumer market. Asia also has high savings which allows for higher consumption while still having surplus funds to finance regional investment activity. The rapid trade liberalisation across Asia has improved market access, creating a vast market for goods and services. In addition, bilateral and region-wide free trade agreements are set to expand further even as multilateral agreements continue to be pursued. The growing pace of intra-regional investment flows has also gained momentum to complement the region’s trade integration. Businesses in the region are leveraging on regional complementarities as well as taking the opportunity of the growing markets in the region.

Timothy F Geithner: Reflections on the changing global economy Remarks by Mr Timothy F Geithner, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at the 46th ACI Financial Markets Association World Congress, Montreal, Quebec, 4 May 2007. *  *  *  Good morning. I am pleased to be able to join you today. And it is a privilege to be here today with Canada's accomplished central bank governor, David Dodge. There are few people in central banks or in governments around the world today that have presided over as far reaching and successful a set of macroeconomic policy reforms as has David Dodge. I want to offer some reflections about the challenges managing macroeconomic policy in a more open and integrated world economy. And I want to say something about how the international monetary system, and the current framework of exchange rate regimes, might develop in the coming years. For the past century or more, choices about exchange rate regimes have played an important role in economic outcomes across countries. From the Gold Standard of the late 19th and early 20th centuries through the Bretton Woods system and the episodes of exchange rate cooperation among the G5 and the G7 in the 1980s and after, the desire to achieve exchange rate stability was a major preoccupation of policymakers. The economic damage inflicted by the disastrous competitive devaluations among the major economies in the 1930s had a profound influence on thinking during much of the postwar period.
The major challenge for the future lies not in the number of jobs moving abroad, but in managing the transition required to make it possible to create new jobs as new employment is created mainly in other countries/regions. This requires a good corporate climate, a good capacity to attract knowledge and capital and an ability to transform, including flexibility in the labour market so that employees can apply to new sectors and areas as smoothly as possible. If this is not successful, there is a risk of growing structural unemployment. At the time of the extensive structural transformation in the 1970s, the public sector took in many of the new entrants on the labour market and those who lost their jobs. This possibility is no longer available to the same extent. Instead, it is the private service sector that will have to expand. In a sparsely-populated country like Sweden, however, labour market matching can be particularly problematic as many service companies require proximity to population centres in order to be profitable. A key issue in future will be how we can attract capital to invest in Sweden. Regarded in this perspective, the falling investment ratio in recent years provides cause for concern, although there was a recovery last year. Sweden currently has a large trade surplus, but many of the large Swedish companies choose to invest their export income abroad.

The value of exports increased 6.7%, y-o-y, in the first quarter, reflecting the moderation in the foreign demand and performance of global market prices. Over the period, imports contracted by 0.9%, y-o-y. These developments led to an annual contraction of trade deficit by 5.4% until August, positively influencing the aggregate demand growth. Also, the sharply decreased current account deficit in the second quarter is a positive signal for the long-term stability of this indicator and assists in stabilizing the demand for and supply of foreign currency in the domestic market. Developments in the monetary sector attest to low inflationary pressures in the economy. Monetary assets expansion slowed over the third quarter, reflecting the decline in the domestic demand for money. The public sector’s prudential behaviour has led to a low demand for monetary assets, particularly from the banking sector. On the other hand, the slow economic activity and available spare capacities appear to have restricted the private sector’s demand for monetary assets. Private sector credit increased by 5%, y-o-y, in August, following the slowing trajectory having started since the second half of 2011. Developments over the past months show that banks are more active in national currency intermediation, while they have decreased their foreign currency intermediation. This development is driven by banks’ readiness to invest lek funds and economic agents’ increased awareness of foreign currency credit risk. Regarding lending concerns, we would emphasise that the weak credit performance owes mostly to economic agents’ low demand for monetary assets. However, the bank credit supply appears somewhat tightened.
18 Felten, E W, Raj, M and Seamans, R (2018), ‘A Method to Link Advances in Artificial Intelligence to Occupational Abilities, AEA Papers and Proceedings, Vol. 108, pp. 54-57. 19 Nedelkoska, L and Quintini, G (2018), ‘Automation, skills use and training’, OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers No. 202. Similarly, McKinsey argue that across advanced economies 15% of the workforce in total will need to shift occupational categories because of digitisation, automation, and AI. 20 This process has been well documented for the China Shock in the US (Autor, Dorn and Hanson 2015) and the collapse of local housing markets (Mian and Sufi 2015). 21 If those who understand technology less well are less willing to trust it and work with it, this could further increase its polarising effects. 6  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  6  Speed Could the Fourth Industrial Revolution happen faster? Certainly, the time taken for new technologies to be adopted has shortened dramatically since the dawn of the First Industrial Revolution. The Story Thus Far Current empirical work suggests on balance that, thus far, increased automation has been positive for employment in aggregate even though it has led to substantial compositional changes. Importantly, while technology has reduced middle-skilled employment, its effects on aggregate employment appear to have been more than offset by increased product demand and local demand spillovers. After all, the employment share in the UK is near all-time highs. There are, however, signs that recent technological advances have increased inequality.

That is why, in the UK, the Monetary Policy Committee periodically takes stock of developments and updates its estimates of key variables such as the equilibrium rates of interest and unemployment. 34  The MPC provided our assessment of the equilibrium rate of interest – the interest rate that sustains inflation at target and output at potential – in its August Inflation Report. The equilibrium interest rate provides a way to think about the forces acting on the economy, and whether policy is stimulative or contractionary. It is affected by shorter-term influences, such as headwinds to demand, and by slow-moving structural factors that affect the balance between the demand for capital and the stock of wealth available to finance it. For open economies like the UK and Ireland, those factors will be heavily influenced by global developments. As the MPC noted at the time, increased automation could push the equilibrium interest rate up or down. On the one hand, the increases in productivity that result could increase businesses’ demand for capital, pushing up the equilibrium interest rate for a period – and permanently if automation raises productivity growth. 35  On the other hand, however, increases in inequality would likely shift income to those with lower  propensities to consume,  36  increasing the stock saving and pushing the equilibrium rate down.
However, there is a connection between “what is a central bank” and “who is the central banker”. 8  BIS central bankers’ speeches  After the First World War, inflation and large-scale imports of goods caused a loss of confidence in the krone, which dropped considerably in value. When Nicolai Rygg became Governor of Norges Bank in 1920, he started work on putting the monetary system in order. In his view, the central bank was obliged to bring the gold value of the krone back to its prewar level – referred to as par policy.33 However, this ambitious aim entailed years of strong deflation and blight before the gold value was achieved in 1928. For 90 years, historians have discussed par policy. My contribution will have to be a presenttime analysis with the inherent scope and limitations.34 Was this a good policy? There is no doubt that the motives were good. Rygg considered that Norges Bank had a moral obligation to keep its word, as it had done a century earlier, but was also of the view that this was rational in the longer term. There is also no doubt that Rygg adhered to the rules of the game. Par policy had the support of the political authorities. Nevertheless, an action must also be assessed by the outcome. The central bank was blinded by the old gold content as a guideline for monetary policy and implemented a policy that inflicted large-scale real economic costs on the country.

BIS central bankers’ speeches  7  At irregular intervals during the past 200 years, Norges Bank has faced defining moments – crossroads – that have defined the bank as an institution. At such defining moments, the central bank becomes what it is, both in its own awareness and in that of the general public. These are situations where it sometimes became bigger than itself or took on too much responsibility, or inversely became smaller than itself and did not fulfil its role. As is so often the case, it is only in retrospect that we can fully identify the defining moments and assess the wisdom of the choices made. Norges Bank faced its first defining moment early on. When it was first established, the Bank was unknown to the public at large. The new paper money, speciedaler notes, was linked by law to a specific amount of silver.29 Despite the fact that the silver tax had secured Norges Bank a considerable silver reserve, the authorities were afraid to permit free silver redemption. The fear was that the silver fund would be emptied quickly. The notes in circulation with the promise of silver redemption far exceeded the silver value of the silver forks and silver plates that had been collected. Confidence in the new notes waned, and in 1822 the Storting adopted a long-term strategy whereby the redemption rate in silver for the speciedaler would gradually be increased. The aim – the right to full silver redemption, i.e.
Funding in securities markets is too expensive for the smallest enterprises. The securities market plays less of a role in Norway compared with other European countries and the US. The market for equity capital is particularly small in Norway. Norwegian companies often rely on foreign funding for new projects. The thin market for securities capital in Norway may be an obstacle to the development of the business sector. This means that it is essential that the banking system function smoothly. When they function, the strength of financial markets lies in their transparency and adaptability. Capital which is tied up in unprofitable activity can be freed up for other activities. Competition for capital contributes to creative destruction. 13  BIS Review 14/2000  Chart 15  Structural changes also take place within individual companies. One example is NOKIA. Thirty years ago, the forerunners of the world’s leading producer of cellular telephones were primarily producing telephone cables, rubber boots and tyres. At that time, the electronics division accounted for 3% of NOKIA’s turnover and employed 460 persons. However, research and product development led to a wider range of products. In 1988 NOKIA was the third largest producer of television sets in Europe and the largest producer of cellular telephone equipment in the Nordic area. NOKIA experienced a deep crisis in the beginning of the 1990s, as did many Finnish companies. NOKIA decided to concentrate on telecommunications. The split-up of the group was initiated from within the company. Non-core activities were spun off and sold.

The chart shows income on the horizontal axis, and health expenditure on the vertical axis. Norwegian health service expenditure is on a par with or higher than in that of other western countries, with the exception of the US, Germany and Switzerland. However, as a percentage of income, health expenditure in Norway is still not particularly high. A further reason for the situation outlined above might be the composition of the population. We know that in a few years health expenditure will rise sharply because of an ageing population. However, current demographic trends do not indicate particularly strong pressures. The challenges will increase considerably in the years ahead. Continued growth in incomes and an ageing population will boost demand for health and care services. Moreover, it will be possible to offer services and forms of treatment that are not available today. All this has to be provided for within tight personnel and budget constraints. The increase in social security expenditure on pensions will lay claim to a steadily increasing share of overall central government expenditure. Even with sizeable government financial assets, these resources will primarily be used to finance the increase in pension expenditure associated with the ageing of the population. Taxes cannot be increased unaccompanied by a weakening of the position of the business sector. Therefore, it would be inappropriate to base policy decisions on the assumption that growth in public expenditure items other than pensions can exceed GDP growth. Allow me to illustrate this.
Another issue which I have discussed in more detail in earlier speeches is that there is reason to fear that wage formation will not be able to cope with limitations set by the inflation target and productivity growth. How great, for instance, is the risk for the old pattern of wage spirals and increasing inflation being repeated? In this case, the Riksbank may be obliged to carry out a more stringent monetary policy to counteract growing inflationary pressure by subdued demand. My ambition is not to give any answers but rather to point out what we have to take notice of in future. Productivity development An important component of the analytical framework of monetary policy is accordingly to make forecasts of potential growth. The supply of labour and productivity growth are important determining factors for how much we can produce in the long term in our country. A higher potential rate of growth creates, as I said earlier, scope for greater demand without inflationary pressure arising. During the1950s and 1960s and until the beginning of the 1970s, the Swedish economy was characterised by very strong growth and very high productivity growth. Labour productivity grew from 1960-74 on average by as much as 4.3%. At the same time, inflation was low during these years. The gross investment ratio was high and a large part of Sweden’s incomes were invested during this period in expanding the productive capacity of the economy.

The development of information technology and growth of IT related investments have probably been promoted by the stable economic environment and been an important driving force behind the unparalleled upswing. It is not then possible to see any clear signs in the Swedish economy that we are on our way into a development similar to the American. At the same time, there are similarities, both with regard to the reorientation of the macroeconomic policy and to the penetration of computers and information technology in Swedish society. An important difference between USA and Sweden is that use of resources in the American economy has been high for many years while the Swedish economy was in a downturn for practically the whole of the 1990s. Investment usually increases only after a long period of high capacity use. The focus on stable prices and budget consolidation also started later in Sweden than in the USA. A very benevolent interpretation could be that we are moving in the same direction as the USA but with some time lag. The USA also waited for a long time for the productive effects of many computers introduced everywhere in the economy. The conclusion that can be drawn now is that it is anyway still not possible to base monetary policy on a real acceleration of potential growth. Is consumption affected by increase in wealth?
We have come a long way from the time when the first two heads of the IMF were Swedes. It is against this background - our weaker international position - that we should evaluate the importance of becoming full members of the European cooperation. Globalisation has strengthened the significance of the European Union. Of course, I can make direct contacts and conduct a dialogue with my colleagues in, for instance, South Africa or Argentina, and argue for a particular line in an international economic policy issue, which I actually often do. They listen to my arguments, but when it really comes to the crunch on an important and sensitive issue, they always wonder what Europe thinks. To an increasing extent - and here there is a tangible difference compared with ten years ago - countries in other parts of the world are regarding Europe as a whole unit. Thus, if we do not have a strong influence in Europe, we will not be heard very far. The discussion of influence focuses too much, in my opinion, on the value of sitting on the ECB's Governing Council and determining interest rates. Of course, as members we would do all we could to ensure this functioned well, but there is no opportunity here to take into account specific Swedish interests; the rates are set for to the good of Europe as a whole. More important from a Swedish perspective would be the discussions on developments in and regulation of the financial system.

In conclusion, despite the upward global economic challenges at various indicators, especially the forecasts for growth of the global economy to slow, and the factors that still affect the performance of many global economies, the recent data of the Arab banking sector for 2021 revealed positive results in terms of capitals, liquidity and profitability inducing to adopt a countercyclical policy by rebuilding capital and liquidity margins for the sector units to face any future challenges. Ladies and Gentlemen, Once again, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude and appreciation to your Excellencies, and hope that the outcomes of this meeting help achieve the desired goals in supporting financial and monetary stability and plans of development and prosperity for our countries. Thank you  18/9/2022  Page 4 of 4