samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
A related problem is that property prices and borrowing are occasionally driven by psychological factors. These factors are difficult to capture in economic models, as these are often based on the assumption that participants will act in a rational manner. Thus, central banks are often forced to think outside the box and also rely on judgement. There are also other challenges facing “leaning”. Firstly, the imbalance must be identified at a sufficiently early stage. Because of monetary policy lags, reacting too late can be counterproductive. Of course, one must also be sufficiently certain that unsustainable leverage building up, so that the upturn is not being driven by fundamental factors. Otherwise, a higher interest rate would hinder growth unnecessarily. Furthermore, the policy rate is a blunt instrument in so far as it impacts all lending in the economy. If imbalances in financial markets require a significant tightening of monetary policy, this could have severe negative effects on the rest of the economy. It can require decision-makers to make difficult choices and it is a tough challenge to communicate. In this sense, regulations have the advantage that they can be applied in a more focussed manner, which can mean that they can be applied more flexibly than leaning against the wind. At the same time, the very bluntness of the policy rate is one of its strengths compared with regulations. As the policy rate impacts the cost situation in the economy in general, it is difficult to circumvent it.

News conference  Berne, 13 June 2019 Thomas Jordan  Introductory remarks by Thomas Jordan  Ladies and gentlemen It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Swiss National Bank’s news conference. I will begin by setting out our monetary policy decision and our assessment of the economic situation, and will also be explaining an adjustment to our monetary policy strategy. I will then hand over to Fritz Zurbrügg, who will present this year’s Financial Stability Report. After that, Andréa Maechler will talk about the situation on the financial markets, the progress made in replacing the Libor, and the SNB joining the Network for Greening the Financial System. Finally, we will – as ever – be pleased to take your questions. Monetary policy decision and introduction of the SNB policy rate  Let me begin with our monetary policy decision. We are maintaining our expansionary monetary policy. Interest on sight deposits held by banks at the SNB remains at –0.75%, and we will continue to be active in the foreign exchange market as necessary, while taking the overall currency situation into consideration. Our expansionary monetary policy remains necessary. We thereby stabilise price developments and support economic activity. At our monetary policy assessment we also decided to make a small adjustment to our monetary policy strategy. We are now introducing the SNB policy rate, which will take over the function previously performed by the target range for the three-month Libor. The SNB policy rate currently stands at −0.75%.
5 / 11  BIS central bankers' speeches  By introducing proportional regulation, we envision that it will stabilise small banks and enhance the solvency of their business models. I would like to highlight that while proportional regulation limits the risks that small banks can take on, but they will be subject to simpler regulation. This will ensure a fairer competitive environment. The second innovation we also announced a year ago here at the congress is the transition to a new bank resolution mechanism and the creation of a fund for banking sector consolidation. We are now ready, both from a legal point of view and in terms of management, to apply the new bank resolution mechanism. We hope that, as the market progressively clears and there is improved early detection of problems, there will be more cases where it is more beneficial to try to recover banks’ solvency than simply revoke their license. Moreover, the new bank resolution mechanism itself could promote the development of competition in the banking sector: consolidation will allow relatively large banks to return to the market. We are currently observing the lowest competition rate among the largest banks. Thus, we have made progress in two of the three major objectives we announced at last year’s congress. The third objective we spoke about last year was establishing qualitative supervision over financial groups – we have prepared a draft bill that is being discussed in the government. We hope this innovation will be introduced next year.

In our opinion, a convenient, large-scale voluntary funded pension system is needed to preserve the funded pension market given the expected long-term freezing of the funded component of pensions. In conjunction with the Ministry of Finance, we have spent a lot of time developing the Individual Pension Capital system. This involves voluntary pension deductions via automatic subscription. In our opinion, it is crucial to establish centralised administration of the system. It will provide a single window for customer service, and standardise and automate work, providing the public with a convenient service. Incidentally, we believe that having centralised administration would reduce the number of incidents where the public’s rights are infringed when transitioning from one non-state pension fund to another. As we see it, the draft bill is currently nearing completion. The government is working on removing disagreements and, all being well, the draft bill will soon be submitted to the Duma. Moving on to the insurance market. It is demonstrating growth and is, on the whole, marked by positive trends. However, there are problematic segments: mainly OSAGO. Resolving the issues linked to OSAGO is one of our near-term objectives. As of this year, it is mandatory for insurance companies to sell the OSAGO policy in electronic form. This helped provide access to the policy in problematic regions. In the first half of the year, seven times the number of electronic policies were issued than over the course of the whole previous year.
In an intriguing paper, Ken Rogoff has shown that output and inflation volatility have declined by considerably more over recent decades than the volatility of returns on a range of financial assets (Table 1).6 As Rogoff discusses, there could be a number of explanations. Financial markets might believe that the Great Stability will not last. Or it may be taking them a while to price in lower macroeconomic volatility. Or the beneficial effects of macroeconomic stability may be being offset by something else. In the third category, Rogoff discusses the possibility that, with the lower level of risk-free rates that have accompanied the Great Stability, a given change in the yield curve now has a bigger proportionate effect on asset prices. I am not sure this would be my own best bet. Common v. idiosyncratic volatility But first, some facts. In the case of equity markets, we need to separate the dominant common (or macro) component of index returns from that attributable to variability in the firm-specific (or idiosyncratic) component. Comparing the period from 1980 to 1992 with that since 1992, when inflation targeting was introduced in the UK, the common component – proxied by the average correlation between returns on pairs of equity index components – has fallen by around 25%7 (Chart 1). Forward-looking measures, derived from option prices, imply that these pairwise correlations are not expected to fall much further. All told, this seems consistent with some beneficial effect on asset volatility from the Great Stability, but with Rogoff’s puzzle intact.

Rodrigo Vergara: Chile’s September 2014 Monetary Policy Report Presentation by Mr Rodrigo Vergara, Governor of the Central Bank of Chile, of the Monetary Policy Report before the Honorable Senate of the Republic, Santiago de Chile, 3 September 2014. *  *  *  The Monetary Policy Report of September 2014 can be found at http://www.bcentral.cl. Introduction Mr. Vice-president of the Senate, Senator Eugenio Tuma, honorable senators, ladies, gentlemen, Thank you for your invitation to the Board of the Central Bank of Chile to present our Monetary Policy Report. As is the norm each September, this Report coincides with the annual report from the Central Bank Board to the Senate, where we share our vision on the recent macroeconomic and financial developments in Chile and abroad, as well as their prospects and implications for monetary policy conduct. Chile’s economic outlook has seen important changes over the past few months. In particular, the slowdown in output has been more pronounced than anticipated and is expected to be also more persistent. A year ago, when we came to the Senate to present our vision of what would be the economy in 2014, we projected that it would expand in the 4 to 5 percent range. Today, as I will detail in a moment, we estimate that growth will be between 1.75 and 2.25 percent this year and between 3 and 4 percent in 2015, that is, less than our estimate for medium-term growth in our economy.
This would spur hedge funds to disclose more or to obtain a credit rating. Global financial supervision The crisis has set off debate as to whether the global capital market needs a global regulator. I doubt this is workable, or even desirable. A global financial super-regulator requires countries to give up national sovereignty. This is politically unrealistic; witness how carefully the IMF had needed to 2  George Soros in The Crisis of Global Capitalism, Ch. 7 The Global Financial Crisis, p. 136. 5  BIS Review 93/1999  canvas its major shareholders to support its prescriptions and how closely the US Congress scrutinises the IMF’s actions. A more practical, albeit modest, solution is the establishment of the Financial Stability Forum. This brings together both the G7 countries as well as non-G7 financial centres and international organisations such as the IMF, World Bank and the BIS to discuss the vulnerabilities of the world system. The Forum should be able to get best practices and supervisory standards implemented more widely and effectively. The FSF has set up three working groups to study areas of vulnerability highlighted by the crisis: capital flows and exchange rate regimes, highly leveraged institutions and offshore financial centres (OFC). Singapore has been invited to participate in the FSF, together with Australia, Hong Kong and the Netherlands. We are also in the OFC working group. OFCs have attracted considerable attention because of the significant capital flows they generate.

Remarks on the launch of the Recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures Mark Carney Chair of the Financial Stability Board Governor of the Bank of England  Delivered at the Tate Modern 14 December 2016  1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/default.aspx  Welcome  It is my great pleasure to have been invited, in my capacity as Chair of the Financial Stability Board (FSB), to help launch the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures consultative report. 1  In late 2015, at the request of the G20 , the FSB established this private-sector, industry-led Task Force, under the leadership of Michael Bloomberg. Its mandate was to develop recommendations for voluntary, consistent, comparable, clear and reliable disclosures around climate-related financial risks for companies. The purpose was to provide the information that investors, lenders, insurers and other stakeholders need to manage these risks, and seize the associated opportunities. As those of you who’ve had an opportunity to read their report will have seen, the Task Force has achieved a great deal during the year. So on behalf of shareholders, creditors and citizens, I thank all of the Task Force members for their tremendous efforts, and your companies for making you available for this important work. If you want a job done well, give it to busy people. Public authorities – like the G20 and the FSB – could identify the problem, but we needed the private-sector to provide the solution. This is a solution for the market, by the market.
Your Honour, apart from Zambian delegates, this international seminar has drawn participation from several other countries including: Angola, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius and Mozambique. Other participants are from Namibia,  2  BIS Review 26/2008  Nigeria, Sweden, Tanzania, Swaziland and Uganda. With this wide participation, I have no doubt that the seminar will be thought-provoking and highly participatory, given also the high calibre of resource persons from institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of International Settlements. I therefore wish all of you good deliberations and a memorable stay in Livingstone and Zambia in general. It is now my privilege to call upon His Honour the Vice President of the Republic of Zambia, Mr Rupiah Banda to deliver the official opening speech for the seminar. Your Honour Sir! Thank you. BIS Review 26/2008  3

Notwithstanding this wider reach, life insurance coverage has remained relatively low compared with the more developed markets in the region such as the Republic of Korea, Singapore and Japan which reported penetration rates of more than 80%. Given the vast untapped market potential and the increased product innovation and new distribution channels, the life insurance penetration in Malaysia is expected to strengthen. Demographic changes leading to a growing ageing population has been a growing concern in many countries. Given the trends in rising life expectancy and falling birth rates, responding to the increased challenges of retirement financing has been high on the nation's socio-economic development agenda. Going forward, there will be greater interest in private pension schemes representing an are of significant growth opportunities for life insurers. The financial performance of the Malaysian insurance industry has also continued to be impressive during the 2000 and 2005 despite the challenging underwriting and investment conditions, with growth primarily driven by the life sector. Total insurance fund assets of the industry grew at an average  BIS Review 55/2006  3  annual rate of 13.8%. The insurance industry also increased in importance as a component of the economy and financial system. The ratio of total industry assets to nominal GNP rose from 16.1% in 2000 to 20.4% in 2005, while the ratio to total assets of the financial system continued on an upward trend from 4.0% in 2000 to 5.1% in 2005.
As I have already said, a significant part of the responsibility for the low growth potential of the Spanish economy lies with the limited use of labour. In my opinion, this is closely related to the structural shortcomings that have, for decades, hampered the operation of the Spanish labour market. These shortcomings not only result in insufficient use of this productive resource, but also give rise to a further factor that limits the growth of productivity in Spain relative to other European countries. The Spanish labour market displays two undesirable stylised facts. First, it is characterised by the persistence of significantly higher unemployment rates than in other European countries, even in upswings. Combating high unemployment and, in particular, its long-term component requires the appropriate instruments, in the form of active labour market policies, in order to increase the employability of persons who have lost their jobs, so as to avoid a permanent deterioration in their human capital and in the growth potential of the economy overall. 9  See P. Cuadrado et al. (2020), A sectoral anatomy of the Spanish productivity puzzle, Occasional Paper No 2006, Banco de España. 20  Second, the unemployment rate fluctuates sharply, which means that inequality also increases substantially during crises. These sharp cyclical fluctuations in unemployment are explained by the high rate of temporary employment and the low protection of workers with temporary contracts compared to those with permanent ones, which means that employment adjustment in recessions falls on temporary workers.

In our region, the recovery of activity and employment has continued, though the data indicate relatively stronger performance in New York State and New York City than in New Jersey, while Puerto Rico has yet to show any meaningful improvement. Our special topic shows a trend toward job polarization both in the nation and the region, which focuses our attention on the ever-growing importance for workers to acquire skills and upgrade their skills on an ongoing basis. I will now ask Jim Orr to present the update of economic conditions in our region. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches
Considering now financial development, another kind of imbalance shows up. The global rise in savings, especially in the emerging world, has not been matched by an equivalent increase in the supply of safe and liquid financial assets. This “asset shortage” is one fundamental reason why bubbles have erupted in many countries with increasing frequency, either in real estate or financial markets or both. It also had a strong impact on the direction of capital flows. Only the US economy has the ability to generate liquid and safe assets in significant quantities. US capital markets act naturally as a magnet for world savings, especially for foreign exchange reserves. In addition, financial engineering allowed US institutions to manufacture complex products which looked apparently safe, but proved very fragile. Admittedly, internal imbalances and huge deficiencies in supervision and regulation  BIS Review 170/2010  1  played a role in the run up to the crisis. But the process has been largely driven by capital inflows in the US looking for an improbable combination of liquidity, safety and high returns. Combining all these evolutions gives a good picture of the structural forces behind the crisis. Worldwide shifts in income distribution generated excess saving, which were compensated by wealth effects borne out of increases in asset prices. Since those transformations were asymmetrically distributed around the world, they were accompanied by growing imbalances and capital flows. Obviously, purely domestic factors, especially in the US played a major role in amplifying the underlying imbalances.

I will argue that those phenomenons can all be ascribed to two common causes: a worldwide based shift in the primary distribution of income; and asymmetries in financial development among countries. Together, they combine to produce (1) excess saving in emerging economies (2) strong capital inflows to the US (3) an increasing frequency in financial booms and busts and asset price bubbles in both advanced and emerging economies. Let’s look first at income distribution. In China, the share of wages in GDP has declined from 55% in 1992 to 48% in 2008. In the US, the median real wage has been stagnant over the last fifteen years despite the fact that real GDP has grown annually by above 3% over the same period. These are deep changes mostly driven by technology and demographics, in proportions which are hotly debated, and partly unexplained. In contrast to wage developments, consumption trends have been widely divergent. In China, the share of consumption has gone down by more than 10 % of GDP over the last decade. In the US, consumption kept growing (both in absolute and in GDP share) fueling the demand for imports. Households in the US could consume more and save less because they felt richer. And they felt richer because the value of their houses and financial assets was rising at a quick pace and that trend was expected to persist. Broadly speaking, the worldwide equilibrium between demand and supply of goods was based on a continuing asset price bubble in the United States.
The outlook for credit risk remains uncertain and we therefore expect firms to be forward-looking in how you manage the risks this presents. We are doing the same. I also set out the ways in which we are evolving our supervisory and regulatory regimes to ensure that they can support growth and innovation within a sustainable and resilient mutual sector. I encourage you to engage actively with those changes to help us make them work well. Finally, I was asked before I came up to Liverpool whether I was looking forward to the Q&A section which will follow my remarks. The answer of course is a resounding ‘yes’ as I enjoy the open and frank engagement I have with BSA members. But I also know that some of your questions can be really quite challenging. So, my response, in recognition of events here next week was to quote Gina G by saying, ‘Ooh, Aah…just a little bit’19 (sorry I just couldn’t resist that one). I would like to thank Phil Evans, Alison Scott, Vicky Saporta, Monica Shant, Rogier Wieffer, Nick Lock, Vrunda Chunilal, Isabel Jennings and Anjli Shah, for their assistance in preparing these remarks. Thank you. 19 Ooh Aah Just A Little Bit, Gina G, 1996, UK

Ravi Menon: Three “C”s of a good payment instrument Welcome address by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), at the Currency Conference 2011, Singapore, 3 October 2011. *  *  *  Why cash is still king Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, good morning and a warm welcome to Singapore and the 2011 Currency Conference. Singapore is honoured and delighted to host this flagship event. The late Mr John Shepherd-Barron, who pioneered in 1967 the development of the Automated Teller Machine, or ATM, said during a 2007 interview: “Money costs money to transport. I am therefore predicting the demise of cash within three to five years.” Shepherd-Barron believed fervently that we would soon be swiping our mobile phones at till points, even for small transactions. We have indeed seen an increasing use of cashless payments at point-of-sale. Electronic payment alternatives have mushroomed in many countries, ranging from contactless stored value cards in Singapore to real-time settlement of electronic fund transfers in the United Kingdom. But cash remains “king”. Even in advanced economies. This is especially so for person-toperson transactions and micro-payments. Take high-tech Singapore. The use of electronic payments has proliferated rapidly in recent years. Yet, currency-in-circulation has been growing at an average 7 per cent per annum during the last ten years. This has reflected demand from a growing population and a growing economy. Less well known is how the demand for cash globally is being driven by tourism.