samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
In late November, the annual growth of budget revenues was only 2 percent, almost entirely reflecting the low pace of generating the tax revenues. On the other hand, public expenditures have maintained high growth rates, accounting for 16.4 percent in November. The budget deficit reached ALL 65 billion in November. The deficit has been mostly financed through foreign borrowing and privatization receipts, dampening the pressures in the domestic financial market Rapid growth of expenditure and budget deficit during 2009 has further increased the public debt level, accounting for 58 per cent of GDP at the end of November. The Bank of Albania deems that the future budget policy orientation towards fiscal consolidation, aiming at reducing the public debt, is now a prerequisite for the macroeconomic stability in the country. As we have constantly stated, the public debt reduction will mitigate the pressure of the public sector on the financial markets, creating more room for the private sector. Consolidation of public finances will also lower the risk premiums in the economy and will raise the monetary policy effectiveness. Monetary supply slowed down further in the second half, reflecting to a great extent, the ever lower credit growth. Annual growth of private sector loan portfolio slowed down to 10 percent in November. Unlike the first six months of 2009, when credit growth curbing was more  BIS Review 11/2010  3  affected by the tightened supply, in the second half of the year the credit performance was dictated by decreased demand for loans.

The Bank of Albania cut the key interest rate by one percentage point, down to 5.25 per cent during this period. It also  2  BIS Review 11/2010  steadily increased liquidity injection, according to banking system needs for liquidity and the economy demand for funding. Concerning liquidity injection, the Bank of Albania has made use of the entire range of monetary policy injecting instruments, facilitating at the same time the access to and easing the cost of operation of the banking system with the central bank. Also, in the presence of the exchange rate depreciation, such policy has brought about easing monetary conditions, serving the promotion of the economic activity. However, the pass-through of easing monitoring policy on interest rates of banking products has been limited, due to liquidity constraints of the banking system and weakened demand of the public sector for funds. On the other hand, the banking system itself has been reserved with regards to lending, as a result of the increased risk in the economy and performance of loan portfolio quality. The alleviation of these problems would help to more fully transmit the monetary policy and enhance its effectiveness. The country’s external position continues to be characterized by a high and upward current account deficit. During the first three quarters of the year, the deficit was fully covered by capital and financial account inflows, resulting in increased foreign exchange reserves of the Bank of Albania. However, the inflows have been significantly favoured by privatization receipts and by public sector borrowing.
We will continue to carefully monitor – as we always have done – the possible side effects of accommodative monetary conditions. It is crucial to remain vigilant and to use the available micro- and macroprudential policy tools as necessary. I will say more on this during the hearing in my capacity as Chair of the European Systemic Risk Board. The low yield environment needs to be understood in the context of the protracted decline in real yields we have witnessed since the 1980s. And this trend is not unique to the euro area. It largely reflects more structural factors such as a slowdown in productivity growth, which can be reversed through an ambitious structural reforms agenda. In other words, we need a coherent economic strategy in the euro area that complements and enhances the effectiveness of monetary policy. This is why there was unanimous consensus in the Governing Council that fiscal policy must make a more decisive contribution. In view of the weakening economic outlook and the continued prominence of downside risks, governments with fiscal space that are facing a slowdown should act in an effective and timely manner. Where fiscal sustainability is ensured, the potential effectiveness of countercyclical fiscal policy is reinforced in the current environment, given that 4/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  fiscal multipliers are higher in a low interest rate environment. At the same time, governments in countries with high public debt should pursue prudent policies and deliver on structural balance targets.

I would like to say that the draft Guidelines are available on the official website of the Bank of Russia. We are now discussing the document with experts and analysts. It was reviewed at a Russian Government meeting. Based on the discussion outcomes, including the today’s discussion, we will be ready to finalise the document and submit it for consideration to the State Duma. Thank you very much for your attention! 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches
From all this it is clear that the economy will be characterised by vigorous expansion this year and into 2006. BIS Review 22/2005  3  According to the inflation forecast also published in Monetary Bulletin, the outlook for inflation has improved since the previous forecast in December but will remain above target two years ahead. The higher policy rate and a substantial appreciation of the króna will subdue domestic demand and dampen rises in import prices, especially in the short term. Inflation will therefore be somewhat lower over the forecast horizon than was forecast in December. The Central Bank forecasts an inflation rate around the 2½% target one year ahead, which is lower than forecast in December. Two years ahead, inflation is forecast at just over 3%, which is also somewhat lower than the rate forecast in December, although still above target. It is important to remember that an unchanged monetary policy stance and unchanged strong exchange rate are assumed over the forecast horizon. The forecast describes the way that the Bank considers developments are most likely to unfold if it takes no further measures than it had already taken. Obviously, uncertainty increases over the horizon of the forecast. A particular uncertainty is the exchange rate, which is at a historical high at present as I have discussed, posing a higher probability that it will give way over this period and inflation will increase.

Plans by the Housing Financing Fund (HFF) to raise its loan-to-value ratio and maximum mortgage amounts prompted a response from the banks, which began offering mortgage loans on far easier terms than had been customary. So far the main impact of increased credit supply on the price level has been through the housing component of the Consumer Price Index (CPI). In the beginning of March the twelve-month rate of increase in housing prices was 24%. Excluding the housing component, the CPI had increased by 2% over the same period. Housing inflation has therefore clearly made a major contribution to total inflation in recent months. Another cause of concern is inflation in services. Over the past twelve months, prices of public services have risen by 6.9%, driving up the CPI by 0.5 percentage points, and private sector services by 3.5%, adding a further 0.8 percentage points. Rising prices of private sector services have often been an indication of mounting demand pressures. According to estimates by Statistics Iceland, GDP growth amounted to 5.2% in 2004, on the back of 4.2% growth in 2003. Faster GDP growth was largely the result of a continued surge in national expenditure, while exports also increased significantly after a low in 2003. Private consumption also continued to firm up during the year with an estimated growth rate of 7.5%, the fastest for five years. Real disposable income increased more slowly than in 2003, but private consumption was spurred by lower mortgage debt service and easier access to credit.
Our model suggests that the desire to signal ability,  17  We also conducted some probit regressions using lagged real credit growth to predict the probability of banking crisis, following Schularick and Taylor (op.cit.). We replicated their results: lagged real credit growth (up to five or six years) was jointly significant in positively contributing to the probability of there being a subsequent banking crisis, and robust across sub-samples pre and post WWII. The joint significance of fivesix annual lags of real credit growth is consistent with our depiction of the credit cycles as a medium term phenomenon in which sustained booms are statistically significantly related to banking crises. 18  See also Bordo and Haubrich (2010), who show that more severe financial events are associated with more severe real effects in the US 1875–2007. 19  There are, of course, alternative explanations. See, for example, Gomes, Kogan and Zhang (2003), whose model predicts counter cyclical dispersion driven by productivity shocks. Our explanation differs both in that (a) we relate dispersion to lower frequency fluctuations in fundamentals than the business cycle and (b) we stress imperfect information, and in particular the incentive to convey type, which is absent in their model. 16  BIS Review 168/2010  rooted in imperfect information and short horizons, may be a cause of counter-cyclical dispersion in banking returns. 20 Charts 14 and 15 look at the same metrics for UK banks. We have also examined return patterns among the largest global banking and non-financial firms.

21 The results are much the same. On average, the dispersion in banking returns is statistically significantly lower than for non-banks, at the 1% level, both for UK and global institutions. And, in general, we observe a compression of returns during credit booms and a dispersion in busts. There is evidence of an increase in the degree of coordination of global banks’ activities after the financial liberalisation of the 1980s. This suggests credit cycles may have become increasingly synchronous globally. To test this formally, we construct pair-wise correlations between countries’ credit cycles for two post-war sub-samples, 1945–79 and 1980–2008. We plot the cumulative distributions of these cross-country correlations in Chart 16. The same technique can be applied to correlations between countries’ medium term fluctuations in GDP (Chart 17). In each chart, a shift to the right of the cumulative distribution indicates an increase in the degree of crosscountry correlation. Chart 12 Dispersion of equity returns of US banks and top 100 US PNFCs (by market cap)  (1), (2) and (3) represent medium term credit booms. Outside of these areas represent medium term credit busts. Source: Thomson Reuters Datastream and Bank calculations. 20  Theoretical explanations have been put forward by, among others, Campbell and Cochrane (1999) and Mele (2007), who show that habits and cyclically asymmetric risk premia respectively may generate counter cyclical volatility in asset pricing models. 21  This global group of banking institutions included UK and US banks as a subset.
xxi But it is clear that there is a significant North-South divide in Europe in terms of education; and France – it must be said – is "southern" and inegalitarian. PISA studies show that France is the G7 country where academic performance of pupils is the most highly determined by their social environment. xxii This observation illustrates what the Nobel Prize winner Jean Tirole described as the “délit d’initié” or rigged system. xxiii This collective failure also contributes to a structural unemployment rate that is still too high in France, i.e. around 7 to 8%. This challenge is common in Southern Europe, and goes hand in hand with another one: at long last developing apprenticeships and vocational training. There are now fewer young people in apprenticeships in France, Italy and Spain combined than in Germany alone... while there are many more young people, and young people unemployed. It is not a paradox, but rather an explanation... and a call for action. The "Avenir Pro" law passed in France  Page 8 of 10  in 2018 must now be implemented, and Italy’s way out of economic stagnation can be achieved by taking the same tack. 2.3  Commitment to the environment and climate  The third requirement of the European model is a firm commitment to the environment and climate. This issue is currently the largest unifying factor among the young as well as older generations throughout the world. The last European elections showed this clearly.

9  The World Is Flat, Penguin Books, 2006  10  For a detailed exposition, see Gurcharan Das, India Unbound, Penguin Books, 2002  11  The personal experience of the author has been that university students normally tend to give priority to paid professional courses over tuition fee-free university courses. In the third and fourth years, only about a one tenth of registered students attend classes, though public money is spent on all of them. BIS Review 4/2007  7  A further benefit which Sri Lanka could gain by promoting a global market based services sector is the possibility of narrowing the current account deficit of the balance of payments through enhanced service income. Historically, Sri Lanka is having an ever ballooning deficit in the merchandise account. With high international oil prices and rising intermediate and investment goods imports, this deficit has risen to a very high and unsustainable level of about 13 percent of GDP by 2006. Countries with such large trade deficits should perforce attempt to generate an equivalent surplus in the services account so as to finance the same. However, the surplus being generated by Sri Lanka in its services account has not been sufficient to fully off-set the trade deficit. As a result, Sri Lanka normally runs a current account deficit of 5-6 percent of GDP which has to be financed through capital flows. This level of a current account deficit, occurring year after year, is not sustainable.
If monetary conditions in Switzerland called for it, the SNB could sell some of its reserves in order to shorten its balance sheet. Although we have not yet reached this point, such an eventuality should not be ruled out. 11 The SNB must be able to deploy its balance sheet at all times, quickly and without restriction. These reserves therefore have to meet stringent security and liquidity requirements. Consequently, as chart 3 shows, we invest a very large proportion of our reserves in government bonds denominated in the major currencies, such as the euro, the dollar, the yen, pound sterling and the Canadian dollar. Holding liquid investments that can be mobilised rapidly allows the SNB to use its balance sheet at any time, should monetary policy require it. A second aspect that differentiates us from other investors is that we remain as neutral as possible vis-à-vis the market. In other words, we must be able to move large volumes without unduly influencing prices. This neutrality ensures that the SNB is able to build up and scale back its investments quickly and efficiently, while avoiding conflicts of interest with its mandate. Neutrality also guarantees that the SNB’s investment policy remains independent of all political considerations. In this sense, neutrality is an essential condition for the optimal fulfilment of our mandate. Finally, at the operational level, the SNB differs from other investors in that it cannot protect itself against the greatest risk to these reserves – currency risk.

Per cent of labour force 3) Projection  Sources: TRCIS, the Directorate of Labour and Norges Bank JB 7. februar 2003  Annual wage growth1) in 2002 Forecasts made at different points in time by Norges Bank, Statistics Norway and the Ministry of Finance. Per cent 7 NB  SN  MF  6 5 4 3 2 1  01 Ap r0 1 Ju n 01 Au g 01 O ct 01 De c 01 Fe b 02 Ap r0 2 Ju n 02 Au g 02 O ct 02  Fe b  De c  00  0  1) Statistics Norway: Wages per normal person-year Sources: Norges Bank, Statistics Norway and the Ministry of Finance JB 7. februar 2003  Relative labour costs: deviation from historical average 1970-2003 25  25  20  20  15  15  Local currency  10  10  5  5  0  0  -5  -5  -10  Common currency  -15 1970  1975  1980  1985  1990  1995  -10 -15  2000  Sources: Statistics Norway, TRCIS/IMF and Norges Bank JB 7. februar 2003  Manufacturing employment, 1970-2001 In thousands employed 45 0  40 0  35 0  30 0  25 0 1970  1 9 75  Source: Statistics Norway JB 7. februar 2003  1 98 0  1 98 5  19 9 0  1995  2000
The 75 basis point cut in the ECB main policy rate implemented in late 2011 has been accompanied by little reaction or even an increase of lending rates in countries under stress, whereas there has been a complete pass-through in euro area countries considered by the markets as financially solid (see slide 9). Self-fulfilling equilibria driven by break-up fears The third, and most recent, dimension of the debt crisis has taken the form of investor fears of a break-up of the currency union. Whereas exchange rate risk across euro area countries should have disappeared permanently with the creation of the single currency in 1999, there have been signs, especially over the summer, that investors have started pricing in redenomination risk. Investors require a compensation for the risk that the euro might not remain the irreversible currency of the euro area – at least in its current composition. Although it is difficult to disentangle redenomination premia from other sources of risks – and it requires econometric analysis – the inversion of the slope of the term structure of sovereign bond spreads 5 observed in early summer 2012, for instance, for Spain and Italy was consistent with expectations of imminent break-up risks. Market fears of a high probability of not paying back in full, or of equivalently to repaying in a different, lower-valued currency, command high spreads.

The data analyzed by the Supervisory Council show that Q1’s budget spending rose by 16.8%, sustained in part by ALL 12.5 billion budget deficit increase, compared to the same period a year earlier. April’s data show a decelerated growth of budget revenues over this period, underlining the necessity of taking measures to observe the budget deficit projection. Real economy data suggest a slow consumption growth, due to uncertainties about employment outlook. On the other hand, better performance of business credit and increase in capital goods imports suggest that investments have been positive, reinforcing the grounds for a sustainable economic growth in the future. Continued business investments in turn require the response of consumer demand, about which the Bank of Albania judges that there is room for recovery. On the other hand, long-term investment growth will be conditioned by the ability of the Albanian economy to attract foreign capital. In this context, responsible institutions at macro and microeconomic level should further strengthen the work for structural reforms, which develop the comparative advantages of the Albanian economy and enhance our economic competitiveness in goods, labour and capital markets. The Bank of Albania judges that preserving the macroeconomic stability parameters is an indispensable condition to orient its work towards maintaining price stability and supporting financial stability at home. 2011 Q1’s data on trade activity performance at home show a slight trade deficit narrowing, due to increased imports and decelerated export growth over March. Merchandise trade deficit shrank by roughly 0.3% y-o-y, accounting for 22.1% of GDP.
Experience has shown that fiscal policy alone cannot ensure a high level of employment. The structure of the labour market and of wage formation is probably of greater importance. The direct regulation of credit, interest rates and capital movements broke down and was phased out in the 1980s. The krone no longer has a fixed value relative to other currencies. Its value is determined from one minute to the next based on supply and demand. We say that the krone is floating. Price regulation no longer plays a role as a macroeconomic instrument. The scope of business policy has become more general. At the same time, the tax system has become more efficient. Tax rates are lower and the tax base broader. State ownership in the Norwegian business sector remains extensive, but the management of ownership has been completely changed. A number of markets in which the state used to be the sole owner have been opened up to the private sector. The competition in the power and telecom markets and in aviation and broadcasting that you would regard as a matter of course today did not emerge until the 1980s. State-owned companies were listed on the stock exchange and unprofitable enterprises are no longer kept artificially afloat. Norwegian businesses also face increasing global competition. International agreements, through our close collaboration with the EU and through the World Trade Organisation, have provided for freer flows of labour, goods, services and capital in and out of the country.

Banking sector reform: efforts made prior to the strengthening of the legal framework in 2010  Within the broad framework of the economic reforms undertaken in the late 1980s (overall reform of the economic regulation, including that of price systems), the banking reform has been implemented since 1990, following the enactment of the law on money and credit (1990) establishing a two-tier banking system. This major monetary reform reemphasized the role of money and monetary policy- through indirect tools- in macro-financial regulation, thereby enabling a gradual shift from the “financial repression” paradigm. Since the year 1990, and after assessing the vulnerabilities of the Algerian public banking system, a number of reforms have been undertaken to improve the functioning of public banks, reinforce the banking activity operating framework- especially through the opening of the sector to private investors- and promote the development of non-bank financial institutions. Based on institutional audits, action plans aiming at improving public banks functions have been launched during the first half of the 1990s and pursued during the 2000s. In order to improve their governance, performance contracts between the public banks’ managers and the State as the owner, took effect in the beginning of 2007. At the same time, and on the basis of their financial statements audits undertaken by international firms, cleaning up operations of the public banks’ balance sheet started in the beginning of 1991 with the repurchase of non- performing loans (NPLs) and capital increases.