samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Transactions on the Turkish Derivatives Exchange are expected provide more forward-looking and quantitative information for Central Bank reports, especially with the transition to explicit inflation targeting after 2006. Hence, if we bear in mind that derivatives markets act as a “catalyst” in the economy, all kinds of arrangements concerning the operation of these markets should be handled carefully. In this context, orientation programs and training should be conducted in order to encourage banks and companies to operate in this market. Central bank independence In conclusion, I would like to say a few words about the maintenance and reinforcement of Central Bank independence. In addition to the points I will deal with here, you can also refer to the speech “Central Bank Independence” on our website, in which this issue is covered in detail from both economic and legal perspectives. In democratic societies, the term ‘independence’ is used to define the institutions establishing that society, for instance, the independent central bank. This issue occasionally raises questions such as ‘Independence from what or whom?’ However, when looking at the historical background, it can be seen that “independence” was granted to institutions by the societies themselves as the consequence of a democratic process and their ultimate goal is to maximize social welfare. Central Bank independence becomes even more significant, not only as a concept, but in terms of its consequences.

In this framework, policies regarding foreign trade, competitiveness and education-technology should be implemented in coordination and conformity. Conditions for continued success So far, I have tried to explain the relative macroeconomic stability and the structural transformation process observed in the Turkish economy in the last three years. I wanted to draw your attention to the radical changes experienced throughout this process. These radical changes have created an environment in which uncertainties and resulting volatilities have been eased. In this environment, it is now possible to make forward-looking policy suggestions that will enable the improvement of social welfare and necessary measures to be taken. However, despite the significant distance covered in terms of achieving lasting macroeconomic stability, we have not yet reached desired level. In order to make current achievements permanent, the immediate sound policies and the structural transformation process should continue in an uninterrupted manner. As also stated in the 2004 European Union Progress Report on Turkey, structural reforms needed for establishing a healthy macroeconomic environment in the coming period can be categorized under a number of headings. The first one is the necessity of assuring ongoing support to the achieved stability in the banking sector with the help of reforms that will strengthen the sector. Despite the important steps taken on the way to remove problems in the banking systems following the 2001 crisis, there are still shortcomings in this area. In line with the achievements observed in the banking sector, studies for an effective risk management scheme have started.
Over the past year, low consumer price inflation has probably contributed to keeping nominal wage increases lower than implied by labour market tightness in isolation. Low inflation has resulted in high growth in household purchasing power even with moderate pay increases. The results from this year’s wage settlement indicate that wage growth this year may be lower than the projection in the March Inflation Report. Inflation among our trading partners is expected to be low in the next few years. It is likely that high prices for oil and other commodities will continue to push up prices for goods where wages account for a small portion of total costs. On the other hand, growth among most of our main trading partners will probably be too low for idle resources to be utilised in the next few years. Particularly in the euro area, wage growth is likely to be low as a result of moderate economic growth and high unemployment. Overall, it would appear that external price impulses via consumer goods to the Norwegian economy will remain negative this year and next. There is no indication that growth in imports from low-cost countries is declining. The decline in prices for clothing and footwear will probably continue in the coming years. Prices for audiovisual equipment are still falling as a result of strong international competition and high productivity growth. We assume that the effects of structural changes in these markets will gradually be exhausted towards the end of the projection period.

However, growth in Norway’s total exports excluding oil and gas is lower than import growth among our trading partners. Mainland fixed investment has gradually become an important driving force in the upturn. Investment has picked up in most industries and growth was stronger than expected towards the end of 2004. Norges Bank’s regional network has registered rising investment in all industries. Petroleum investment in particular appears to be growing at a rapid pace. This may continue to boost mainland output. Even with a strong upturn in the mainland economy, the increase in the number employed has been relatively modest. Productivity rose fairly sharply in the first few quarters after economic growth picked up. Normally, when productivity growth is strong, enterprises again begin to hire new staff. The current upturn has lasted about two years. The fairly low level of growth in employment, as measured by the number of employed, must be seen in the light of the sharp decline in sickness absence through 2004 after rising for several years. The decrease in sickness absence has increased the supply of labour to companies and reduced the need for new employees. Measured in person-hours worked, employment growth was solid last year. Person-hours worked increased by 2.2% from 2003 to 2004. A corollary to the increase in the number of person-hours worked is partly reduced sickness absence and partly three more working days in 2004 compared with 2003. Inflation has been low in recent years. Initially, the fall in prices for imported consumer goods pushed down underlying inflation.
In contrast to the typical IMF program, governments were permitted to use a  BIS Review 69/2007  3  portion of the IMF-supplied resources to take some pressure off the exchange rate, as foreign investors sought to reduce their exposures to the crisis countries in the initial stages of the crises. But the provision of large external financial resources was not, by itself, sufficient to achieve stability. The critical feature of every program was a set of policy measures designed to address the causes of the crisis, to stabilize confidence and to put in place conditions for recovery. In some cases, the initial policy response looked tentative or inadequate. In others, the reform program did not appear to have broad support within the government. Broader political uncertainty associated with a pending election or change in leadership also undermined confidence in the commitment to a credible recovery plan. Where confidence in the recovery plan was weak, the financial resources had little impact on market sentiment and confidence faltered. Even though the resources looked large relative to past financial interventions, they were easily overwhelmed when markets were unimpressed by the policy response. Ernesto Zedillo explained the policy challenge exceptionally well when he wrote that since markets tend to overreact at the onset of crisis, so policy needs to overreact too. A classic problem in financial crises is to distinguish between problems of illiquidity and insolvency. This diagnosis is critical to the design of an effective response, but it is very hard to do.

Once confidence had been shattered, the markets responded with brutal speed and force. Monetary authorities without a record of institutional independence and without a sufficiently clear mandate for price stability did not have the experience or credibility needed to restore confidence quickly. The crises helped bring about a fundamental reassessment of the merits of fixed but adjustable exchange rate regimes, regimes that try to exist somewhere in the middle between the opposite extremes of irrevocably fixed and purely floating. The new consensus, which you can now see in policy choices across emerging markets, is that the soft middle is fundamentally untenable for an economy that is open to cross-border capital flows. With the limited exceptions of those cases where full monetary union or a currency board is optimal, or where a fixed exchange rate can provide a nominal anchor for a disinflation strategy, the general view now is that flexible exchange rate regimes make more sense for emerging market economies. Exchange rate flexibility offers the advantage of allowing monetary policy to be directed at sustaining price stability, which in turn offers a better prospect of sustained growth. Changes in fundamental factors such as productivity growth and inevitable shocks to demand and supply require changes in relative prices, both domestically and internationally. A flexible exchange rate makes it easier for relative prices to move rapidly and effectively in the appropriate direction and so generally eases the cost of adjustment.
Chart 1 illustrates how the growing proportion of nonprime first mortgage loans helped fuel the sharp rise in home prices. As home prices rose and the stock market performed strongly, household net worth rose sharply. Households responded by borrowing more and saving less. After all, why save when the rise in home prices was adding to your wealth and the housing equity created by the rise in home prices could be easily tapped for funds as needed? The use of home equity as a source for funds to support consumption is evident in the fact that the homeowners’ equity as a share of home values was essentially flat over this period (Chart 2). This indicates that homeowners were borrowing against their accumulated gains. The surge in home prices pushed up the ratio of household net worth to disposable income to nearly 640 percent and the personal saving fell below 2 percent (Chart 3). The surge in home prices was fueled by products and practices in the financial sector that led to a rapid and unsustainable buildup of leverage and an underpricing of risk during this period. These dynamics in turn provided the fuel that caused house prices and consumer spending to rise much faster than income. As shown in Chart 4, the share of GDP accounted for by consumption and residential investment climbed to a peak of 76 percent in 2005 from 71 percent in the mid-1990s. The boom, of course, was unsustainable.

Tightening policy sharply in order to deal with the currently elevated level of inflation would simply have put a brake on the recovery unnecessarily and would have made inflation more likely than not to fall below the target in the medium term. If all goes to plan, however, and private final demand continues to pick up the baton as the fiscal consolidation proceeds, then the margin of spare capacity will shrink and it will at some juncture become appropriate to begin withdrawing the current extraordinary degree of monetary stimulus. And, when that point comes, the MPC will aim to do so in a timely, but measured, fashion. As 2010 draws to a close, the good news, then, is that the recovery, here and more widely, has remained on track, following the sharpest downturn in activity since the Great Depression. Such an outcome was by no means guaranteed twelve months ago; for that we must be grateful. But there remain significant challenges for the year ahead. In many developed countries, the after-effects of the financial crisis still linger, in the form of banks that are still overly reliant on official support, fragile household and business confidence, and bloated public sector deficits and debt. Moreover, the rapid recovery in emerging markets  BIS Review 169/2010  5  has reawakened global inflationary pressures. And here in the United Kingdom, inflation has been running above the MPC’s 2% target for an uncomfortably long time. It may be some while yet before normality is restored. Thank you.
We also regard our definition as a particular advantage in the post-pandemic phase, with its heightened uncertainty regarding structural equilibria. Why is this so? And how can three adjustments that have been discussed internationally be put in context against the backdrop of the specific situation in Switzerland and our definition of price stability? The first possible adjustment relates to the level of the inflation target. A credible higher inflation target would lead to both an increase in expected and realised inflation. The consequence would be higher average nominal interest rates, which would reduce the likelihood of the effective lower bound being reached. As a result, unconventional measures – Page 7/16  in our case primarily foreign exchange market interventions – would need to be used less frequently. Why do we not aim for a higher rate of inflation? We do not believe a higher inflation target would truly free us from the problem of the effective lower bound. It would take a significantly higher inflation target to sustainably lift interest rates from the lower bound. However, such a target would no longer be compatible with our statutory mandate to ensure price stability. Furthermore, it would not tally with the pronounced preference of the Swiss people for low inflation. Higher rates of inflation would be neither understood nor accepted in Switzerland. A survey of more than 400 Swiss companies in the first half of 2022 showed a large majority in favour of low inflation, by which they typically mean a rate between 0% and 2% (cf.

Of course, besides the influence of monetary policy, this development of the real economy also reflects structural factors such as the strong resilience of the well-diversified Swiss economy and the flexible labour market. Companies had to make considerable efforts to adapt to the difficult conditions after each appreciation surge, which may have enhanced the flexibility and efficiency of the Swiss economy even further. The increase in the population as a result of immigration made a positive contribution to growth as well. Furthermore, during the pandemic in particular, there was also a rapid and targeted fiscal policy response. II. New constraints The pandemic and the war in Ukraine have fundamentally changed the constraints on central banks. In particular, inflation has risen strongly in many countries over the past year, and uncertainty has also increased markedly in many respects. The SNB, too, is at present confronted with an inflation rate that is significantly above the range we equate with price stability. As in recent years, inflation in Switzerland is currently lower than in many other countries. Besides the strong Swiss franc, the energy mix in Switzerland has thus far also helped to keep inflation comparatively low. Nevertheless, the current level of 3.4% is still the highest inflation our country has seen since the 1990s. Furthermore, there are signs that inflation is increasingly spreading to goods and services that are not directly affected by the pandemic or the war in Ukraine.
But there is also a risk that one may thus give too little weight to the possibility that things could actually go better than we believe and thus we may receive a surprise from a different direction. I have worked with forecasting for many years, and there are two things in particular that I have noted, and for which I also believe there is scientific evidence: that it is difficult to predict turning points in the economy, and, once they have happened, it is easy to underestimate the strength of the development that follows. This applies to both downturns and upturns. There is perhaps no reason today to assume that a rapid recovery will be the  6  BIS Review 73/2009  most likely alternative. But it is definitely something that it is worth being prepared for in the slightly longer perspective. A central bank must have good long-term planning. Even if we are busy trying to alleviate the effects of a collapse in economic activity we must ensure that we bear in mind the mediumterm perspective. This may seem self-evident, but I believe it may be important to point it out. Not merely emphasising the short-term perspective is important for maintaining confidence in the inflation target in the long term. There must be a preparedness to act in a situation which could differ from the expected by being both better and worse.

In addition, in cases pursuant to Article 17 of Regulation (EU) 2018/389 regarding corporate payment processes and protocols, a payment service provider will have to submit to the BNB an audit report performed by auditors with expertise in IT security and payments. The audit report should certify that those processes or payment protocols guarantee at least equivalent levels of security to those provided for strong customer authentication as per Article 100 of the Law on Payments Services and Payment Systems. The provider must notify the BNB of any change in the application of exemptions from strong customer authentication. In addition to these requirements, payment service providers applying the exemptions should perform the monitoring, as stated in Article 21 of Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2018/389, and make the results available to BNB upon request. Charges on Cross-border Payments in Euro and Currency Conversion Charges Regulation (EU) 2019/5183 introduces the requirement for payment service providers in non-euro area Member States to levy equal charges for cross-border payments in euro and for corresponding national payments of the same value in the national currency of the respective Member State. Such a legal requirement has existed so far only in respect to equal charges for national and cross-border payments in euro. The requirement for equal charges will become mandatory for payment service providers as of 15 December, 2019.
There are, of course, many criticisms one could make of the specific inadequacies of the fiscal support that has been provided and the timing of the various measures. Nonetheless, it is fair to say that fiscal policy has fulfilled its stabilisation role in the Czech Republic and elsewhere during the crisis. Inflation has surprised us quite significantly during the Covid crisis. Shortly after the pandemic broke out, we at the CNB cut our interest rate in three steps almost to zero in order to reduce the expected demand slump at least partially. At the time we were worried that inflation would fall quickly and sharply, as it has done in past crises. Our decision was guided largely by economic intuition, because it is extremely difficult to draw up quantitatively reliable forecasts at critical junctures under large and complex uncertainties. In the year since the crisis erupted, inflation has declined from above the upper boundary of our inflation target to close to the target, but that’s about all. Looking back, we can see two main reasons why inflation did not fall significantly lower. The first is that our economy was strongly overheated before the coronavirus crisis and the crisis merely tempered the overheating. Unfortunately, I have to admit that if we’d been better able to estimate future inflation in 2019 and had not been so unsettled by the risks associated with Brexit and trade wars, we’d have taken interest rates higher at that time.

Had we done that, inflation would have been closer to the target last year and we’d have had a little more room to ease the interest rate component of the monetary conditions. The second reason is rather more complex and technical and relates to our gradually evolving perception of the relationship between the supply and demand-side factors of inflation. At the start of the coronavirus crisis we felt that the potential output level would not fall significantly and that the sharp drop in demand would cause the output gap to widen and have a disinflationary effect. However, core inflation did not fall very far in the months that followed. So, we gradually reappraised this picture, lowering the potential output level and proportionately reducing the size of the output gap. Not only was the persistently high inflation consistent with a relatively small output gap, but the decline in potential output matched our growing conviction that the coronavirus crisis was primarily a supply shock. This is apparent from a closer inspection of the supply side, where remarkable changes were and still are going on. The coronavirus crisis saw unprecedented interactions between the supply and demand side.
Härle et al (2010), “Basel III and European banking: Its impact, how banks might respond, and the challenges of implementation” McKinsey & Company. Richardson, G (2006), “Determinants of tax evasion: A cross-country investigation”, Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation 15 (2006) 150–169. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3

The longer you wait to settle, the more money you will owe since interest will be charged each month on the unsettled balance. Cardholders therefore need to be careful not use the card liberally. If you think, the card makes you throw caution to the wind as you spend; you might consider leaving the card alone. The possibility of falling into a debt trap is another real danger that cardholders need to watch out for. Interest rates on credit cards can be high. In some countries interest rates on credit cards can be as high as ten times what banks are willing to give on deposit balances. We will keep our sight on what rates apply in the market as a central bank and may even intervene if necessary. But the responsibility of avoiding falling into a debt trap lies primarily with the cardholder. It is prudent to remember that whilst a credit card can make your life easier and can be a wonderful tool for facilitating payments, if you do not use it wisely, it will become a massive financial burden for you. We must learn some lessons from how failure to keep track of purchases and the uncontrollable propensity to spend outside budget, has led to the financial ruin of many people in the developed economies. The last risk, I want to talk about is pertinent to both cardholders and issuers of cards – and that is the risk of credit card frauds.