samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
We will continue to monitor and assess the impact of the low interest rate on the search for yield and long-term saving behavior. We are also vigilant on other pockets of risks which may have destabilizing effects on the economy, such as those in the real estate sector. Let me now turn to the Bank of Thailand’s plan to handle an increased volatility of foreign exchange, which is the second element of our policy navigation. As a matter of fact, a certain degree of foreign exchange flexibility is desirable for the economy as it allows foreign exchange to act as a shock absorber and facilitates real economic adjustments. With weaker outlook of growth across Emerging Market economies, and the expected Fed’s policy rate hike, many Emerging Market currencies, including the Thai Baht, have depreciated. In case of Thailand, with relatively strong external financial position and well-managed foreign exchange risk exposure by public and private sectors alike, the risks from substantial foreign exchange debt exposure are currently contained. In addition, as part of the Capital Account Liberalization Master Plan, the Bank of Thailand announced earlier this year the relaxation of capital flows measures in a bid to promote more balanced fund flows, and greater flexibility in the foreign exchange markets. As the global financial markets will continue to be volatile in the near term, the Bank of Thailand thus remains focused on mitigating short-term excessive exchange rate volatility to cushion any impact it would have on the domestic financial conditions, and consequently the real economy.

The current account surplus is expected to top 6 per cent of GDP this year, amounting to more than 26 billion USD. Public debt stays rather stable at around 43 per cent of GDP. Our international reserves stand at almost 3 times of short-term debt, among the highest in the region. The non-resident security holdings in our bond market is lower than 10 per cent, while those in the Stock Exchange of Thailand account for around 30 per cent of market capitalization. Such relatively low levels of non-resident participation, compared to our peers, suggest limited exposure to future capital flight. Corporate sector’s foreign debt also accounts for just 13 per cent of total corporate debt as of mid-2015. Moreover, most external debt is concentrated among large corporations. These large firms tend to manage their exchange rate exposure well, by utilizing financial hedging instruments. Careful risk management practice among Thai corporates and financial institutions has made them much more resilient to volatile movements of the exchange rate. The Thai banking system is also resilient, with a high level of capital buffer and stable loan growth, despite some deterioration in loan quality. Banks have closely monitored their customers, and have maintained a high level of loan loss provision as a buffer for bad loans. They are also well capitalized, with the capital adequacy ratio at 17.3 per cent and Tier1 ratio at 14.4 per cent, among the highest in Asia. This suggests that our banking system has sufficient capital to shoulder unexpected loss, and accommodate credit expansion.
Andréa M Maechler: How negative interest works and changes in the management of foreign exchange reserves Speech by Ms Andréa M Maechler, Member of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the Media News Conference of the Swiss National Bank, Berne, 10 December 2015. *  *  *  Accompanying charts can be found at the end of the speech. In my remarks today, I will begin by talking about developments on financial markets since the middle of the year. Then I will discuss the way in which negative interest works. I will conclude with a report on changes in the way we manage our currency reserves. Situation on the financial markets I will start with the situation on the financial markets. Financial market developments since the middle of the year have mainly been shaped by three topics: the uncertainty surrounding the first interest rate move by the Federal Reserve, monetary policy easing measures by the European Central Bank (ECB) and concerns about growth prospects in the emerging economies, particularly China. In mid-August, disappointing economic data and an unexpected depreciation of the renminbi against the US dollar resulted in a sharp decline in the Chinese stock market. The fallout was also felt by stock markets of other emerging and advanced economies in short succession. After volatility on the stock markets had increased sharply at times, investors’ appetite for risk gradually returned at the end of September. Favourable economic data from the US and the euro area contributed to the more positive sentiment.

Cumulative exemption thresholds come to some CHF 300 billion. When negative interest came into effect in January, thresholds were 88% exhausted. Since then, this percentage has steadily increased and is now just over 98%. There are two principle reasons for this. First, a redistribution of sight deposits between banks has taken place. Institutions whose sight deposits exceeded the exemption threshold have transferred money from their SNB accounts to banks which had not exhausted their threshold and were prepared to accept these funds at somewhat less negative interest than –0.75%. This redistribution of sight deposits can be observed, for instance, on the Swiss franc repo market. Chart 3 shows how, on that market, turnover was considerably higher than that recorded for the whole of 2014. Most of the turnover was accounted for by transactions with very short terms. This is likely to include many transactions aimed at exhausting remaining thresholds. The second reason for the higher exhaustion of the exemption thresholds is that banks’ sight deposits at the SNB have increased overall. Since negative interest came into effect in January, sight deposits have risen from approximately CHF 440 billion to some CHF 470 billion at present. The interest burden increases overall when the SNB feeds more liquidity into the system, in particular in the event of further foreign exchange market interventions. This, in its turn, makes it even less attractive to hold Swiss francs. Now that almost all exemption thresholds are exhausted, every newly-created Swiss franc is subject to negative interest.
Work done by my Federal Reserve colleagues, Thomas Laubach and John Williams, suggests that the so-called neutral real  BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  federal funds rate today may be close to zero. 4 This presumably reflects still-persistent headwinds from the financial crisis, such as the constraints on mortgage credit availability to prospective borrowers with lower FICO scores. Second, one might expect that it will still take additional time for these headwinds to fully subside. This implies that the neutral short-term rate may be depressed for some time. Third, my assessment is that the long-run equilibrium real federal funds rate is lower now than in the past, reflecting the likelihood that potential real GDP growth is lower due to slower growth of the labor force and more moderate productivity growth performance. Another important factor that will affect the trajectory of short-term rates is how financial market conditions respond to a rise in short-term rates. Monetary policy works on the economy through how it affects financial market conditions. Economic conditions at any point in time warrant a particular set of financial market conditions so the FOMC can best achieve its objectives of maximum employment and price stability. The FOMC chooses a policy stance to help support financial market conditions that will lead to economic outcomes consistent with its objectives. An important aspect of current financial market conditions is the very low bond term premia around the globe.

In this framework, it is worthy to note that during the five years of its existence, crucial results have been achieved, most noteworthy the approval of the National Retail Payments Strategy (2018–2023). The insofar findings clearly evidence the low financial inclusion of the Albanian population, not only compared with the European Union, but also with regional countries. All these are reflected in a high use of cash in the Albanian economy. Empirical studies by the Bank of Albania in collaboration with the World Bank Group show that the use of cash in economy, beyond the diminishing effects on the mechanisms of the Bank of Albania used for maintaining price stability and safeguarding financial stability, and supporting economic development, has a real cost from its use as a means of payment, amounting to more than 1% of GDP. Furthermore, the use of cash may be seen as a promoter of informality in economy. Hence, this strategy aims to establish a contemporary and comprehensive retail payments market, supported by safe and efficient infrastructures, as well as by a wide range of payments instruments and services that fulfil the needs of financially capable users across the country. This strategy, compiled with the valuable support of the World Bank Group, is the outcome of a long and analytical study and aims to best address the needs of the domestic market. The realisation of this vision is assessed to be materialised through a set of legal, regulatory and infrastructural developments, which promote technological developments and innovation in the payments market.
Anita Angelovska Bezhoska: We remain consistent in maintaining price and denar stability Address by Ms Anita Angelovska Bezhoska, Governor of the National Bank of the Republic of North Macedonia, marking 28 years of monetary independence of the country, Skopje, 26 April 2020. * * *  This day has been deeply imprinted in our history. On 26 April 1992, the independence of our country was completed with the last piece of the mosaic – the monetary sovereignty. The grounds of the monetary independence were laid 28 years ago, by introducing the denar as our currency that replaced the Yugoslav dinar. At the same time, the National Bank began operating as an independent central bank, standing firm in front of the series of challenges in those turbulent times of separation from the Yugoslav state. I address you in times when the global population is facing pandemic of unprecedented proportions. Now, allow me to briefly retreat from the everyday hardship and recall this crucial day of the monetary history, when our modern central bank began constituting with great dedication, sacrifice and vision. A central bank with mission that has been clear since early days – to create an independent and responsible institution that will cope with the current challenge of macroeconomic stabilization and build a capacity to approach central banks in the developed market economies. Looking back, I believe that the challenges of the National Bank’s leading team in the first years of independence had been immense.

Our speaker in the third session, Jean-Pierre Danthine, will illustrate the benefits from the discipline that economic theory can impose on our thinking when analysing European equity market integration. He will also present a generalised approach to estimating the importance of country and sector effects in portfolio allocations. One of his discussants, Bruce Carnegie-Brown, will draw on his experience as a market expert to interpret for us recent developments in bond markets. Finally, as already mentioned, the policy panel, which will be the final session of the conference, will discuss the role of central banks in the maintenance of financial stability  2  BIS Review 60/2002  against the background of the transformation of the European financial system. I am particularly pleased to see that we have been able to bring together such highly esteemed policy-makers and academics for this purpose. Ladies and gentlemen, I should like to finish at this point and hand over to our first speaker. I sincerely thank you again for coming here today. I wish you a very interesting and stimulating discussion, and I look forward to hearing about the results of the second ECB Central Banking Conference. BIS Review 60/2002  3
These include sticky information models, in which new information is slow to diffuse through the population (Mankiw and Reis, 2002), perhaps because agents only probabilistically pay attention to experts or to news (Carroll, 2003). They also include noisy information models, in which agents form expectations based on noisy private signals (Woodford, 2001). Other explanations are based on the use of some form of adaptive learning (Evans and Honkapohja, 2001), switching between different prediction rules (Branch, 2004); or learning from lifetime inflation experiences (Malmendier and Nagel, 2013; Madeira and Zafar, 2012). In our information-based experiment that I discussed earlier, we found that cross-sectional disagreement (variance) in expectations falls after our information treatments, which is consistent with a sticky-information model and points to the importance of private information and information constraints. We also found evidence of gender differences in updating behavior, which in turn may reflect differences in gathering and evaluating new information. Numeracy, financial literacy, and education also appear to play a role in explaining dispersion across respondents, as seen in Chart 8. In our research, we have found extreme inflation expectations, especially high values, to be associated with lower financial literacy and numeracy skills, and with being relatively under-informed about past inflation or inflationrelated facts. Finally, there exists suggestive evidence of respondents forecasting under asymmetric loss, with respondents appearing to be averse to under-estimating inflation.

A second group would be those supervisory agencies, central banks, multilateral financial institutions, and other public authorities around the world who shared with us the perspectives and needs of banking systems that are based in many different markets, economies, and legal systems. Thanks to discussions with these colleagues, such as through joint working groups like the Core Principles Liaison Group and through regional consultations and meetings, the Committee was better able to ensure that the new framework would be relevant to many different kinds of banks and economies that are in various stages of growth and development. The cooperation of so many public authorities worldwide has helped to make Basel II a truly global product. The Committee will continue to seek opportunities to deepen its relationships, and its opportunities for discussion, with other supervisors and central banks in the months and years ahead. Of course, this work would have been impossible without the sponsorship of the Bank for International Settlements. I would like to offer my sincere thanks to Malcolm Knight, the General Manager of the BIS, for his institution’s support of our work on Basel II. The BIS has been a staunch ally and advocate for our work over the entire thirty-year history of the Committee. With regard to Basel II itself, the BIS is fostering a greater understanding of the new framework among central bankers and supervisors  BIS Review 38/2004  1  worldwide through programs organised by its Financial Stability Institute, the “FSI”.
In my opinion, the policy realignment owed at least as much to our international contacts as to the successful opinion-forming work by, for example, the Centre for Business & Policy Studies (SNS). Many of the problems and measures that are being discussed are of a national nature; they vary between countries and it is in each country’s interest to solve them. Moreover, due to differences in the initial situation, the solutions may have to differ, too. One should therefore be cautious about imposing universal mandatory rules. Furthermore, solutions will presumably become more uniform as a result of increased trade and competition. It is likely, however, that fiscal and budget polices will be further coordinated, though this process will not necessarily be driven solely by principles and intellectual arguments. I am more inclined to guess that circumstances will bring this about by degrees  2  BIS Review 6/2002  as new problems, stemming from the member states sitting in the same boat, have to be tackled, perhaps in some cases at rather short notice. Fiscal policy in Sweden The problems for stabilisation policy So what about the problems for stabilisation policy that arise if the euro is adopted? We would clearly have to do without an independent monetary policy. By itself, this may imply a risk of larger cyclical fluctuations and it would also make a proper crisis more difficult to manage with measures of economic policy.

Policy frames in the European Union Before discussing economic policy in Sweden in the event of a transition to the euro, something should be said about the European frames which this policy would have to comply with. These frames already affect the conditions for Sweden’s policy and will presumably do so even more in the future. Of the economic policy processes in the European Union, the most prominent are contingent on the Stability and Growth Pact from 1997. The primary purpose of the Pact is to ensure that budget policy in the member states is conducted so that no country encounters serious problems with debt because that could lead to costs for the Union as a whole and, in the worst case, to other countries being forced to bail out the ‘sinner’. The Pact contains binding rules and in well-defined extreme cases could even result in sanctions. In addition, there is a number of processes or rules whereby peer pressure and benchmarking are used to speed up the EU’s structural reforms. The central policy instrument is the general economic policy guidelines, which can be likened to a budget statement. Other instruments are, for example, the Luxembourg, Cardiff and Lisbon processes. All the above applies to Sweden, whether or not we adopt the euro, though the terms of the Growth and Stability Pact do differ in this respect; the rules for sanctions, for instance, do not apply as long as we are outside the euro area.
The supply might come from lifeinsurance companies, who benefit from increased longevity to the extent that fewer early deaths mean lower claims, and financial intermediaries collecting the savings of those younger investors prepared to bear some of the longevity risk of the old.24 How close private markets can get to providing the optimal amount of risk sharing is hard to say. Private annuity markets which could pool individual longevity risk are small. For collective longevity risks, the burden of unexpectedly high longevity for a particular cohort should be spread over as many generations as possible. In theory, this provides a potential role for government to share risks across generations. 18  Fanny Dashwood is claiming that annuities lead to “moral hazard” to use the modern jargon: the provision of an annuity changes behaviour in a way that increases life expectancy. 19  See Yaari (1965) and Davidoff et al. (2003). For a discussion of pension arrangements in the US see Diamond (2003, 2004). 20  For a theoretical study of annuity provision under adverse selection, see Brugiavini (1993). 21  Finkelstein and Poterba (2004), for instance, note that 65 year old men who voluntarily buy annuities live about 20 percent longer than other men. Pauly and Zeng (2003) found that in the United States adverse selection made it impossible for a private market in prescription drug insurance to function.

But in reforming our pension system, it is important to separate two issues. First, how should we pay for the cost of present pension commitments? Second, what is the right structure for our pension system: which risks should be borne individually and which collectively? A debate is needed over whether present arrangements imply too much or too little sharing of risk. We should remember also that insurance is based on ignorance - ignorance of the outcomes facing each individual. But knowledge can turn risk into certainty. The advent of genetic testing could undermine a private market in insurance against longevity and illhealth. Even if insurance companies could not require testing as a condition of insurance, the fact that tests were available could increase even further the degree of adverse selection in such insurance markets. Pooling risks caused by unequal genetic inheritance might no longer be feasible. Insurance would become instead a question about redistribution, and hence a matter for public policy. 6. Conclusions  In this lecture I have stressed that most public policy decisions are a matter of the balance of risks. There is no certainty. Indeed, it is the illusion of certainty that undermines much public debate. As Bertrand Russell said, “The whole problem of the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts”. Recognising and modelling risks means understanding the limits to our present knowledge. Communicating risk is about transparency.
One such law is the Law on Electronic Documents, Electronic Identification and Trusted Services that we believe could have multiple positive effects on our economy.. Another example that should be underlined is the newly established Central Population Register and the guiding regulations for its operations that besides other functionalities, will offer integration of the trusted services (eID) with the register. All these initiatives clearly denote our strong commitment to embrace with financial innovations and reap its benefits. Dear guests, A Fintech ecosystem cannot flourish in a vacuum. It is of vital importance that the regulators and supervisors, but also other stakeholders collaborate to better achieve the fintech goals that will be enshrined in the National Fintech Strategy. Multiple entities and agencies need to collaborate and contribute their knowledge, expertise, and resources. The support and coordination of these various parties is essential for enabling swift operation of all elements of the ecosystem. Their integration and synergies will provide space for innovation to prosper. Sharing experience and best practices would also help provide guidance on the most effective regulatory frameworks considering country circumstances. Thus, through coordinated and inclusive approach of all stakeholders, let us avoid vacuums and create an enabling financial innovations environment, benefits of which can be felt by the society at large. Thank you.

So far this year, it has bought currency for 30 b.kr., as opposed to 21 b.kr. over the same period in 2014. If it maintains that pace, it will buy more currency in 2015 than in 2014. As a result, the reserves exceed the outstanding foreign-denominated loans taken to finance them – by 65 b.kr. as of the end of February. But we mustn’t rest on our laurels; we need sizeable reserves as we prepare to lift the capital controls. I mentioned uncertainty surrounding the estimation of potential FX outflows once the controls are lifted. But one thing is certain: if the failed banks’ estates were given a green light tomorrow and could convert all of their krónur to foreign currency, and the same happened with the offshore overhang, there is no way we could safeguard stability, let alone bolster confidence, except perhaps after a long time has elapsed. The Central Bank of Iceland has designed a model intended to assess the impact of various developments in the balance of payments over a long horizon, including capital account liberalisation measures. When applied to this instance, the model reveals that our entire foreign exchange reserves would be wiped out – and more besides – if they were used to shore up the exchange rate. This would never be done, of course, and therefore the currency would depreciate sharply.