samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Lastly, I would like to emphasize that the level of the current account deficit is not so important in terms of ensuring that it does not follow a volatile course and is not perceived as a significant risk factor. However, in an environment where turbulences are observed in the markets and uncertainty perceptions are increasing, it is reasonable to expect a surge in the perceptions of fragility in the current account deficit, as well as the popularity of these perceptions. The current account deficit is a closely followed indicator. We are also aware of the risk potential of the current account deficit and have been carefully monitoring it in coordination with other agents responsible for the economy. Dear guests, I was most honored to be here in Malatya and to have the chance to share my views on the Bank’s policies and macroeconomic developments with you today. Thank you. 10  BIS Review 89/2006

This support has taken various forms, including the following:   Salary supplementation to fifteen (15) academic staff in the Department of Economics at UNZA and nineteen (19) academic staff in the School of Business at the Copperbelt University (CBU);    Full sponsorship of five undergraduate students at third and fourth year level at CBU and five students at Masters Degree level at UNZA;    Financial support in the acquisition of books and periodicals;    Purchase of equipment such as computers and computer software. The Bank of Zambia acknowledges the various efforts being made by the University to improve its infrastructure and the delivery of quality university education and research. We are also mindful of the various funding constraints faced by the University as it expands its programmes to meet the ever increasing demand for its services. The Bank is therefore, proud to respond to the University’s call for partnership with industry and other stakeholders in order to realise its noble objectives that cannot presently be fully funded from public resources and students fees. In this regard, the Bank of Zambia has seen it fit to not only extend this support, but to also streamline and enhance it in order to better align this support with strategic objectives of both the Bank and the University. Ladies and Gentlemen; as you are aware, the Bank of Zambia has been providing financial support for the purpose of promoting scholarly and academic excellence in research and instruction at the University of Zambia.
The long run containment in inflation necessarily relies on containment of monetary expansion and increase in production in the country, particularly by improving productivity. As the Central Bank, what we can do? Obviously we cannot produce goods or services for the consumption of the economy, but certainly we can create the right conducive environment enabling the country’s economic performance. Why should the Central Bank be interested in productivity? Our role is to maintain economic and price stability and financial system stability. We also provide necessary payments and settlement infrastructure. We advise the government in economic affairs and policy making, and we provide important agency services such as exchange control, public debt management, provident fund management and regional development activity. In all these functions, our Mission is to “contribute to Sri Lanka’s prosperity”. At the same time, the Central Bank widely pronounces the theme of “success through productivity”. 4  BIS Review 116/2008  But, obviously this cannot be done by ourselves… The success through productivity needs a consolidated national effort. That is why we all have to push ourselves to a greater productivity level. We have to, •  work smarter,  •  combine better,  •  deliver results,  •  get it right. It should be noted that the private sector has continued to make commendable efforts in order to improve productivity in the country. What can the ICC Sri Lanka do? ICC Sri Lanka too can play a prominent and essential role.

I am pleased to see that the objective of a return to fiscal equilibrium within five years is one of the new government’s priorities. The President of the Republic has undertaken to achieve balanced public accounts by the end of his mandate. This is a necessary target. So far, the tax increases have allowed the financing of additional spending and the reduction of the deficit. I am waiting to see the 2013 budget proposal to measure exactly by how much the State’s spending will be reduced. In concrete terms, what exactly would you like to see? The Cour des comptes (court of auditors) has compiled a list of the different potential savings that the government should examine. I agree with its analysis. It is indeed a colossal and ambitious project. Alongside the reduction of public expenditure, we must also encourage investment, entrepreneurship and restore confidence for those who wish to start a business. We therefore need structural reforms and a reform of our labour laws to allow greater flexibility with the objective of restoring and improving the competitiveness of our economy. We must change our social model because it is no longer coherent with global competition. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3
However, there may be projects with a lifetime of days or certainly months and weeks, such that lowering the frequency of settlement points to, say, annually would clearly create an artificial and harmful annual economic cycle and affect price stability. Second, increasing the frequency of points in time when banks need to settle, say to hourly, would increase liquidity management costs of banks considerably. Because this is not needed from a monetary policy perspective, this would mean a waste of economic resources. Finally, central banks probably want to control the ability of banks over time to settle their accounts, and also banks are probably more comfortable to see that other banks settle their accounts with the central bank on a regular basis, as proof of their soundness. To sum up, the daily cut-off separating free central bank credit and credit against a monetary policy-related interest rate is a reasonable convention, reflecting monetary policy transmission mechanism issues, convenience of banks’ liquidity management, and credit risk management considerations. It allows central banks to safeguard price stability, while at the same time ensuring the smooth functioning of the payment system. Turning to collateralisation, it is important to note that in the past, central banks often set ceilings for intraday and overnight credit to banks. In contrast, today, many central banks, including the Eurosystem, tend to provide unlimited access to both types of credit, but with the need to provide eligible collateral.

Gertrude Tumpel-Gugerell: Payments and monetary and financial stability Opening remarks by Ms Gertrude Tumpel-Gugerell, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, at a joint European Central Bank/Bank of England conference on “Payments and Monetary and Financial Stability”, Frankfurt am Main, 12-13 November 2007. *  *  *  Ladies and gentlemen, It is a pleasure to welcome you to this conference and I am grateful that I can do so also in the name of the Bank of England. The idea of the joint conference was born at one of our regular bilateral meetings and it is wonderful to see the idea come to fruition. You may wonder why we have put payments first, and monetary and financial stability second. This is not only because payments are at the root of a functioning (or not functioning) financial system; payments also require a thorough understanding of the economics of banking, money, financial markets, industrial organisation, and regulation. The diversity of theoretical and policy issues in this field is also reflected in the conference that I have the pleasure of opening this morning. Historical overview Considering the historical evolution of interbank settlement arrangements and central banking functions may help to understand why central banks evolved as the natural candidates for taking the responsibility for financial and monetary stability. 1 Indeed, I would argue that the reason lies in the key role central banks played in payment systems.
They exist to manage and reduce the risks faced by their members – to ensure financial contracts are reliably and transparently margined and collateralised. The main prudential risks CCPs face is from the failure and consequently inability of clearing members to meet their obligations to the CCP. The steps that have been taken since the financial crisis to increase the resilience and resolvability of their bank clearing members are therefore a key protection for CCPs. But CCPs also need the backstop of a credible resolution regime. The principal challenge here is not solvency per se but rather the ability of a CCP to restore itself to a matched book if members default, and to do so in a way that does not undermine the stability of the system. CCP rule books provide for very substantial mutualised resources and a comprehensive series of recovery actions. These include, as a last resort, the cancellation or ‘tear up’ of contracts and the end of the clearing service. However, waiting until the mutualised resources of a CCP are exhausted and subjecting participants to the unpredictability of a full tear-up may well pose unacceptable risks to financial stability. Resolution allows the resolution authority to intervene, if necessary, to tear-up a subset of contracts earlier in the process than would be possible in CCP recovery, and before the mutualised resources in the CCP have run out. The losses can then be spread across the membership in the order set out in the rule-book.

Rather than constructive ambiguity, we need credible clarity that when a bank gets into trouble, the losses will be made to fall on shareholders and creditors and not the taxpayer. And if the bank provides critical services to the economy, that these can continue while the bank is resolved in an orderly way. The Purple Book  It is in order to achieve such credible clarity, that next week the Bank will publish an update of its approach to resolution. This document – known by the colour of its cover as the Purple Book - was first published in October 2014. Its purpose is to set out very clearly the options that the Bank has to deal with a failure of a bank and the way in which we would use our powers. Explaining how resolution is designed to work in practice and what is needed to remove barriers to resolvability are necessary steps to ensure that resolution regimes are credible. 4  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  4  The Purple Book illustrates the scale of progress that has been made in the UK towards putting in place a credible and effective way of dealing with bank failures. I would pick out three crucial areas of reform:  First, there is now a comprehensive statutory framework to deal with failing banks, for which the Bank of England is formally responsible. We have statutory powers to match this responsibility and there are a wide range of options available to us.
Third, as regards the euro area and the sovereign debt crisis, of which the euro area is currently the epicentre, the euro area central banks, and the ECB in particular, have been permanently calling for sound economic policy management, in particular in the fiscal domain, for structural reforms and for reinforced economic governance. As independent institutions that are devoted to stability and that are medium- to long-term oriented, we are an anchor of stability and confidence. This is especially valuable in the turbulent market environment that we are witnessing and that is characterised by acute tensions of some sovereign signatures which are causing negative spillovers on others. Only a few weeks ago, the central bankers were all meeting in the BIS headquarters in Basel in our Global Economy Meeting. Reporting to the press afterwards, I stressed that we were all very closely “united in purpose”: each of us in our own economy, with its different features and challenges, striving to solidly anchor inflation expectations, preserve stability and consolidate confidence. Meeting here in Washington, authorities have the opportunity to display the same unity in purpose to address their economic challenges at home, prevent negative spillovers for the global economy and consolidate confidence in the world recovery.

Now, at the end of this exposition, it might be useful for me to tell you what is the assessment that the European Systemic Risk Board has expressed after its last meeting only two days ago:  BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  Since its previous meeting on 22 June 2011, risks to the stability of the EU financial system have increased considerably. Key risks stem from potential further adverse feedback effects between sovereign risks, funding vulnerabilities with the EU banking sector, and a weakening growth outlook both at the global and the EU level. Over the past few months, sovereign stress had moved from smaller economies to some of the larger EU countries. Signs of stress are evident in many European government bond markets, while the high volatility in equity markets indicates that tensions have spread across capital markets around the world. The situation has been aggravated by the progressive drying-up of bank funding markets, and availability of US dollar funding to EU banks had also decreased significantly. In that context, central banks have decided on coordinated US dollar liquidity-providing operations with longer maturities. The high interconnectedness in the EU financial system has led to a rapidly rising risk of significant contagion. This is threatening financial stability in the EU as a whole and adversely impacts the real economy in Europe and beyond. Looking ahead, decisive and swift action is required from all authorities.
BIS central bankers’ speeches  11  Chart 7: Sterling corporate bond yields Per cent 9  Per cent 40  8  QE2  QE1  7  35 30  6  Investment grade, non-financial (left-hand scale)  25  5 20  4  15  3  10  2 High yield (right-hand scale)  1  5  0  0 2007  2008  2009  2010  2011  2012  Source: Bank of America/Merrill Lynch. Chart 8: International equity prices(a) Indices: 4 January 2007 = 100 120 QE1  QE2  100 80 60 40  Euro Stoxx S&P 500  20  FTSE All-Share 0 2007  2008  2009  2010  2011  2012  (a) In local currency terms. 12  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Chart 9: Constraints on investment spending(a) Percentages of respondents 100 Recessions Uncertainty about demand Inability to raise external finance Cost of finance Internal finance shortage  90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0  2000  2002  2004  2006  2008  2010  2012  Sources: CBI, CBI/PwC and ONS. (a) Manufacturing, financial services and consumer/business services surveys weighted by shares in real business investment. Companies are asked for factors likely to limit capital expenditure authorisations over the next twelve months. Financial service companies are not asked to distinguish between a shortage of internal finance and an inability to raise external finance, so their single response is used for both questions.

3  3  There are two differences compared with a Treasury Bill: first, only banks with reserve accounts can hold bank reserves, whereas a Treasury Bill is a marketable instrument; second, if a bank needs cash, say to meet withdrawals, it can convert its reserve holdings directly into cash, whereas it would need either to sell or repo its Treasury Bill holdings in the market. 6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  The aim of quantitative easing is to drive down longer-term yields, when short-term interest rates are already at or near their floor. It does this by encouraging those who have sold assets to us to rebalance their portfolios into assets that are substitutes. That includes corporate bonds and equities, as well as a variety of other assets. There is a line of academic thinking that this mechanism will not be effective if private agents “pierce the public sector veil” and internalise the tax implications of the change in the composition of the consolidated public sector balance sheet (Eggertsson and Woodford, 2003). However, event studies of quantitative easing here (see Joyce et al., 2011) and in the United States (see Gagnon et al., 2011) do suggest that yields on a range of assets have fallen as a result of the purchases. That can be seen in the downward pressure on corporate bond yields (Chart 7) and the upward pressure on equity prices (Chart 8) during the two rounds of asset purchases (marked in grey).
The second asked participants to play a simple monetary policy game, setting a short-term interest rate in order to minimise a loss function described by deviations of unemployment and inflation from desired target levels. The data generating outcomes for this hypothetical economy came from a two equation macroeconomic model of a fairly standard kind. Again a structural change - this time to the “natural” real rate of interest - would occur at some point during the game, and, by observing data generated by this economy, players would need to learn about the change in structure in order to set the appropriate interest rate. All the students who participated played both as individuals and in a group. In both experiments success could be measured on a quantitative scale, and both led to a common conclusion: that decisions made by committees were superior to those of individuals. How robust was this result? And what explained it? Last year, a team from the Bank of England attempted an exercise very much like Blinder and Morgan’s monetary policy experiments using a sample of just under 200 economics students from the 3 London School of Economics. Using a simple macroeconomic model that was broadly representative of the UK economy, the experiments examined how the performance of groups differed from that of individuals. And again they found striking evidence that committee decisions were superior.

In contrast, the debates among the MPC are published in the monthly minutes and are the subject of much commentary in the press. I want, this evening, to pose four questions about the role and record of the MPC. First, why give the power to decide interest rates to a committee rather than an individual? Second, does it matter that the MPC frequently disagrees about its decision? Third, has the Committee communicated clearly the reasons for its decisions? Fourth, does the MPC require reform? Let me try to answer those questions in turn. BIS Review 34/2002  1  1. Why give the power to decide interest rates to a committee? The academic argument for central bank independence is well established, but why delegate monetary policy to a committee rather than an individual? In many other situations where expertise is crucial, groups of experts are often regarded as superior to individuals. So one motive could be that committees make better decisions. The technical nature of the monthly interest rate decision gives a natural division of responsibilities between a democratically elected government that chooses the target and an appointed group of experts who set rates to meet that target. One dissenting voice comes from Sir Alec Issigonis - inventor of the Mini - who once said, ‘A camel is a horse designed by a committee’. Despite this view, there is a wide range of evidence to suggest that in many other real-world scenarios, a committee is often the preferred decision-making body.
In my mind, a location policy is the most efficient tool: first, it would make it possible to maintain effective control over the activities denominated in EU currencies; and second, it would foster a better and more balanced clearing market structure, less dependent on “too big to fail entities”, which would enhance global – and not only EU – financial stability. In this regard, I would like to acknowledge the valuable proposals recently made by the European Commission, even if they could be strengthened and streamlined: those CCPs whose activities are "super-systemic" for the EU market should indeed establish themselves in the European Union. A location policy is the only viable mechanism to guarantee that European authorities, and the Eurosystem in particular, can control and manage the risks that CCPs are likely to pose to the financial stability of the European Union. In order to do so, the concept of “substantially systemically important CCPs” should however be clearly defined with objective, rule-based requirements; euro-denominated clearing activities should be located in the European Union when they exceed certain thresholds. 2. Speed up the creation of a “Financing Union for Investment and Innovation” The second imperative is to speed up the creation of a “Financing Union for Investment and Innovation” at the European level. The need for such a Financing Union stems both from a weakness and an opportunity. The weakness is that the euro area faces persistent financial fragmentation.

For us as emerging country, with foreign bank presence, the global financial regulatory reforms also pose challenges, as they can possibly stimulate deleveraging, reduce access to financing and financing flows to the private sector. At the end, let me also avail myself of this opportunity to emphasize yet again our continuous efforts to align with the EU requirements in all areas of operation, especially the banking regulation and statistics, notwithstanding the efforts and the progress done in all other fields. Thank you for your attention. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3
Svante Öberg: The economic situation Speech by Mr Svante Öberg, First Deputy Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, to the Västerbotten Chamber of Commerce, Umeå, 25 August 2011. *  *  *  My message today can be summarised in four points:   Developments have been dramatic over the summer.   However, statistics for the Swedish economy received during the summer have been in line with the forecasts made in July.   The turbulence on the financial markets has nevertheless increased uncertainty over future developments.   We will discuss how this may affect monetary policy in September. It is now the fourth year in a row that I have held a speech on the current economic situation in the month of August. Normally, I give an account of the most recent forecasts from the latest monetary policy decision in late June/early July and of the statistics received since then. This year it seems justified to give just a brief account of the forecasts made before the summer holidays and of the new statistics and to instead discuss events during the summer and what future consequences they might have. I shall therefore begin with a brief background, and then move on to discuss in more detail the turbulent developments in the financial markets during the summer, concluding with a few words about the problems I believe we will face at the next monetary policy meeting.

Unemployment Percentage of the labour force 10  10  8  8  6  6  4  4  2  2  0  0 04  05  06  07  08  09  10  11  12  13  14  Sources: Statistics Sweden and the Riksbank  10  BIS central bankers’ speeches  7. Inflation Annual percentage change 5  5  CPI CPIF CPIF excluding energy  4  4  3  3  2  2  1  1  0  0  -1  -1  -2  -2 00  01  02  03  04  05  06  07  08  09  10  11  12  13  14  Note. The CPIF is the CPI with a fixed mortgage rate. The data are updated with new outcomes after the publication of the July Monetary Policy Report. Sources: Statistics Sweden and the Riksbank  8. Repo rate with uncertainty bands Per cent, quarterly average 8  8 90% 75% 50% Outcome Forecast  7 6  7 6  5  5  4  4  3  3  2  2  1  1  0  0 04  05  06  07  08  09  10  11  12  13  14  Source: The Riksbank  BIS central bankers’ speeches  11  9.