samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
In Australia, the senior official in the Ministry of Finance and Administration is a member of the monetary policy committee. He or she has voting rights. In the UK, the Ministry of the Exchequer has the right to be present but only has the right to speak. In the ECB, the chairman of the ECOFIN Council and one member of the Commission may participate in the meetings of the Governing Council, but they have no voting rights. At Norges Bank, the Executive Board makes the monetary policy decisions. The Executive Board consists of internal and external members and has responsibility for all of Norges Bank’s operations. Australia has a similar arrangement. In the Bank of England and the Riksbank in Sweden, the interest rate is set by a monetary policy committee with members who in practice work full-time for the bank. In New Zealand, the central bank governor alone sets the interest rate. In Canada, the central bank governor has also been given this responsibility. In the UK and Sweden, the individual member’s responsibility is emphasised in particular. Minutes from the monetary policy meeting as well as the voting results are published. At the same time, members participate actively in the public debate with speeches and articles on monetary policy. In Norway, we have chosen to provide a broad account of the interest rate decision that reflects the Executive Board’s discussions. Differences in the practice of inflation targeting are often due to historical and cultural differences.

For example, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand will in an extraordinary situation with a very sharp rise in asset prices consider extending the horizon for achieving the inflation target in order to dampen developments in asset prices. The purpose of this is to reduce the risk of a serious economic downturn at a later time. In Norway, we have flexible inflation targeting. We have chosen to incorporate assessments of financial stability in the interest rate decisions. This is primarily because developments in financial balances affect inflation and output over time. Through its work on financial stability, Norges Bank gathers information about the financial strength of the financial system and the financial position of households and the corporate sector. This information is useful in connection with monetary policy decisions. Integrating the objective of financial stability into monetary policy ensures that we are giving adequate attention to risks in the financial system. But it is important to remember that we have only one monetary policy instrument, the interest rate. Monetary policy should continue to focus on price stability. In the light of the experiences of different countries in the last 10-15 years, I am confident that flexible inflation targeting provides us with a sound framework for performing this task. 11 “Asset price ‘bubbles’ and monetary policy”. Remarks before the New York Chapter of the National Association of Business Economics, New York, 15 October. 12 Issing, Otmar (2003), “Monetary and Financial Stability: Is there a Trade-off?” Speech at the conference “Monetary stability, financial stability and the business cycle”.
However, one cannot deviate from the target in the longer run. Long-term inflation expectations thus need to be anchored to the target so that the credibility of the inflation target is not lost. This is in practice a limitation on how much consideration a central bank can give to financial stability. It should also be said that long-term inflation expectations should be guided by actual conditions and be in line with the Riksbank's forecasts. If the Riksbank forecasts an inflation rate close to 2 per cent in the longer term, inflation expectations should also be at this level. If this is not the case, it may reflect a lack of confidence in the inflation target and the Riksbank can then try to influence inflation expectations by justifying its forecasts more clearly and explaining why deviations from the target may sometimes be justified. The solution is not necessarily to take less account of financial imbalances. 31 See Billi and Vredin (2014) for a discussion of central banks and financial stability and how financial stability  can be integrated into an inflation targeting regime. 32 See Svensson (2014). 18 [30]  One of the main tasks of central banks has always been to maintain a well-functioning system of payments and credit or, in other words, to keep the financial system stable.33 Financial imbalances can lead to both too high inflation – when a credit bubble occurs – and too low inflation – when there is a financial crisis.

David Clementi: The Bank of England's roles in monetary and financial stability Speech by Mr David Clementi, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, at the Association of Private Client Investment Managers and Stockbrokers (APCIMS) Annual Conference, London, 19 October 2001. *  *  *  Introduction Thank you for the kind invitation to address your conference today. APCIMS performs an important function, representing and informing the views of a wide range of private client investment managers, brokers and banks. Its voice is increasingly heard in a number of public debates. At one time, back in 1984, I worked very closely with a number of private client firms as we sought to sell shares to the retail market in British Telecom, the first of the large privatisation issues. It's good to see that a number of the firms involved then are represented here today. When Angela Knight asked me to speak, she said she wanted something which would allow us all, in the midst of our day-to-day preoccupations, to lift our eyes to the horizon. That reminded me of Harold Wilson's description of John F Kennedy: "he had his eyes on the horizon, but his feet on the ground." "Keep your eyes on the horizon and your feet on the ground" certainly ought to be written into every modern central banker's contract of employment. Looking to the future, assessing risks to our economic and financial systems, and - where necessary - acting on these assessments is absolutely core to what we do.
In addition, an upswing is likely to be held back by product and labour market rigidities. BIS Review 19/2002  1  So all in all, it is hard to see how the coming economic upswing can be as rapid as earlier recoveries. But the world economic picture is now appreciably brighter than last autumn and the outlines of an upturn are becoming increasingly clear. Inflation in Sweden is high If the picture we present in the Inflation Report holds good, the present cyclical dip in the Swedish economy will turn out to have been the mildest for over thirty years. GDP growth was admittedly subdued in 2001 but the figures from Statistics Sweden do not show any negative rates. Neither has the labour market deteriorated as much as usual. Nor have any serious imbalances arisen. So thus far there is reason to be positive about the economic situation; most leading indicators point to an economic recovery, with an upturn in activity during 2002. There is, however, the problem that inflation has for a time been clearly above the Riksbank’s 2 per cent target. To a certain extent the comparatively high inflation can be explained by various supply shocks that have raised the prices of electricity, meat, fruit and vegetables, for instance. The background to these shocks includes the previous winter’s low precipitation for hydroelectric power, livestock diseases and poor harvests due to last autumn’s unusually cold weather in Europe.

Lim Hng Kiang: What’s next for hedge funds? Keynote address by Mr Lim Hng Kiang, Minister for Trade and Industry and Deputy Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, at the SkyBridge Alternative (SALT) Conference, Marina Bay Sands, 17 October 2012. *  *  *  Mr Anthony Scaramucci, Managing Partner, SkyBridge Capital Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. A very good morning to all of you. I am very pleased to join you at the inaugural Asian leg of the SALT conference. Global outlook As we move into the last quarter of 2012, the world economic outlook remains uncertain. Advanced economies continue to encounter headwinds as deleveraging, fiscal consolidation and a still-weak financial system act as a drag on growth. With US and Europe facing economic difficulties, Asia will not be immune to a global slowdown given its heavy reliance on trade. This can be seen by Asia’s slowing growth in the last two quarters as weak demand in the G3, especially the Eurozone, exerted a sharp drag on exports from the region. 1 The IMF has recently revised its growth estimates downwards. Global growth is now expected to be 3.3% in 2012 and 3.6% in 2013. 2 However, this is dependent on the assumption that there will be sufficient policy action to ease financial conditions globally and that recent policy easing moves in emerging market economies will gain traction. Overall, global growth is expected to remain muted for an extended period.
Thirdly, structural analysis suggests that agents assign less importance to past inflation trends – one of the factors that determines the persistence of inflation mentioned above – in the euro area 14 than they do in the United States. Moreover, it is important to highlight the fact that not only has there been less inflation variability in the euro area compared to the United States, there 15 has also been less variability in economic growth. And, contrary to popular belief, the euro area’s greater stability has not been achieved to the detriment of its growth, which in per capita terms has been broadly the same as in the United States for the past ten years. The same is true regarding the creation of new jobs, with 17 million new jobs having been created since the euro was first introduced. Thus it is incorrect to argue, as people often do, that the stabilisation of inflation in Europe has damaged economic growth. 3. Budget policy  The differences between the European and US budget policies can be attributed to a combination of factors including: the political-cum-institutional setup, the general public’s preferences regarding the role and size of government and the structure of the economy in the broader sense. Just like monetary policy, so also budget policy in Europe appears on the  12  Bernanke, B. (2006), “Semi-annual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress”, 15 February 2006. 13  See Ehrmann, M. et al.

Some countries have preferred to maximise their production of tradeables by undervaluing their real exchange rates through fixed or heavilymanaged nominal exchange rates to the US dollar. As the absolute sizes of their economies have increased, so have their current account surpluses and the scale of their foreign  1  http://www.imf.org/External/Pubs/FT/GFSR/2008/01/index.htm. BIS Review 94/2008  1  reserve accumulation is now massive. Global foreign exchange reserves have increased from just under $ trillion in early 2000 to over $ trillion in May 2008 and are forecast to grow by $ trillion in 2008 alone (Chart 2). The vast excess savings of these economies needed somewhere to go. The gainers were in the West where the asset and financial markets were most developed. The inflow brought greater liquidity to markets and helped to create the conditions for widespread underpricing of risk. The counterpart to the excess savings in the East became expansion of credit, the growth of consumption and a boom in asset prices in the West. Looked at in a global perspective, the dramatic increases in wealth and living standards in emerging economies have been a great step forward. But the growth pattern has been unbalanced and we are now having to handle the inevitable correction.
Eric S Rosengren: The role of “financial myths” in financial crises Remarks by Mr Eric S Rosengren, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, at the Boston University conference on “The State of Financial Reform” (panel on Lessons Learned from the Global Financial Meltdown), Boston, Massachusetts, 28 February 2011. *  *  *  Good morning. I’d like to thank Boston University and all the conference organizers, particularly Larry Kotlikoff, for the opportunity to be here to discuss lessons learned from the global financial meltdown.1 Everyone knows that the past three years have been a particularly difficult period for global financial market stability and for the global economy. The financial crisis clearly showed the dramatic impact that financial problems can have on the real economy. And in spite of a fair amount of focus on financial stability prior to the crisis, events highlighted that the private and public sectors both here and abroad were not fully prepared for the kinds of financial shocks we experienced. Today I’d like to discuss the role of what I call “financial myths” in creating financial crises. By financial myths I mean the beliefs, held by most market participants and by regulators, that certain outcomes are so unlikely to occur that they can basically be ignored – essentially that low probability events, based on historical experience, can be reclassified as zero probability events.

When these sorts of widespread assumptions – these financial myths – turn out to be wrong, most financial-market participants find themselves poorly positioned for the resulting shocks. The result is insolvency of groups of firms and substantial uncertainty – uncertainty about the exposure of many firms to direct losses, or to indirect losses created by their counterparty exposure to other firms that suffer direct losses. These so-called financial myths are not unique to this time period, or to this country. I would like to briefly mention two among the numerous examples from recent history – examples where financial myths were important in helping to create a potential crisis. The first example involves the assumption of many in Japan that real estate prices could not fall in the late 1980s. The second involves the assumption, in the late 1990s, that the Internet had completely changed how we should think about company valuation. I will then briefly mention four financial myths that played critical roles in the recent financial crisis.
However, we should not forget that the real economy and the financial economy are largely two sides of the same coin. Without one, the other would not exist. Financing is a key element for economic activity, and channelling such financing is precisely where we need the banking sector. We have once again been able to witness this owing to COVID-19. As you will recall, the financial sector was declared an essential service during the lockdown. And, for example, without banks’ active participation, it would not have been possible to successfully structure the ICO guarantees programme. Naturally, mobilising the resources needed for this transformation, which the law estimates at around € billion, will necessarily involve public-private investment formulas in which banks will no doubt play a key role. As you can imagine, financing these public-private investment needs is reason enough for the banking system to become involved. But initiatives such as the climate agreement signed on the occasion of the COP25 and the launch of FinResp (Centre for Responsible and Sustainable Finances) show that the sector is clearly committed. How can the financial economy contribute to switching the real economy towards full decarbonisation? The response is straightforward: through correct risk measurement. When banks manage their risks properly, they are promoting the effective allocation of available economic resources, by distinguishing between those projects more likely to succeed and those not viable in the medium term.

Mugur Isărescu: How can the EU generate a virtuous circle in the Black Sea Region – the case of food and energy security Speech by Mr Mugur Isărescu, Governor of the National Bank of Romania, opening the European League for Economic Cooperation (ELEC) conference, Bucharest, 26 April 2016. *  *  *  Commissioner, Ministers, Your Excellencies (Ambassadors), Distinguished guests, Ladies and gentlemen, I am honoured to open this ELEC conference that will focus on how the EU can generate a virtuous circle in the Black Sea Region in the case of food and energy security. It is the fifth time that the National Bank of Romania is the host for an ELEC conference. The fact that we gather here, today, not at the National Bank of Romania office, but at the Romanian Banking Institute is quite significant: this establishment is a hub of financial education committed to passing knowledge both to experts and non-experts. I wish this to be a substantial debate in an open and insightful manner, which will cast more light and clarity on the topics you are going to discuss. I am pleased to welcome Miguel Arias Canete, Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy; and Rudi Mögele, Deputy Director General, DG Agriculture and Rural Development. They will be keynote speakers today. Allow me to greet Baron Bernard Snoy, President of ELEC International and Jerry van Waterschoot, Secretary General of ELEC International.
Statistics during the summer confirm the picture that growth in the Swedish economy is slowing down and that inflation remains high. Seasonally-adjusted, the GDP figures for the second quarter remained largely unchanged compared with the first quarter. This was a weaker outcome than we expected in the July Monetary Policy Report. There is a clear trend towards falling GDP growth from around 1 per cent a quarter two years ago to close to zero over the past six months. At the same time we know that GDP growth figures for the first and second quarters are usually revised upwards in later National Accounts publications, so we will not know the final outcome until a couple of years from now. In addition, one should bear in mind that monetary policy looks ahead. We cannot affect what has happened during the second quarter of this year. It is only to the extent that the new information affects our forecasts for the coming years that it is important to monetary policy. The National Accounts also indicate that productivity continued to decline in the first two quarters. We had assumed that productivity would increase. Hourly wages increased by 4 per cent from January to May this year, compared with the same period last year, according to preliminary wage statistics from Statistics Sweden and the National Mediation Office. Normally the figures are revised upwards in statistics published somewhat later, but the statistics nevertheless indicate that there have not yet been any unexpected rises in the rate of wage increase.

Svante Öberg: The economic situation Speech by Mr Svante Öberg, Deputy Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, at the KOMMEK fair, Malmö, 21 August 2008. *  *  *  GDP growth will slow down this year and next year. Employment will stagnate and unemployment will begin to rise. Inflation is high but will fall towards the target of 2 per cent over the coming years. This is the picture of the expected development of the Swedish economy reported in the most recent Monetary Policy Report published at the beginning of July. In my presentation today I shall describe my view of economic developments abroad and in Sweden, explain how we Executive Board members viewed monetary policy in connection with the most recent monetary policy decision at the beginning of July and describe what has happened in the economy over the summer. In the first three sections I will mainly describe the forecasts from the Monetary Policy Report published in early July, but I will also mention some data that have been published since then. In the fourth and final section of my speech I will take up the most important information on developments in the Swedish economy that has been received since early July. 1.  International developments  No end to the financial crisis yet The problems in the international financial markets continued during the first half of this year.
We have indicated that we plan to shrink the balance sheet to the smallest size consistent with the efficient and effective conduct of monetary policy, and that, in the long run, the asset side of the balance sheet will consist primarily of Treasury securities.9 That’s our strategy, but its execution will depend on the operating framework of monetary policy, among other factors. Here, the Fed basically has two choices. We could return to a system similar in spirit to that used before the financial crisis, in which the supply of reserves in the banking system was kept relatively scarce, and the interest rate was set by adjusting reserves on a frequent basis through open market operations. Alternatively, we could continue with the system that we’ve been using since the crisis, in which bank reserves are abundant and the federal funds rate target is achieved through adjustments to administered rates. As I said, this approach is working very well at controlling interest rates and has proven to be easy to communicate and adaptable.10 The Fed will be looking closely at these options in the coming months and will subsequently make a decision on the future operating framework. And, as is our standard practice, we will be sure to communicate our thinking and decisions on this issue as soon and as thoroughly as practicable. Conclusion Monetary policy-making has perhaps never been more challenging than it was following the financial crisis.

I should hasten to add that not everyone has shared equally in this otherwise strong economy. The unevenness of the recovery is evident in my travels around the Second District, where, for example, the economic recovery in upstate New York continues to lag the nation as a whole. So, while the national economy is in good shape, longer-run economic challenges have meant that not all Americans have benefited from the improvement in the economy. Beyond supporting a strong overall economy, monetary policy has limited reach into these issues, which are best addressed through other means, such as investments in education, workforce development, and economic development. Three Stages of Monetary Policy Normalization In thinking about the outlook for monetary policy, it’s useful to remember how we got to where we are today. The financial crisis and the Great Recession led the FOMC to lower the federal funds rate target to near zero and to keep it there for seven years. This lengthy spell at zero reflected the long shadow of the crisis—evident in the subsequent subdued growth rate and inflation rate —and the need for the economy to convalesce after enormous trauma. With the unemployment rate still very high and inflation low, the Federal Reserve embarked on a long journey through terra incognita of unconventional monetary policy actions, including large-scale asset purchases and forward guidance on the future path of interest rates. We weren’t alone: Indeed, some central banks across the globe went even further down the road of unconventional policies.