samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Without going into the details of the Regulations, let me only mention that their effect is to strengthen the Stability and Growth Pact and to make sanctions a more credible threat. 6  See M. Salines, G. Glöckler, Z. Truchlewski and P. Del Favero (2011): “Beyond the economics of the euro. Analysing the institutional evolution of EMU 1999–2010”, ECB Occasional Paper No. 127. 6  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Another important innovation has been the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union, known as “fiscal compact”, which entered into force in January 2013. This is an intergovernmental treaty which establishes, among other things, that Member States must enact laws (preferably at Constitutional level) requiring their national budgets to be in balance or in surplus within the treaty’s definition. The laws must also contain a self-correcting mechanism to prevent any breach. The treaty defines a balanced budget as a general budget deficit less than 3.0% of the gross domestic product (GDP), and a structural deficit of less than 1.0% of GDP if the debt level is below 60% – otherwise it shall be below 0.5% of GDP. Finally, the so-called “two-pack” Regulations entered only very recently into force, subject euro area countries to the obligation of ex ante notification of budgetary plans to the European Commission.

These externalities led to the emergence of a twin crisis, where private sector debt (often by financial intermediaries) was rapidly converted into public liabilities, resulting into the self-reinforcing negative feedback loop between sovereigns and banks I alluded to before. A single mechanism for banking supervision and a common authority with strong tools for bank resolution could have mitigated the emergence of these negative externalities. The crisis clearly highlighted that financial stability is a common good and as such requires shared responsibility for its preservation. We have learned the hard way that high financial integration without a commensurate deeper integration of financial stability policies is intrinsically unstable. Second, sustained divergences in competitiveness and macroeconomic imbalances were largely ignored. Persistent current account imbalances within the euro area, signalling vulnerabilities of some Member States, were long considered as irrelevant in a monetary union. Besides fiscal surveillance, the working assumption was that there is no need to closely monitor macroeconomic imbalances. Disequilibria originating from the private sector were supposed to be only short-lived and eliminated by market forces. The crisis has taught us that imbalances in individual countries may have powerful negative externalities on other countries within a monetary union. This recognition led to the belief that the governance of economic policies at the EU level has to be reformed: more effective macroeconomic policy coordination at euro area level is an essential building block of a monetary union. Third, the euro area availed of a fiscal policy coordination and surveillance framework.
It will improve incentives for safe driving behaviours and better risk management practices by both risk owners and insurers. And it will address market distortions which have threatened access to motor insurance, particularly for higher risks. This is also a time when businesses and households are facing rising costs and more uncertain conditions which can adversely affect discretionary spending on insurance. At the same time, the exposures of households and businesses which insurance is designed to protect, have actually increased as evidenced by more frequent and severe incidents of natural and man-made disasters. All of these developments raise critical questions for insurance agents. One question that comes up time and again is: Will insurance agents continue to be relevant? If you are in this room today, then I assume you will agree with me that the answer is clearly ‘yes’. But I believe you are also here because there is a recognition that agents will have to evolve. Even if some of you were not completely convinced of this before, that reality surely can no longer be ignored or dismissed. So the more important question then is how agents can be a meaningful part of this change in order to advance the important benefits of insurance for the economy and the wider society? Today in Malaysia, the general insurance penetration level measured in terms of premiums as a share of GDP stands at less than 2% (1.68% as at end 2015).

This is notwithstanding a more intense operation of automatic stabilizers as a result of divergences in the behavior of cyclical revenues. About the MPR, the working assumption is that in the coming quarters it will stay flat and will begin a gradual normalization process during next year. Nonetheless, this is one of several alternative MPR paths compatible with achieving the target, so it must not be construed as a forecast or commitment with respect to the decisions that the Board will be making as more information is gleaned about the twists and turns of the economy. Taking all of this into account, the baseline scenario sees CPI inflation hovering around 3% during 2020, and the CPIEFE arriving to 3% by the turn of 2021. For the end of this year CPI inflation is foreseen slightly below 3% (Figure 12). III.4. Risk balance As always, the baseline scenario I just presented reflects those events most likely to occur with the information at hand at the close of this Report. There are risks, however, that if come true, would alter not only the macroeconomic outlook, but also the course of monetary policy. On the external front, the balance of risks continues to be clearly biased downwards, increasing the probability of occurrence of negative events. The escalation of the trade dispute between China and the US has become the main risk and has begun to transcend other areas of these economies’ relationship. Moreover, US tariff decisions have been extended to other countries and with motivations not strictly commercial.
Some of those who stop trading when markets are unsettled would probably not do so if they had a known and safe counterparty with whom to trade in a properly transparent market. Conditions are then in place for arranging securities transactions in ways that are safe and efficient, so that financial stability can be more satisfactory. The fixed-income market I shall now say something about the fixed-income market. The fixed-income market in Sweden differs from its larger counterparts in Europe. There are considerably fewer participants and the market is shallower – less liquid. This presumably entails higher costs  8  4  This refers to the derivatives that are not traded on exchanges, for instance swaps, futures and options. BIS Review 153/2008  for transactions of a given size, as well as closer relationships between the players. These circumstances are liable to affect how the market functions, particularly in times of unrest. The risk propensity falls and with relatively few participants, market liquidity is easily eroded. Trading in the Swedish bond and money market is still done mainly by telephone, over-thecounter, though some electronic trading has existed since 2001. This electronic trading is in three benchmark bonds. To work properly, electronic trading needs products that are highly standardised, as well as relatively high liquidity. In Europe, electronic trading is used for roughly 75 per cent of all transactions but they account for only about 50 per cent of the volume. Large orders are still traded by telephone.

The steering system has been successful in the sense that overnight loans between the banks are arranged as a rule at the repo rate. A potential drawback of the fine-tuning operations is that the operational risks grow with the volume of these operations. We therefore make a weekly offer of one-week Riksbank certificates at the repo rate. As this withdraws liquidity, the fine-tuning operations do not have to be so large. BIS Review 153/2008  5  The way in which we implement monetary policy means that we are active at two time horizons or, as we usually say, at two points on the yield curve. One is for overnight loans or deposits, where our fine tuning helps to keep the overnight rate at the repo rate; the other is for one-week certificates, likewise at the repo rate. As we are active in the market only once a week, with one-week certificates, we cannot steer the one-week rate as effectively as the overnight rate, which we steer on a daily basis. Neither do we intend to do so. Our operational goal is precisely to steer the overnight rate. Which measures should be said to be connected with the implementation of monetary policy and which should instead be seen as more directed at assisting the performance of markets and promoting financial stability? There is no simple answer. Something that a financial crisis makes clearer is how monetary policy and financial stability interact. Neither of them can evidently function without the other.
8  Joint Council for Qualifications, 2017 GCSE and A-Level results, available at: https://www.jcq.org.uk/examinationresults/gcses/2017/gcse-full-course-results-summer-2017/gcse-full-course-results-summer-2017. 9 HE student enrolments by subject of study 2016/17 available at: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/table-9. 4  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches  4  Once the right people are through the door they need to be developed and the culture needs to be supportive. For the Bank that means identifying a pipeline of future leaders with a diverse and broad set of experiences and pushing them in order to prepare themselves for bigger roles. Last year for internal appointments, the Bank introduced pooled (or co-ordinated) recruitment for senior appointments. Governors and Executive Directors come together to assess the roles available with the candidates that have applied to try and find the best fit for each team, and for the institution as a whole. This allows us to take a birds-eye view of diversity, rather than appointing in isolation, which risks reinforcing homogeneity in our senior appointments. Pooling our appointments makes everyone realise how their decision impacts the diversity of the whole organisation and helps to highlight the characteristics and skills that may be missing or overrepresented in the senior leadership. And it provides real time feedback if someone’s career is being held back by gaps in their experience or training. Pooled recruitment catalyses the creation of essential development plans that prepare colleagues for future roles. Since its inception, over half of the 15 promotions to Head of Division level between May 2018 and February 2019 using this pooled recruitment were women.

As the Swiss economy is on the upswing, income is rising, as are the prices of assets. Demographic changes could also add to the pressure. For instance, immigration of well-qualified persons with high purchasing power has increased quite steeply since the agreement on the free movement of persons entered into force almost five years ago. These factors all tend to drive up demand for residential space. So far, supply has been able to keep pace with the increasing demand. Nevertheless, with supply adjusting only slowly, a higher level of demand could well accelerate price increases in the real estate market. It would then be the SNB’s responsibility to ensure – under these more difficult circumstances – that price movements in the real estate market did not threaten price stability as a whole. BIS Review 11/2007  1
As one of four non-G7 financial centres represented on the Forum, we play a useful role in providing insights and perspectives from the region on financial market developments. We participated in the FSF’s work on Offshore Financial Centres. We also hosted a meeting of the FSF earlier this year during which the three FSF reports were adopted. Singapore also participates actively in IMF initiatives to enhance transparency as a means to minimising risks to the global financial system. In particular, we are in general compliance with SDDS (Special Data Dissemination Standards), including the new requirements for more detailed breakdown of data on official foreign reserves of member countries. We also release regularly the IMF’s assessment of our Singapore economy and policies; the latest report was based on the annual consultation that ended in June of this year. MAS annual accounts Assets & liabilities On MAS’ annual accounts, total assets increased by $ billion to $ billion as at 31 March 2000, of which $ billion was in the form of foreign assets and $ billion in our holdings of Singapore Government Securities (SGS). The increase in SGS holdings reflects a conscious effort to build up our portfolio of SGS to engage in more repo transactions for our money market operations, thereby broadening the range of money market instruments that we use. On the liabilities side, there was a reduction in deposits of banks by about $ billion, reflecting the repayment of deposits previously placed by POSB with MAS prior to its merger with DBS.

Koh Yong Guan: The economic outlook and monetary policy in Singapore  Statement by Mr Koh Yong Guan, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, delivered at the MAS Annual Report 1999/2000 Media Conference in Singapore on 27 July 2000. *  *  *  Introduction We have had an eventful year as we supported Singapore’s recovery from the Asian crisis and persisted in our efforts to liberalise the financial sector. The economy turned in an impressive performance in 1999 compared with the year before, showing clear signals that we have emerged from the crisis. Having weathered the crisis, the economy is now more resilient and better prepared for external shocks. Let me first highlight some pertinent points on our outlook for the domestic economy as well as our monetary policy stance. The economic outlook and monetary policy In July last year, MAS had noted that the Singapore economy was picking up faster than expected, although recovery had not extended to all sectors. Manufacturing had posted strong growth in the first half of 1999, but construction, commerce, and most financial services remained weak. The economy was still operating below potential, and the inflation outlook was benign. MAS therefore took a neutral exchange rate policy stance, to reinforce the government’s cost reduction measures and facilitate economic recovery. The trade-weighted $ remained roughly unchanged over the past year, fluctuating within its usual band, although the $ bilateral exchange rates varied significantly against individual major currencies on account of volatility in the global currency markets.
These spreads began to rise following the turnaround in the international markets and they had a tendency to rise more on the Icelandic banks than on other banks with every event or news that prompted a general rise in risk aversion and in CDS spreads. The spreads peaked around the end of March and have come down quite considerably this month. The CDS market is an opaque and unregulated one but, nevertheless, CDS spreads are a reference for the terms that would be available to the banks if they were to go to the market. In our view, the CDS levels on the Icelandic banks have been out of proportion to their underlying financial strength, their credit rating and spreads on comparable banks in other countries. It also seems that the CDS market is thin, turnover in CDS transactions on Icelandic banks appears to be limited. One reason behind relatively high CDS spreads on Icelandic banks maybe the fact that a sizeable amount of Icelandic bank bonds issued in recent years ended up in CDO´s which have been in a process of being unwound over the last few months. However, this alone does not explain the very high spreads. It is also quite remarkable that the CDS spread on the Republic of Iceland rose very substantially, even to 400 to 500 points when it was at its highest earlier this year. This happened despite the fact that on a net basis, the Icelandic Government has no external debt.

The problem of which decisions belong to the government sphere as opposed to markets is not confined to the nation state. At the international level there are also differences of opinion as to what should be left to individuals and nations to decide instead of being settled in joint political assemblies. The global level lacks overriding democratic structures that could help to establish common rules that are broadly supported. In the debate on the globalisation process there are also many who consider that the global market is not sufficiently ‘democratic’ and that ‘the struggle is about securing the shared values that transcend economism’. Another criticism is that the poor countries have too little say in the global markets. So what do we mean by ‘globalisation’? Pope John Paul has said that “globalisation is something that is present in every aspect of our lives”. Others see globalisation as the emergence of a common global culture, perhaps at the expense of national and local cultures. One is inclined to agree with His Holiness — globalisation is not a straightforward phenomenon that is easily explained. I would say that globalisation stands for the growing interdependence of individuals and countries that is resulting from the increasingly comprehensive exchange of everything from goods, services and capital to ideas and know-how. Defined like that, globalisation is not something anyone would want to abolish but a fundamentally positive process that contributes to an increasingly prosperous world, as well as to the democratisation of a great many countries.
(external),” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring. Lockhart, Dennis, 2014, “Thoughts on liftoff,” speech, Global Interdependence Center, Sixth Annual Rocky Mountain Economic Summit, Jackson Hole, WY, July 11. Mueller, Andreas I., Jesse Rothstein and Till M. von Wachter, 2013, “Unemployment insurance and disability insurance in the Great Recession,” National Bureau of Economic Research, working paper, No. 19672, November. National Association for Survey(external), August. Business  Economics,  2014a,  NABE  Economic  Policy  National Association for Business Economics, 2014b, NABE Business Conditions Survey(external), July. Shierholz, Heidi, Lawrence Mishel, and John Schmitt, 2013, “Don’t blame the robots: Assessing the job polarization explanation of growing wage inequality,” Economic Policy Institute, working paper, November 19. Yellen, Janet, 2014, Federal Open Market Committee press conference, transcript(externalpdf), Washington, DC, September 17. 10  BIS central bankers’ speeches

We will continue to work closely with Bank Negara Malaysia and Euroclear Bank to promote the platform to other central banks and securities settlement systems in the region and to implement additional services to the platform to meet evolving market needs. Thank you. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches
The financial industry in Singapore has good expertise in developing FX and derivatives instruments, with several emerging Asian FX teams based here. It is well equipped to develop customised offshore RMB capital market instruments, especially for Asian market participants. For instance, banks in Singapore can explore how to encourage offshore RMB bond issuance in Singapore with longer maturity tenors and different issuer profiles. Conclusion 40. Let me wrap up briefly. Global deleveraging is being accompanied by the continued inflow of funds into Asia’s emerging market economies. This shift poses risks if not wellmanaged, but it is also an opportunity. The next phase of development in Asia’s financial markets is therefore critical. We have to develop greater breadth and breadth in Asian markets, so that savings flows translate into sustainable economic growth rather than recurrent bubbles in asset markets. 41. Thank you and I wish you a successful conference. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5

The bigger the economy grows over time, the more fiscal resources can be made available. Thus, taking steps that do not hurt long-term productivity growth would seem preferable to steps that reduce the amount of invested  BIS Review 28/2010  5  capital – both physical and human – and/or its quality. I also would be inclined to measures that indicate a credible commitment to long-term budget consolidation, but with a contractionary impulse that phases in only slowly and builds over time. The last challenge I wish to discuss is how to move from a cyclical recovery to a more balanced and sustainable pattern of growth globally. Just as there are substantial fiscal imbalances in several countries that threaten to become unsustainable in the absence of consolidation, so there are large-scale imbalances in the world economy as a whole that raise issues of long-term sustainability. In particular, there continues to be a need to reduce consumption and increase saving relative to investment in the United States, and a parallel need to increase consumption relative to investment in parts of the emerging world. The recent crisis has reduced but not eliminated current account imbalances worldwide. In many cases, the imbalances remain sizable, and they could begin to grow again and ultimately become destabilizing. The case for global rebalancing is compelling when we consider the structural backdrop.
The higher productivity growth is instead due to an unusually large rise in total factor productivity, which is usually ascribed to technological and organisational improvements. Historically, the broader impact of technological changes has lagged since it takes time to adapt an organisation and technology to each other in order to fully take advantage of the innovations. It is therefore possible that the large-scale investment in ICT at the end of the 1990s is only now beginning to make a clear impact in the form of organisational improvements, cost cutting and higher productivity growth. In addition, ICT developments have led, by enabling more efficient production in networks and at a distance, to new sectors in the service industries being opened to trade and international competition. Another important factor in this process is the increasingly strong interaction between ICT, trade and product markets, which enables outsourcing of labour-intensive stages of goods and services production to low-wage countries. 3. Globalisation and the structural changes in the world economy  The access to new information technology is thus one of the conditions for the new trade and production patterns that are emerging.

In Sweden CPI inflation has fallen from around 5 per cent in 1994 to approximately 2 per cent in 2003. Even in a more long-term perspective, inflation shows a downward trend, which is illustrated in a figure showing inflation in OECD countries. Other parts of the world have experienced a similar development. The IMF’s previous chief economist Ken Rogoff has demonstrated in an article that global inflation has fallen from 30 per cent to 4 per cent between 1993 and 2002. Which factors could lie behind this remarkable slowdown in the rate of price increase? I believe that it is mainly a combination of three factors: (1)  A change in monetary policy with independent central banks applying inflation-targeting,  (2)  IT investments enabling large-scale cost savings and  (3)  Globalisation that entails, among other things, increased competition from new low-wage countries and pressurises producer countries towards greater productivity. 1. Independent central banks with inflation targets  At the beginning of the 1990s, in the aftermath of the years of overheating and crisis, a process of reorientation of economic policy began in Sweden: the tax system was reformed and combating inflation was given priority. The Riksbank decided at the beginning of 1993 to introduce an inflation  BIS Review 21/2004  1  target, defined as 2 per cent with a tolerated deviation interval of plus/minus one percentage point, and fiscal policy was increasingly oriented towards budget consolidation. Similar developments took place at around the same time in many other countries.