samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
We continue to develop our services and infrastructure in a way that will help business make the most out of changing opportunities and challenges. Recent initiatives include plans announced by the Financial Secretary earlier this month for a cyberport that will be able to offer the most advanced information technologies to a whole range of businesses and industries. Within the HKMA, we have, in the last few months, seen the completion of a major strategic consultancy study that will help to guide the broad development of our banking sector into the next century. 2. I single out these initiatives – and I could mention many others – for two main reasons. First, one of their aims is to help Hong Kong get the best advantage out of three closely linked and irresistible trends: the globalisation of markets, the liberalisation of trade and finance, and the rapid advance of information technology. Secondly, while we need to grasp the opportunities produced by globalisation, liberalisation and technological advance, we also have to manage the risks that they bring with them in ways that strengthen, rather than undermine, our economic fundamentals. Along with many other economies in this region, we have, over the last year or two, been grappling with this challenge in a very practical way at a time of crisis and uncertainty. The Asian financial crisis is the cumulative result of many complex causes coming together at roughly the same time.

Its commitment is essential, in order for our co-operation to be part of our daily job and add to the efficiency of both institutions and not to remain solely on paper. The Bank of Albania considers the conclusion of this memorandum as a cornerstone which will overwhelmingly affect the enhancement of real competition conditions, in which the banking and financial activity are currently being conducted. It is worth underlining that fair competition promotes the efficiency in the banking business and refines the composition and the functioning of the banking market. The Bank of Albania will make its utmost efforts to make the co-operation deriving from this agreement as concrete as possible and with direct impact on achieving a real, fair and efficient market competition. BIS Review 82/2007  1  I take this opportunity to express the Bank of Albania commitment to carry out all the responsibilities deriving from the law and from this agreement. In addition, allow me to express my appreciation to the Competition Authority and to Ms. Lati for the support granted in the conclusion of this agreement. Thank you. 2  BIS Review 82/2007
When in 2003 we clarified our objective to keep inflation below but close to 2%, we assumed an equilibrium real interest rate of 2% on average. 9 The probability of hitting the effective lower bound under this assumption was very low. Today, imperfect indicators of the equilibrium real rate, such as real forward rates at long horizons, suggest that it may have fallen to much lower levels. In this context, higher potential growth would facilitate the stabilisation task of monetary policy by allowing the equilibrium real rate to rise. The untapped potential of the euro area For all these reasons, structural reforms that reverse the downward drift in potential growth are now vital for the euro area, which is why I believe, as the guardian of the currency, we have a legitimate interest in talking about them. But we should recognise that our weak longterm performance also provides an opportunity. Since many economies are distant from the frontier of best practice in at least some policy areas, the gains from structural reforms are easier to achieve and the potential magnitude of such gains is greater. To give just one example, research by the OECD suggests that committed convergence towards best practice across labour and product markets, tax policy and pensions would  8  Arulampalam, W., P. Gregg, and M. Gregory (2001), “Unemployment Scarring.” The Economic Journal, vol. 111, November 2001. 9  Coenen, G. (2003), “Zero lower bound: is it a problem in the euro area?” ECB Working Paper Series No. 269, September 2003.

And we will work hard, as we have in the past, to try to find the right balance between the broad objectives of stability and security and the efficiency of the system. BIS Review 59/2004  5
Third, directors should exercise due care to prevent the misperception of being involved in a situation of conflict of interest, and risk being seen to have compromised the bank’s interest. Therefore, it would be prudent to excuse yourself from any Board consideration of issues which you may have direct or indirect interest. In fact, many directors now excuse themselves from Board meetings when such agenda come up, and such action is to be commended. Fourth, while directors need not be involved in the day-to-day running of the bank, it is important that you be fully involved in the process of setting the strategy and key policy that determine future direction of the bank at the outset. By ensuring that directors have in-depth knowledge of key strategy and policy, they can carry out their oversight role in monitoring operation of management effectively to ensure that management performance are aligned to strategic objectives, and enable them to be able to spot occasions where management have omitted to bring a report to their attention. Fifth, this issue may be somewhat new to some directors, and is an addition to the traditional role, the role of directors in overseeing risk management in the bank. In fact, the role of directors in ensuring that the bank does not take excessive risk in conducting business is quite a traditional one.

We hope that you would have a better appreciation of why the Bank of Thailand needs to call for even more on your directorship role. But before I dwell into the topic of the duties of directors, let me take this occasion to extend to you my deepest appreciation and thanks for the tremendous efforts and cooperation you have given the Bank of Thailand in the course of the year. Your institutions have continued to lend strong and valuable support to the recovery programme for the businesses affected by the Tsunami disaster, and those affected by the violence and unrest in the three southern provinces, by extending the concessional lending programme for another year. To support the reform in the banknote management system, you have made substantial changes to your operation nationwide to take on the additional role of handling and moving banknotes. This cooperative spirit truly demonstrates a shared understanding of the benefits of reform, despite the adjustments required on your part. Last year we also had a cause for celebration with the progress made in the Data Management System which helped improve efficiency of the reporting system for financial institutions, customers, and foreign exchange transactions data. Going forward, we continue to receive full cooperation from banks in building the country’s economic database. The project is expected to be completed this year. Turning to the payments system, the ITMX project designed as infrastructure for a modern payment system, has also made tremendous stride with the full cooperation of all Thai banks.
Mugur Isrescu: nvestments in challenging times - how can Romanian firms thrive in the new context? Opening speech by Mr Mugur Isrescu, Governor of the National Bank of Romania, at the conference "Investments in challenging times: How can Romanian firms thrive in the new context? ", Bucharest, 16 March 2023. *** Vice-President Pavlova, Chief Economist Revoltella, Distinguished audience, Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to this year's conference organized by the European Investment Bank in partnership with the National Bank of Romania, titled "Investments in challenging times: How can Romanian firms thrive in the new context?". I am glad that we are able to meet again at the National Bank of Romania, after 2 years in which we had to host this event exclusively on-line. Please allow me to extend a warm welcome to the EIB representatives that are joining us: Vice-President Pavlova, Chief Economist Revoltella and Ms. Tasan Zanin, Head of the EIB office in Bucharest, and to all our colleagues and guests that are with us today, in person or online. I commend EIB's continuous involvement and support in engaging with stakeholders in Romania through these valuable series of events. There is already a tradition, today's conference being the sixth we have co-organized and hosted. Romania and the European Investment Bank share a long and fruitful partnership that has resulted in projects in important sectors of our economy. I am certain we will be able to continue to build on this important partnership, tackling variable challenges and opportunities.

I would add here that the Government has implemented several measures in this respect, such as electricity and natural gas price capping schemes, the compensation of the price of motor fuel/liter and caps on the firewood price. Also, we are aware that the war in Ukraine and the related sanctions will continue to generate considerable uncertainties and risks to the outlook for economic activity, through possibly stronger effects on consumer purchasing power and confidence, as well as on firms' activity, profits and investment plans, with an unfavorable impact on financing costs. In this current juncture, the balanced macroeconomic policy mix and the implementation of structural reforms, including the use of EU funds to foster the growth potential over the long term, are essential in preserving a stable macroeconomic framework and strengthening the capacity of the Romanian economy to withstand adverse developments. With respect to the National Bank of Romania's responsibilities, we aim to anchor inflation expectations over the medium term, to bring the annual inflation rate back towards the target, in a manner conducive to achieving sustainable economic growth. The annual CPI inflation rate is projected to follow a gradual downward path, but to remain slightly above the variation band of the target also next year. The prudential and financial position of the Romanian banking sector - the main source of finance to the economy - is adequate. However, the risks are rising both locally and internationally.
Debt dynamics Speech given by Ben Broadbent  London Business School Wednesday 23 January 2019  I’ve received many helpful comments from colleagues at the Bank of England. I’d particularly like to thank David Seaward, Danny Walker and Mette Nielsen for their invaluable help with what has proved a data-heavy bit of work. The views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Bank of England or other members of the Financial Policy Committee or the Monetary Policy Committee. 1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  Introduction and summary In mid-2007, as the first cracks in the financial system began to appear, some of the most indebted households in the developed world were not in the US or the UK but in the Netherlands. Average mortgage debt was almost twice average annual income. Yet over the following few years, there were almost no defaults on Dutch mortgages and associated losses for the lending banks were minimal (Chart1). In the UK, where households were less heavily indebted, mortgage losses were somewhat higher though still comparatively low.1 It was in the US – of the three, the country with the least mortgage debt – where rates of negative equity and ultimate default were by far the most severe. So at least among this mini-sample of three, prior levels of debt were not a good guide to the scale of the subsequent distress in the mortgage market (Chart 1).

Default on a mortgage carries much more risk for households – the potential loss of a home – than non-payment of unsecured debt. It’s just that this has become more the case in recent years. As outlined in the introduction, almost all the growth in unsecured household debt, relative to income, involves two relatively new developments that involve less pound-for-pound risk, at least for borrowers, than other forms of debt. Nor do they tell you anything about whether households are “living beyond their means”. One involves a change in the way people pay for cars. Conventional loans for car purchase have been around for a while. But over the last decade or so these have been overtaken by so-called “personal contract purchases” (PCPs) in which buyers make lower monthly payments but don’t own the car outright (there’s usually an option to buy at the end of the term, but the car is otherwise returned to the dealer). This is a highly contingent contract and, as far as households are concerned, it’s one that looks more like a rental arrangement than normal debt. The payments are mostly for depreciation, not pure interest. (They’re, in any case, set in advance and are therefore insensitive to subsequent changes in short-term interest rates.) The car owner can choose costlessly to walk away from the contract, at least once half the original price has been repaid.
30  Debt, default and dependency on high-cost credit are also a recipe for another d – depression. Debt and financial illiteracy affect physical and mental health. without to have a common mental health disorder. 31  32  Adults in debt are three times more likely than those  Financial stress is associated with high levels of  personal anxiety, depression and alcohol-dependency - problems that tend to felt more acutely by people with low levels of financial literacy. 33  The link between debt, financial illiteracy and mental health is clearly two-way. In a survey by mental health charity MIND, over 90% said that financial problems had worsened existing mental health problems, while around two-thirds said mental health problems had contributed to their financial difficulties. 34  There is a  debt-cum-depression spiral. These statistics are, in every sense of the word, depressing. A lack of trust or understanding of finance and the economy can have wider societal costs. Economic mistrust and misunderstanding can spread contagiously across societies, much as happened after the MMR 26  House of Lords Select Committee on Financial Exclusion (2017). Resolution Foundation (2014). 28 Lusardi and Tufano (2009). 29 Gerardi, Goette and Meier (2010). 30 Disney and Gathergood (2013), for example, find that borrowers with poor financial literacy hold higher shares of high cost credit. 31 Richardson et al (2017). 32 Earwicker (2016). 33 Earwicker (2016). 34 As quoted in Earwicker (2016). 27  6  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  6  vaccine scare.

Yet, in the case of these countries, there is a real risk posed by speculative capital inflows. As long as negative real interest rates prevail in Europe, straying too far away from our regional peers in terms of policy rate would invite considerable appreciation pressures. While helpful in terms of taming inflation, these would not be welcome, given Romania’s increasingly significant external imbalance that is singular in the region in terms of size and trend. It owes to the faster growth of domestic absorption than that of domestic output, as well as to non-price competitiveness issues manifest in certain production sectors. Therefore, striking the right balance in terms of the interest rate differential is of the essence. After the tightening undertaken so far in Romania (including three policy rate hikes in the first half of 2018), it is probably wise to proceed cautiously in the future. 2/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  Which brings me to the last issue I would like to address: what is advisable in terms of economic policies in order to cope with any future adverse developments. For the sake of simplicity, allow me to try to formulate three general rules that are instrumental in dealing with such developments. First of all, irrespective of the possible scenarios, it is wise to put your house in order before the storm comes. One example is fiscal consolidation, which is paramount for the economy.
For instance, with this crisis, we witness a breakdown in the key assumptions that form the basis of our thinking about the efficiency and the self-correcting nature of markets which, for a long time, underpin the rationale for globalization, liberalization, and deregulation. These assumptions are now being challenged. Next, in this crisis, the most damage comes from the most regulated sector of the economy, notably the financial sector. What we saw is that, even with regulation in place, the sector surprisingly exhibited important failure in risk management discipline across a variety of institutions and players, including banks, institutional investors, credit-rating agencies, and regulators. On this, a better way to manage risk to support the process of international financial intermediation still needs to be worked out. And finally, the global economy has never before been put in a position that it might have to deal with the consequences of the  BIS Review 92/2009  1  massive policy response that have been put in place both on the fiscal and the monetary fronts. These 4 consequences are the known unknowns, and the approach we choose to address them will importantly influence the direction that global finance will take going forward. Given the focus of this conference is on the stake of emerging economies in the international financial system, let me share with you briefly how emerging economies in Asia so far have managed in the current crisis, and how we see the direction of global finance evolving.

From the point of view of the FSB, the possibility of conducting an orderly resolution of a failing cross-border financial institution is an important element in finding a solution to the “too big to fail” and “too big to rescue” issues. Effective communication between the relevant  2  BIS Review 167/2009  supervisory authorities as well as forward-looking elaboration of emergency procedures are indispensible in this process. Internationally recognised regulations for the dissolution of systemically important institutions that can be enforced under any jurisdiction are no doubt a splendid objective. In the real world, however, different national regulations will continue to exist in this field. From our point of view, reciprocal recognition of national regulations that are mutually compatible, and the associated adjustment of structures and processes, are a more realistic objective. The second element proposed by the FSB is to supplement the increased capital and liquidity requirements with various measures that address the organisational structures of systemically important financial institutions. Measures of this kind could, for instance, create the possibility of extracting operations that were important for the economy and liquidating the remaining operations. The third element in the solution envisaged by the FSB is a financial market infrastructure whose design ensures that, as far as possible, it minimises destabilising effects in the event of a bank collapse. Central counterparties can play a special role in this respect.
In 1980, the self-employed accounted for less than 8% of the workforce. In 2016, they stood at an historic high of around 15%, or around 4 ¼ million people (Chart 6). The increase in self-employment has occurred within each age cohort, although the pick-up has been greatest among the old. In 1990, 30% of the self-employed hired other workers. Today, that share is around 16%, with more of the self-employed working independently. 8  As with decreasing unionisation, it seems unlikely these trends will reverse. As older workers are more likely to be self-employed, the ageing of the population will by itself generate further increases. As a rough ready-reckoner, were the incidence of self-employment in each age group to remain constant, the ageing of the population would by itself generate an extra 100,000 self-employed people over the next decade. If numbers in self-employment kept on increasing at the same rate as in the past, the increase could be much more substantial, perhaps as much as an extra 1 million people over the next decade. A more recent phenomenon in the labour market – and one which has attracted particular attention – is the “zero hours” contract. As recently as 2010, 0.6% of those in employment were on zero hours contracts, around 170,000 people. By 2016, that had increased to almost 3% of employees, or almost 1 million workers (Chart 7). It is unclear how much of the measured increase in zero hours contracts is a genuine trend, rather than reflecting increased awareness and reporting.

Steps taken as part of the liraization policy, including deposits converted from foreign currency and gold that constitute one of our reserve build-up tools, have not produced a net cost for the Bank's balance sheet. Deposit accounts converted from foreign currency and gold, Turkish lira securities maintained in line with the changes made in the collateral policy, the varying interest cost in Turkish lira reserve requirements, changes in commissions for foreign currency reserve requirements, and the increase in Turkish lira rediscount bills due to the liraization in rediscount credits had a balanced total effect on the balance sheet. Distinguished Shareholders, Esteemed Guests, Before concluding my speech, I would also like to mention the major activities we carried out throughout the year to contribute to the financial development of Türkiye. In line with our vision in the field of information technologies, we maintained our studies to develop the technological solutions and systems needed, as well as to ensure the security and continuity of these systems. Accordingly, we supported our payments infrastructure with innovative business models. We developed and introduced the Security Overlay Service (SIPER), to enhance the security of FAST, our Instant and Continuous Transfer of Funds system that we put into implementation in 2021. To expand the use of TR QR Code, another important application in the field of payments, we continued our work on regulation, infrastructure and promotion.
Thank you for your attention. BIS central bankers’ speeches  9  10  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  11  12  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  13

First, modern ATMs can more safely dispense notes of a physical quality that as the issuing authority I would not wish to see in circulation (for example, heavily soiled notes). This is a mundane point, but the latest ATMs are harder to jam, unlike their predecessors. On the whole, financial institutions do not dispense what we regard as unfit notes, even though their ATMs might be able to do so, but as the issuing authority we now have to pay more attention to ensuring that this does not happen. The second development represents the connection between the physical quality of notes and denominational mix. We have most difficulty getting our low denomination note, the £ into circulation. The main reason for this problem is that few ATMs dispense £ The link to quality comes about because once our £ enter circulation, they stay in circulation and exchange hands more times before they return into the wholesale cash distribution system for fitness sorting, and thus can be taken out of circulation as unfit or re-circulated as a fit note. Put simply, since there are relatively few £ notes entering circulation they stay in circulation and are not banked and fitness sorted as regularly as they should be. Chart 9 illustrates this problem. It shows over the last nearly fifteen years the trend in how many times per year on average banknotes of each denomination are processed through the wholesale cash centre fitness sorting process.