samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The wave of consolidation has, however, created mega-exchanges in the U.S. and Europe, and competition among them has proceeded at a furious pace. The Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) faces a serious challenge on its home turf from Eurex, the all-electronic exchange owned by Deutsche Börse and the Swiss Stock Exchange. Eurex is now offering electronic trading in U.S. dollar denominated fixed income futures which have been the mainstay of the CBOT. The pan-European exchange, Euronext.Liffe, is offering electronic trading in Eurodollar futures contracts in direct competition with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). CME has responded quickly, announcing initiatives to accelerate the migration of its flagship Eurodollar contract to GLOBEX, its electronic trading platform. And just this month, it was reported that the New York Stock Exchange may enter the derivatives market too. Hardly a week passes without press reports of strategic moves by the exchanges. Securities exchanges have not been spared from the competition. London Stock Exchange (LSE) will launch its Dutch Trading Service, euroSETS, in May this year. This will allow the most liquid stocks listed on Euronext-Amsterdam to be traded through LSE. This bold move is being watched closely by the industry, and may challenge conventional wisdom on the contestability of stock exchange liquidity. The outcome of these contests could significantly alter the competitive landscape for exchanges in the next few years. Key drivers of consolidation and competition One key driver behind the consolidation and competition is technology. Exchanges and clearing houses are very much technology businesses today.

To achieve this objective, we have made it mandatory for the conventional banks to establish a dedicated Islamic banking division within the bank, create and observe a minimum Islamic banking fund, opening separate clearing account with the Central Bank to facilitate effective separation in the payments system as well as to have a separate accounting disclosure. Having these policies and infrastructure in place, we have been able to operate the dual banking system in a structured and systematic manner. Ladies and Gentlemen, Although the regulations are in place, close oversight and updated statistical reporting, supported by close monitoring through the early warning system, are necessary as measures to avoid banking failures. The global experience has shown that not all banking failures are due to economic and financial crises. The global experiences has shown that banking failures can be caused by the lack of good corporate governance in the banking institutions. Lack of transparency, lack of oversight, weak internal controls, lack of checks and balances, incompetent directors and abuse of power are among the elements of poor corporate governance. Hence, even the best regulations and supervision and the best financial safety nets cannot prevent such banking failures. The regulation of banking institutions therefore needs to be complemented and reinforced with good corporate governance.
The experiment showed that those who bid for the tickets using their credit cards were willing to pay up to 100% more than those who were using cash.2 And this was a group of students that was not a typical population, but a group of MBA students from MIT! Even they, with their credit cards, bid much more when using credit cards than when using cash. This is normal human behaviour. 8. Hence MAS’ credit card rules are important. We have to discourage people from excessive spending using credit cards. Many countries do not impose rules, or some have imposed rules only recently. We moved very early to discourage excessive credit card spending. I think it is a very sensible move, having a minimum income requirement and also making sure that once you have a credit card, you can’t spend too much compared to your monthly income. This is something we have strengthened recently. As some of you may know, we have a total limit on what individuals can borrow on all their credit cards and unsecured facilities combined, with all the banks. The total limit will be capped at 12 months’ of income, which is still a very high borrowing on an unsecured basis. But MAS started with this limit because we are aware that some Singaporeans’ borrowings currently exceed 12 months of income, and we have to give them time to bring their borrowings down. MAS will monitor the situation, and tighten the credit limits further, if necessary. 9.

Data from Credit Counselling Singapore (CCS) also shows that the people who over-spend and over-borrow are not just low-income people. In fact, most of them are not low-income. The average income of those who come to CCS with serious debt problems is around $ per month, not far below the median income level; and quite a few are higher income. Hence everyone can over-borrow because of overspending. According to the CCS, the most common problem is actually over-spending. 5. MAS has also found from the survey that more than half of those surveyed had insufficient insurance to protect their dependents if something were to happen to them. One in three of those surveyed did not know that they were covered by Medishield. Hence the level of awareness is not very high. 6. Quite a few people are passive towards managing their money. That means not planning ahead or finding out information that would help them to manage their money well. This is again something we find all over the world. In most countries, they find that many people do not plan ahead, and they take life one step at a time, taking things as they come. But eventually, they may end up with problems if they have not saved enough or not anticipated some future expenses for their children or themselves. So we can do more to help Singaporeans to plan ahead, by expanding financial education for all age and income groups, all over Singapore.
But obviously, it is also important for us to continuously assess how the Riksbank’s earnings will be affected during the course of the journey. This is something we have discussed in different contexts. 4 Our latest estimate indicates that the effect on earnings from the bond holdings could be quite close to zero seen over the entire holding period. But how earnings will be ultimately affected depends on how the interest rate develops in the future. Can households cope with higher interest rates? Swedish households current have record-high debts in combination with a large proportion of variable-rate mortgages (see Figure 7). As you are no doubt aware, the Riksbank has been concerned for many years about the high level of household indebtedness and the potential negative effects on the Swedish economy of rising interest rates or falling house prices. 5 From our horizon, it is therefore important to carefully analyse the interest-rate sensitivity of households. We have also returned to this issue on a number of occasions, most recently in the Monetary Policy Report in December. 6  4 See, for instance, “The Riksbank’s bond purchases affect government finances”, speech by Martin Flodén on 9 November 2016. 5 For example, we published an extensive inquiry into the risks on the Swedish housing market as early as in the spring of 2011. See Sveriges Riksbank (2011), “The Riksbank’s inquiry into the risks on the Swedish housing market”. 6 See “How are household cashflows and consumption affected by rising interest rates?” article in Monetary Policy Report, December 2018.

But I think that the situation on the Swedish housing market is still very uncertain. Weaker developments than in our forecast pose a significant risk to the Swedish economy. Those components of domestic demand that would be negatively affected first of all would be housing investment and household consumption. But as I am here at the Swedish Property Federation today, I would also like to mention that the weaker developments on the housing market since last autumn have not escaped housing developers. You can read more about this in an article in our Financial Stability Report, published in November. 16 An important conclusion we can draw from developments in recent years is that housing developers have burdened households with substantial risks during the building process. In  16  See “The new production of housing and financial stability”, article in Financial Stability Report 2018:2. 12 [13]  the prevailing market situation, these risks have come to the fore, causing households’ interest to wane, especially when move-in dates to new homes are far-off in the future. This will require modified business models in order to rekindle the interest of prospective house-buyers in newly built homes. My assessment is also that newly built homes are currently far too expensive for many groups. Cheaper new builds and better turnover in the housing stock could help untangle this knot. There are of course many uncertainty factors not only surrounding future economic developments, but also surrounding inflation.
In isolation, higher carbon prices could carry the risk of households facing higher prices, without being able to switch their consumption expenditures towards greener technologies. Strong public and private investment efforts are therefore needed to prevent consumers from being locked into carbon-intensive technologies. Public investments can serve a catalytic function in this context. Infrastructure investments, for example for charging electric vehicles, can trigger wide-ranging changes in the type of energy mix used in public and private transport. The coronavirus crisis offers a must-seize opportunity. The costs of letting the current crisis go to waste would be exceptionally large, for two main reasons. First, business dynamism in Europe has been comparatively weak for a long time (see figure 3). There are considerably lower shares of both growing and shrinking firms than in other advanced economies, holding back productivity growth as well as technology creation and diffusion. [6] Put simply, new firms are more likely to adopt new and greener technologies, and we are not seeing enough of them in Europe. Figure 3 New business creations (thousands)  Notes: Number of new businesses created outside of agriculture (FR, DE, IT, ES), and number of business applications outside of agriculture (US), 12-months rolling average. Data for France excludes sole proprietorships. US data has been transformed from weekly to monthly, data for Italy from quarterly to monthly and data for Spain from annual to monthly. Data for Spain available only until 2018. Sources: INSEE (FR), Destatis (DE), Banca d'Italia (IT), Census Bureau (US) and INE (ES).

The EU’s emission trading system (ETS) is the world’s largest carbon market. Its “cap and trade” scheme provides a mechanism for both reducing the total amount of emissions in a cost-efficient way and ensuring that pollution is priced adequately. A recent study shows that the ETS saved more than one billion tons of CO2 between 2008 and 2016, a 3.8% reduction in total EU-wide emissions. [5] And only this week, carbon prices hit their highest level in more than a decade, despite the sharp contraction in aggregate demand and energy consumption, possibly reflecting the anticipation of tighter climate policies under the European Green Deal (see figure 2). Figure 2 EU ETS price (in euro per ton CO2 emissions)  Source: Bloomberg. Last observation: 15 July 2020. Notes: Energy Broker pricing on Bloomberg updates on a near realtime basis. Updates only occur when there is activity in the market, so there may not be updates to every contract every day. There is no reason for complacency, however. Currently, the ETS only covers economic sectors that together account for less than half of total carbon emissions in the EU, whereas the remaining sectors are subject to a patchwork of non-harmonised measures across the European Union. A global solution is out of reach. Moreover, carbon pricing is not a sufficient condition to manage the transition towards a more sustainable economy. Fostering green investment and innovation This brings me to the second pillar.
That’s quite something given the general rate of inflation in the 1970s and 80s. In real terms – relative to the rest of the consumer basket – they fell by over 80%. This has brought significant benefits for consumers. It’s hard to say what would’ve happened in the absence of globalisation. But let’s suppose that, in that event, real clothes prices would have continued to fall at the 1%-or-so pace we saw prior to the mid-1970s (and since 2008). By comparison the actual decline in prices over the past 40 years has added just over 3% to real household incomes. At the same time the domestic production sector has clearly suffered (Chart 6). It didn’t start in a great position, it should be said. In 1975 it was a comparatively unproductive industry: per capita value added was 30% below the UK average. It required and employed relatively low-skilled labour: the average full-time wage was £ a year – barely £ per hour in today’s money and over a third lower than in the rest of the economy. Even then the country was buying more clothes than it produced: the balance of trade in clothing and textiles was already in deficit. Ricardo may have chosen British cloth as his quintessential example of a comparative advantage. But by the 1970s, if not long before, the position had been reversed. Faster productivity growth in the same sector in other countries, and in other sectors at home, had turned that into a comparative disadvantage.

So, although some trade is always better than none, there are settings in which – given the existence of trade – changes in relative productivity can worsen a country’s welfare. 8  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  8  But you do see something in employment and participation. Relative to others, regions with larger-thanaverage clothing sectors in 1981 experienced slightly lower growth in employment, and slightly greater rises in economic inactivity, over the following ten years (Charts 8a and 8b). Even in the 2011 census (Charts 9a and 9b) there still seems to be something of an echo of the pattern of employment thirty years earlier. Chart 9a: Even after 30 years the negative  Chart 9b: Same goes for inactivity  correlation with employment still exists  Source: UK Census, Nomis  Source: UK Census, Nomis  From such bare-bones relationships any conclusion can only be tentative. They don’t control for any other differences that might have existed in 1981 and it’s possible the correlations are picking up something other than the size of the local clothing and textile industry. However, the results do happen to accord with other, 6  much more careful studies. In the United States, David Autor and co-authors have found that individuals working in industries and regions more exposed to trade with China have subsequently seen longer than average periods of non-employment. This is particularly true for those at the lower end of the distribution.
Japan aside, it is now close to seven years since the last episode of concerted intervention among the major economies; and there has been no Japanese intervention for two years. Among emerging economies, too, we have seen a marked trend toward more flexible exchange rate regimes. This is particularly pronounced in parts of Latin America. At the other end of the spectrum, some of the newer members of the European Union are gearing up to adopt the euro. Somewhere in the middle between these extremes of flexible exchange rate regimes and full monetary integration are the emerging market economies, mostly in Asia and among the major oil exporters in the Gulf, that still sustain fixed or partially fixed exchange rate regimes. Most of these countries link their currencies to the dollar, though we see varying degrees of flexibility in the closeness of that link. How has the world fared under this diverse mixed of flexible and fixed exchange rate regimes? In general, I think, the costs of living with exchange rate volatility have been less than feared and attempts to limit volatility have been more damaging and less effective than expected. Take the experience of the major economies. Despite periods of very substantial swings in exchange rates, and the amplitude of the changes in exchange rates among the major currencies since 1973 have been exceptionally large, economic growth in the major economies have become more stable, not less.

Once relaxed, exchange and capital controls are both difficult and costly to reintroduce, and even relatively modest steps back from an open regime can be damaging to confidence and credibility, without buying much in the way of lasting stability. The policy responses to the challenges that come with economic and financial integration principally involve choices for governments at the national level. International cooperation can in some circumstances help provide a more supportive environment, but there are no feasible changes to the architecture of the international financial system that offer the prospect of a durably stable external economic and financial environment for nations, large or small. Fundamentally, the only realistic choice for policymakers is to equip their economies with the flexibility to cope more successfully in this increasingly integrated global economy. And this means preparing for a world of more rather than less flexibility in exchange rate regimes. Thank you. BIS Review 44/2007  3
This year, Barclays pipped us to the post but in the spirit of sharing knowledge, we look forward to learning about the initiatives that have worked for them. The Bank is also focusing on mid-career recruitment and last year almost half of our experienced hires were female. To attract diverse candidates we review all job adverts to ensure they use only gender-neutral language to avoid alienating or discouraging prospective applicants. During the selection process, CVs are anonymised of all personal data, fostering a more objective assessment of a candidate’s skills. At the interview stage, we ensure that panels are diverse in order to mitigate affinity effects and unconscious biases. To make these initiatives a success, all our managers are required to undertake unconscious bias training before recruiting. Of course, not all talent develops on a linear career path; some people choose to take career breaks and may require support to return to the workplace. Recognising this pool of untapped talent, the Bank successfully piloted a Career Returners programme last year. The Bank offered a six-month placement to 16 people, with coaching and training support and fifteen women went on to take up permanent positions. Bolstered by this success, we are rolling out the programme across the institution. Recruitment is only the first step. As Jayne-Anne Gadhia observed in her review of gender diversity in finance, a layer of “permafrost” sets in at middle management, where women get either stuck or leave the sector.

Kosovo is one of our largest export markets, and it is, certainly, a significant market for Macedonia. This deadlock in the trade was relatively brief, so we will see the data on September when they will be available, but I hope that it will not disturb largely the economic activity in our country. It is forecasted that the growth will be around two, two and a half percents annually. How many percentages of growth are necessary to enable the citizens to feel the benefits of the economic growth of RM? Our projection for this year remains 2.2 percentages, but after the publication of the data on GDP for the second quarter, it will probably move upwards. We are now launching the new round of projections which will be finalized near end of October, but it can be expected that the increase in the Gross Domestic Product this year will be over 3%. The growth should be continuous, meaning a growth of 3, 4, and even 5 percents in a several year continuous period in order to be felt more substantially by all citizens, by each class and by all enterprises. According to the National Bank data, increase in the savings deposits was registered. If my data are right, the deposits increased by about Euro 87 million. What is the reason for such a trend? Yes, it is interesting that the deposits here are growing continually, even during the hardest times of the global financial crisis at the beginning of 2009, we had a deposit growth.
Public debt sustainability in the long run percent of GDP 60  Public debt critical threshold  1st Scenario (decreasing public debt)  2nd Scenario (stabilizing public debt)  3rd Scenario (rising public debt)  3.9 1)  3.9  3.9  -0,3 2)  -1,0  -2,5  4,5 3)  4,5  4,5  50  Interest rate on public debt (%)  40  30  Primary balance (% of GDP)  20  10  Real economic growth rate (%)  Public debt/GDP  Scenario 1  Scenario 2  2028  2027  2026  2025  2024  2023  2022  2021  2020  2019  2018  2017  2016  2015  2014  2013  2012  2011  2010  2009  2008  0  Scenario 3  Note: 1) Public debt interest payments as a ratio to average public debt in 2014. 2) The primary government budget balance of 0.3 percent of GDP corresponded to a structural deficit of around 1 percent of GDP (MTO – Medium-Term Budgetary Objective) in 2014. 3) 2.8 percent is the real growth rate in 2014. Source: MPF, NBR calculations  Maintaining the deficit within the limits set by the MTO (medium term objective) ensures long-term sustainability of public debt  Figure 14.

17 Second, as part of our broader SkillsFuture national initiative, MAS is partnering various other players to enhance continuous learning. We must in particular equip financial professionals with stronger digital skillsets: The Financial IT Academy (FITA) is delivering a digital transformation programme for midcareers that includes topics such as data analytics and agile development, to deliver software faster and with high quality. The Institute of Banking and Finance (IBF) will be offering new learning modules on a set of core capabilities covering data science, human-centric design, agile thinking, and cyber-risk awareness. To develop the cyber security talent pool in Singapore, the Info-comm & Media Development Authority (IMDA) and the Cyber Security Agency (CSA) have introduced the Cyber Security Associates and Technologists (CSAT) Programme1. The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School will also be launching a new executive education programme in Singapore focused on financial innovation. i) Called the Wharton FinTech Innovation Program for Financial Institutions, it is expected to launch in the second quarter of next year. ii) The Program aims to expose senior managers in incumbent financial institutions to current topics in FinTech. iii) Participants will learn to how to grapple with disruptive trends, and drive change and innovation across their organisations to compete in the FinTech space. We also want to ensure that professionals trained in ICT skills have good placement outcomes in the financial sector. We are doing this through the recently-formed Finance Committee of the Technology Skills Accelerator, or TeSA, programme.