samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
In some municipalities, the number of vacancies is higher than the number of job-seekers. There are also reports of shortages of other factor inputs. There are shortages of drivers, pre-school teachers, supervisors, engineers, carpenters, architects, auditors, accountants, IT personnel and health workers. It has probably not been since the 1970s that we find such widespread reports of purely physical production constraints, for example now in the form of shortages of rigs and other equipment in the petroleum industry or shortages of plank, concrete, insulation and scaffolding in the construction industry. New national accounts figures show that activity in the Norwegian economy increased at a faster-thanprojected pace in the period 2004 – 2006. The figures also indicate that productivity growth has been higher than expected. We interpret this to mean that the permanent level of production capacity has also increased. An alternative interpretation is that favourable cyclical developments are fuelling productivity growth. If that is the case, it may show a marked decline when economic growth slows. BIS Review 34/2007  1  Unemployment has fallen sharply in the past few quarters. The rate of decline and level of unemployment are reminiscent of two previous cyclical peaks, the one in the mid-1980s and the other that started in the late-1990s and continued into this decade. Both expansions culminated in a sharp rise in wage and cost inflation. Employment growth was for a long period lower than in the cyclical upturns in the 1980s and 1990s.

The deviation between market expectations and the actual interest rate has been substantial in periods. There is no reason to believe that Norges Bank will not also have to reassess its interest rate forecasts as new information emerges about economic developments. According to the monetary policy strategy in Inflation Report 2/06, the sight deposit rate should be in the interval 2¾ - 3¾ per cent in the period to the publication of the next Inflation Report on 1 November, conditional on economic developments that are broadly in line with projections. Monetary policy is oriented towards a gradual increase in the interest rate - in small, not too frequent steps towards a more normal level. The analyses in Inflation Report 2/06 were based on a gradual increase in the interest rate towards a more normal level. In the first six months of 2006, the key rate was increased in two increments of 0.25 percentage point. There were prospects that the interest rate would rise further at about the same pace. At the meeting on 27 September, Norges Bank’s Executive Board decided to leave the key rate, sight deposit rate, unchanged at 3.00 per cent. The background for the decision was formulated as follows: "There is now little slack in the Norwegian economy. A steadily rising share of enterprises lacks the capacity to accommodate increased demand, largely because of labour shortages. The labour market has grown considerably tighter, and there are several signs that wage growth is picking up.
CPI inflation was forecast to increase quickly next year, mainly as a result of mortgage rates rising due to the repo rate increases. CPI inflation was expected to temporarily overshoot the inflation target in 2012 and 2013, but to be around the 2 per cent target in the longer run when the repo rate has reached more normal levels. The majority of the Executive Board members made the assessment that it was appropriate to continue the process of normalizing monetary policy that had begun in the summer. The repo rate was raised to 0.75 per cent and the repo rate path was held unchanged from June. This is roughly the picture we painted in the Monetary Policy Update published in September. The statistics received recently have continued to point towards a rapid recovery in Sweden. The GDP outcome for the second quarter has been revised up relatively substantially compared with the preliminary outcome, and expressed as an annual percentage change amounts to 4.6 per cent. The National Institute of Economic Research’s economic tendency survey points to the mood among households and companies being much stronger than normal, and the indicator is now only marginally lower than the peak listing from 2000. New international statistics present a mixed picture. How the new information will be taken into account is something we will return to at our next monetary policy meeting.

2 Much earlier, Minsky had already stated the same type of acid test “...for an economic theory to be relevant, what happens in the world must be a possible event in the theory”. 3 Under the ideal imagined conditions of prevailing thinking before the crisis, the market mechanism operates smoothly and since financial frictions are disregarded, financial intermediaries were generally absent from macro models and without leveraged financial intermediaries, financial instability is not an issue. It is true that there some frictions linked to the credit channel had been included in macro models, basically related to the Financial Accelerator developed by Bernanke and Gertler and Gilchrist. 4 This is, however, only a  1  Caballero, R (2010) “Macroeconomics after the Crisis: Time to Deal with the Pretense-of-Knowledge Syndrome” NBER WP n. 16429. 2  Buiter, W. (2009) “The irrelevance of most ‘state of the art’ academic monetary policy”, available at www.voxeu.org. 3  Minsky, H. (1986) “Stabilizing and unstable economy” in Chapter 12 “Introduction to policy”, McGraw-Hill Professional, new edition, 2008. 4  Bernanke, Ben, Mark Gertler, and Simon Gilchrist, 1999, “The Financial Accelerator in a Quantitative Business Cycle Framework,” Handbook of Macroeconomics, John Taylor and Michael Woodford editors. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  mechanism that could aggravate an on-going crisis, but was not strong enough to trigger one. Recently, Adrian, Colla and Shin examined which frictions should, at a minimum, be included to be relevant.
Source: IMF World Economic Outlook What has been the basis of the recent economic strength of the Asia-Pacific region and what might this suggest about its future development? Economic historians can point to estimates of world economic activity before the industrialisation of Europe and the United States which suggest that Asia accounted for about half of world GDP in the 18th century.1 So in one sense the growing economic strength of Asia might be seen as a restoration of the balance of the world economy which existed before the industrial revolution. But a better explanation is needed of why this might be happening now and how far it has to run in the decades ahead. Japan has been an industrial power since the late 19th century. But the rapid progress of continental Asian economies in recent decades can be seen as the product of three overlapping phases of development. The foundation was provided by what became known as the “East Asian Economic Miracle” – the rapid development of four “tiger economies” – Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan – in the 1970s and 1980s. By pursuing export-led growth, based on high levels of savings and investment, enhanced levels of education and stable macroeconomic policies, these economies achieved strong productivity growth and began to catch up rapidly with western economies and Japan, particularly in the manufacturing sector.2 The second phase of development occurred when a wider group of economies – with much larger populations – began to pursue similar policies.

Svein Gjedrem: The outlook for the Norwegian economy Address by Mr Svein Gjedrem, Governor of Norges Bank (Central Bank of Norway), at the Bergen Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Bergen, 11 April 2007. The text below may differ slightly from the actual presentation. The address is based on the assessments presented at Norges Bank’s press conference following the Executive Board’s monetary policy meeting on 15 March and in Monetary Policy Report 1/07. *  *  *  Introduction Monetary policy in Norway is oriented towards low and stable inflation with annual consumer price inflation of close to 2.5 per cent over time. Low and stable inflation provides enterprises and households with an anchor for inflation expectations. Given that there is confidence in the nominal anchor, monetary policy shall also contribute to stable developments in the real economy. Norges Bank therefore operates a flexible inflation targeting regime. This means that weight is given to both variability in inflation and variability in output and employment in interest-rate setting. Flexible inflation targeting builds a bridge between the long-term objective of monetary policy, which is to keep inflation on target and provide an anchor for inflation expectations, and the more short-term objective of stability in the real economy. Low inflation and solid growth in the Norwegian economy Inflation in Norway decelerated markedly from the late-1980s to the mid-1990s and has since been low and stable, and fairly close to, but somewhat lower than the target of 2.5 per cent, with considerably lower variability than earlier.
I also call on banks to better monitor their pricing practices: margins must be sufficient to cover the costs and risks associated with housing loans. These points will be particularly closely monitored by the ACPR in 2020, and they are – I stress – of common interest to both you and us – in terms of financial stability. Lastly, to meet the challenge of profitability, French banks and insurers must be able to – at last! – operate in a genuine single financial market conducive to cross-border consolidation. And yet, the Banking Union is still half-finished: progress on resolution – second pillar – is at least as important as that on the deposit guarantee scheme – third pillar. Moreover, in the run-up to the arduous discussions on the future relationship with the United Kingdom, Europe must – more than ever before – assert its financial sovereignty. This requires the Capital Markets Union. I 2/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  would like to express my support for the priorities put forward in the “Next CMU” report and for the High-Level Forum (HLF) launched by the new Commission. If 2020 proves to be not only the year of Brexit, but also the year of a Savings and Sustainable Investment Union, Europe will have turned the problem into an opportunity.

On the fiscal front, cuts in wage and corporate income taxes differentiated across regions have been put in place last week to support the economy that is already growing at a moderate pace. 1  On March 15, 2009 Special Consumption Tax (SCT) rates were decreased on vehicles to %18 from %37, and on durable goods and other electrical household appliances to %0 from %6.7. These rates were increased on vehicles to %28, on durable goods to %2 and on other electrical household appliances to %6.7 on 16 June, 2009. By October 1, 2009, SCT rates were brought back to the levels before March 2009. Similarly, Value Added Tax (VAT) rates on furniture and IT products were slashed to %8 on March 30, 2009, before being raised back to the initial rate of %18 on October 1, 2009. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  Dear Participants, So far I have touched on the impacts of movements in commodity prices on inflation and economic growth. Now I will talk about the impact of fluctuations in commodity prices on foreign trade balances. The dependency of the Turkish economy on energy imports makes the current accounts balance more sensitive to changes in commodity prices. Uncertainties regarding the global economy in recent years and the exceptionally loose monetary policies adopted by advanced economies, such as the United States, Japan and the Euro Area, foreshadow the high probability of continued excess volatility in commodity prices.
All of this in a context in which financial conditions remain favorable, due to both the persistence of low interest rates and good credit lending conditions. It is important to warn against the temptation of trying to extract information on the behavior of private consumption from indicators of retail activity. Although this practice can provide some information, there are differences between both variables that confuse the reading. First, consumption is a component of demand, while retail is a part of GDP, so they differ in their measurement, magnitude and components. Second, retail sales indicators are one of the sources on which household consumption is calculated in the National Accounts. However, formal retail trade represents only 15% of private consumption. Third, the consumption of goods must be added up to the consumption of all services (domestic and foreign acquired), which are almost half of household consumption and are not captured in retail sales indicators. Finally, when it comes to making the GDP retail figures compatible with consumption, we must keep in mind that this retail includes not only retail (related to household consumption) but also wholesale (related to companies). All this recommends using retail data with caution, given the important differences between this sector’s activity and private consumption. III.2. International scenario Internationally, in the baseline scenario, the impulse that the Chilean economy will receive from abroad in the next two years will be lower than in the two previous years and the one we expected in March.

Indeed, it is unusual for any economy to experience a change in the production factors of the magnitude and speed that immigration has triggered in Chile in the last three years. It is also unusual for an increase in potential growth to be accompanied by a reduction in the neutral MPR, which in this case has occurred due to the magnitude and persistence of the fall in interest rates in the world. In previous episodes of CPI basket changes, we had not seen so important corrections to the inflation measurement as this latest one. Faced with this unusual configuration of circumstances, the Central Bank of Chile needed to be rigorous in its analysis, clear in its conclusions and quick in its response. It was helped by the research work and the updating of his models that have been progressing for some time. But once all the pieces of this puzzle have been assembled, the Board has preferred acting over postponing a decision. It is an unusual action in the face of unusual circumstances. Central banks today are not prone to surprising the markets and ours is no exception. We do not seek surprises for the sake of them, and certainly we have not concealed anything in our communications of recent months regarding the analysis that we have conducted, nor have we distracted attention away from it. However, after accumulating evidence and reaching a downright conclusion about its implications for monetary policy, we saw few advantages and many more costs in postponing.
In this regard, we should also be ready for new crises that will be different from the present one. No matter whether the next crisis ahead will be due to increases in the prices of oil and food, to geopolitical tensions or to the bust of potential asset bubbles in emerging markets, we should stand ready to react to any of those possible shocks. In order to be prepared we need to understand that finance and economics are not natural sciences, there are no “fundamental laws” to discover, but they are more about modelling and understanding the outcome of interactions between humans in human-made systems. That is, probably, one of the biggest challenges risk managers need to face. 4. Challenges ahead for central banks as risk managers  Last but not least, I would like to quickly refer to the challenges ahead for central banks. I’m not going to refer to the challenges faced by those central banks which are also banking supervisors or regulators, which are relevant enough to be deserve a full conference on their own, but I will focus on the crisis and risk management function in central banks. The job of central banks is akin to that of risk managers, in the sense that they have to deal with crisis situations and manage risks to the economy using a limited toolbox.

Liquidity risk-related losses piled up over losses registered as a result of fair value accounting as risks in the real estate sector started to materialise on a scale unseen since the Great Depression. In the absence of asset liquidity and with many of the main actors in financial markets undergoing painful processes of loss-recognition, consolidation and deleveraging, some of the assumptions of the models regularly used for risk management did not hold anymore. For  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  instance, this was the case of the assumptions of price continuity and sufficient arbitraging activity that underlie proper market functioning. Furthermore, a variety of assets had to be priced using models that were over-reliant on assumptions and inputs such as credit ratings that had come under strain, thereby increasing the scope for model risk. As a result, uncertainty about the “true” fair value of the assets being held by financial institutions increased significantly. As if the discovery of these “forgotten” risks – the liquidity risk as well as tail market and credit risks – would have not been sufficient evidence of the failures of investment decisionmaking practices at the global level, the default of Lehman opened our eyes even wider and the focus shifted to counterparty risk. This source of risk became increasingly important due to the implementation of hedging and trading strategies based on derivatives contracts, which were very concentrated on a few institutions.
Naturally, the Bank uses data supplied by other agencies as well. It also acquires information through other channels, such as both informal and formal meetings. For this reason it is simply wrong to claim that the Bank's resistance to easing its monetary stance is based on outdated information. BIS Review 27/2001  3  The Central Bank has declared that it will maintain tight money until unequivocal signs of a cooling in the economy begin to appear. Such indications have been emerging recently. For example, total business turnover has decreased. Retail turnover has contracted sharply and there has also been a decrease on the wholesale side. Turnover in manufacturing appears to be stable. However, turnover is still rising rapidly in the construction industry and at a considerable rate in the service sector as well. Although credit growth is still quite substantial, it has slowed down. In the Central Bank's opinion, the economy has now passed the most difficult phase of overheating and the time is ripe to ease the monetary stance somewhat, among other things to avoid a hard landing. The Board of Governors therefore decided today to reduce the rate of interest on its repurchase agreements with credit institutions by 0.5 percentage points. This change has been made in light of next year's lower inflation scenario alongside the slowdown in economic activity. Inflation prospects are within the reference limits stated in the joint declaration on inflation target issued today by the Government and Central Bank.

Birgir Ísleifur Gunnarsson: Update on Iceland’s economy Address by Birgir Ísleifur Gunnarsson, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Central Bank of Iceland, at its Annual General Meeting, Reykjavík, 27 March 2001. *  *  *  On behalf of the Board of Governors of the Central Bank of Iceland I welcome you all to the Bank's 40th annual meeting. This year marks the Bank's fortieth anniversary after it was made completely separate from Landsbanki and transformed into an independent institution. The Bank's financial statements for the year 2000 have been ratified today by the Prime Minister. The Bank's annual report has also been published. As usual it includes a survey of the Bank's activities and performance, along with a detailed report on the Bank's monetary policy and actions, the financial system and financial markets, and the main features of economic developments in the course of last year. I shall now address several aspects of economic issues and the present prospects, in particular those most closely connected with the Central Bank's field of activities. Overheating of the economy Iceland has distinguished itself from most other industrialised countries in recent years by the strong economic growth it has enjoyed, or 4-5% per year. The closest comparison in this respect is with the USA, where growth is in fact on a downward path now.
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Once again, “Selamat datang” to Kuala Lumpur and thank you for being here. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3
Hence, we need to ensure sound regulation and oversight. Network and scale effects are as important as ever. With globalisation, the network effects are moving from the domestic market to the global. Regarding scale effects, I would argue that digitalisation has increased the fixed costs and lowered the variable costs, thereby increasing the large-volume advantage. Next-generation payment systems I will now turn to the present and focus the remaining part of my speech on the work at the Riksbank on developing the current infrastructure – building the payment systems of tomorrow, if I may say so. Naturally, this is not a solo task, but a joint effort involving many stakeholders, public and private, domestic and foreign. I will concentrate, however, on the Riksbank’s rationales for this work. They are to a large extent related to the lessons that I just highlighted. Before I do this, let me briefly reflect on what I said earlier about the higher pace of innovation in recent years. For those in the commercial sphere of payments, this has increased the risk of ‘falling behind’, we often hear. You need to master the new opportunities offered by the ‘era of digitalisation’ to avoid losing market shares. Add to this that network and scale effects tend to benefit suppliers that are first with a new solution or service. Here my point is that the same factor has also led to demands on central banks to be as vigilant as ever.

4  BIS Review 124/2006  Chinese authorities that the central bank should be more open-minded about cooperating with the government institutions in managing huge reserve assets). So, ceteris paribus, this factor will imply balance of risks skewed towards further risk premia compression in emerging markets in situation when US growth slows and expected returns in developed markets drop amid poor growth outlook. The important question is how it will end? Temporary US growth slowdown is unlikely to solve global imbalances issue, it is unlikely that oil-exporting countries will accelerate further their investment in real estate, as the pace is already frantic, lack of reforms in the eurozone indicates that potential output in this part of the world is unlikely to speed up significantly. So standard, consensus prescriptions will not work. The only feasible channel that might work is accelerating the pace of financial sector development, particularly in emerging markets, to produce more financial assets and more collateral. These reforms are easier to implement, because they do not require taking away social benefits and they do not hit any specific groups of interests. So it appears that the discussion should shift away from overvaluation of renminbi, and from implications of pegging gulf currencies to the weakening dollar, towards ways of speeding up necessary financial markets reforms in saving-abundant countries. If these reforms gain speed, we may be able to solve global imbalances problem without much global pain.