samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
This was accompanied by further declines in both the share of people working part-time that would like full-time work, as well as the share of people not part of the labor force. Consistent with a tighter labor market, the share of the working-age population that is employed has risen gradually, and the labor force participation rate has stabilized. While the weakness in some indicators has led me to make small reductions in my forecast, my overall outlook has not changed substantially. In making this determination, a central question is how to reconcile these cross-currents. One has to also factor in that the real GDP growth rate in the fourth quarter was only 1.0 percent and the four-quarter change was 1.9 percent – low even by the subdued standards of this expansion. It is important, though, to recognize that a number of transitory factors held down growth in the fourth quarter – most notably lower utility spending due to warm weather and a decline in the rate of inventory investment. As these transitory factors depressing the pace of economic growth dissipate, the core strengths for the economy should reassert themselves. I anticipate that consumption and housing activity will expand at a moderate pace. Continued job and wage gains, as well as low energy prices, should support real disposable income growth and consumer spending. Retail sales in January provide evidence of this support. The housing market should remain on a solid trajectory, supported by rising employment and low mortgage rates.

We supplement this survey evidence with assessments from internal models. These models are data-driven and estimate percentiles of the distribution of possible forecast outcomes for growth and inflation. Our estimated models have indicated a greater degree of uncertainty than reflected in the U.S. SPF, and suggest downside risk to both the growth and inflation forecast. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  But, I would caution that these models are still relatively new in terms of their development and their results need to be supplemented by judgment. Now, putting these inputs and my judgment together, I see the uncertainties around my forecast to be greater than the typical levels of the past. This assessment reflects the divergent economic signals I highlighted earlier, and is consistent with the turbulence we have seen in global financial markets. At this moment, I judge that the balance of risks to my growth and inflation outlooks may be starting to tilt slightly to the downside. The recent tightening of financial market conditions could have a greater negative impact on the U.S. economy should this tightening prove persistent and the continuing decline in energy and commodity prices may signal greater and more persistent disinflationary pressures in the global economy than I currently anticipate. I am closely monitoring global economic and financial market developments to assess their implications for my outlook and the balance of risks. U.S. Monetary Policy in a Global Environment Thus far, my remarks have focused on the U.S. outlook and the risks relative to this outlook.
If investors have doubts about the dollar, there is no need any longer to rush into the Swiss franc, the euro will do just fine. Second, the eurozone, although not quite to the extent of the United States, is largely a closed economy. Movements in the euro are far less devastating than movements of similar magnitude in the Swiss franc or in the German mark. The euro is much more capable than any other currency to take on the role of shock absorber against the U.S. dollar. The eurozone, in some ways, is the large closed economy that the world needed as the counterweight to the U.S. economy. Be it by intent or by chance, the new, two-headed international monetary system, far from being a freak of nature, is a harmonious and balanced construct that should benefit all small open economies, not least Switzerland. There is a third reason why the arrival of the euro has changed the landscape and should fundamentally prove beneficial to the stability of the international monetary system, and that is competition. Even though the U.S. monetary authorities do not have a mandate that is as specifically directed at price stability as the ECB does, investors now have a choice and can vote with their feet. Thus the pressure is on the United States to deliver price stability as well.

Although we fully appreciated the benefits that Switzerland would draw from the creation of the euro in terms of increased transparency and lower transaction costs, we were also quite concerned about the possible risks. Three of these came to mind. First, we feared that the Swiss franc might be in for a bumpy ride. In the past, whenever the dollar was under attack, international investors turned their attention to the German mark and the Swiss franc. Their status as safe-haven currencies meant that at times of turbulences on foreign exchange markets they would move well beyond what economic fundamentals could justify. In fact, the Swiss franc often revealed a tendency to appreciate even more than the German mark, a phenomenon that was generally attributed to the relative narrowness of the Swiss financial markets. Now with the German mark gone, wouldn’t all attention focus almost exclusively on our currency? Would it not mean that in a dollar crisis the franc would have to bear even more of the adjustment than in the past? Even more frightful, what would happen if the euro itself were under attack? The last thing we needed was for the franc to become the first currency in the line of fire, or something like the lightening rod of the international monetary system. A second apprehension that we had was that it might become very difficult in the future to conduct an autonomous monetary policy. Switzerland, together with Liechtenstein, would now be totally surrounded by a single monetary zone.
The regulatory response to the crisis was oriented towards strengthening the banks’ soundness as well as designing treatment of systemically important banks which certainly require a special attention by the authorities. Systemic risk requires systemic and comprehensive solutions, including changes in the institutional setup. In the EU it was done by establishing crisis management mechanisms, strengthened governance aimed to monitor and prevent against any macroeconomic imbalances, as well as to move towards the banking union. The EU member states and institutions face many challenges when making the new institutional setup operational and when making the necessary adjustments in a reasonable time framework. In addition, all other countries face the challenge of converting the lessons from the crisis into policy actions. The changing role of central banks During the crisis, the role of the central banks moved from traditional way of monetary policy implementation towards combining the monetary and financial stability objectives, both being complementary components of macroeconomic stability. The set of instruments became more complex because of the unconventional measures, designed to bridge the period of extraordinary circumstances affecting the effectiveness of standard instruments, and aiming to strengthen the financial stability or economic recovery. Due to the variety of those unconventional measures across the countries, it is still difficult to assess their impact, although the experiences of countries could confirm the quite largely accepted consensus that the "monetary stimulus" really supported the economy.

Dimitar Bogov: Policy nexus and the global environment – a new consensus emerging from the crisis? Address by Mr Dimitar Bogov, Governor of the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia, at the 2nd Research Conference “Policy nexus and the global environment – a new consensus emerging from the crisis?”, Skopje, 26 April 2013. *  *  *  Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear guests, Let me wish you welcome on our second Research Conference that we usually organize on the day of the monetary independence anniversary of the Republic of Macedonia. The subject of this year’s conference we believe is highly topical, in line with the ongoing lively discussions among central bankers, research and academic institutions worldwide. The global economy in the last couple of years undergone remarkable changes, both from institutional and policy design setup. We witnessed financial market turbulences, banks failures and sovereign debt crisis with strong contagion around the world economy that was almost unique by its size, and the global economy is still struggling to recover. After five years of global crisis we could say that we experienced a lot, and hopefully, we learnt a lot. One of the main lessons of the crisis was exactly related to the topic of the conference – the need of policy nexus as a kind of a consensus emerging from the crisis. What is the policy nexus about?
One possibility is to develop the G20 based on the IMF model where countries are represented through constituencies. Small  2  163/2009  countries like Norway, or at least the Nordic countries, could then be represented in a forum for discussion of the policies of major economies. In the wake of the Great Depression of the 1930s, protectionist measures were introduced in many countries. Customs duties were increased to shield domestic industry. As a result, world trade continued its decline over several years. So far, protectionist policies have been avoided in the wake of the latest crisis, which makes it possible to reverse the sharp contraction in world trade more rapidly and hence reinvigorate economic growth. One reason why the mistakes of the 1930s have not been repeated this time may be that the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was established in the interim. International trade agreements concluded under the auspices of the WTO contribute to binding national governments and prevent protectionist measures. By and large, this has worked well during the recent crisis. Could the crisis have been avoided? The macroeconomic forces that were unleashed in the years leading up to the financial crisis were strong. It is unlikely that a single country could have stemmed the tide. China’s participation in international trade in goods added several hundred million persons to the global workforce over a few years. This increased the room for strong, non-inflationary global growth. China was not prepared, however, to liberalise its capital markets fully.

Many observers warned of the risks associated with these developments but no one foresaw how the crisis would unfold, when it would erupt, or its severity. The global financial crisis has revealed weaknesses in the financial system. In retrospect, it is clear that financial sector regulation was not adequate. Regulation was primarily designed to ensure that individual banks had sufficient equity capital to protect lenders and depositors against losses, rather than ensuring stability in the system as a whole. For example, there were no requirements stipulating the size of liquid assets a bank must hold to weather periods of failure in market funding. Nor were there any minimum requirements as to funding stability. An example of the importance of these conditions is the collapse of the British bank Northern Rock in September 2007. The bank had a residential mortgage portfolio that was not particularly exposed to risk. The bank had, however, expanded rapidly over several years, an expansion that was partly based on short-term market funding. When funding markets failed, the bank promptly encountered liquidity problems and was compelled to turn to the Bank of England for support. When it became known that the bank had sought government support, depositors quickly lost confidence and the UK experienced its first bank run since 1866. Many other banks that were considered to be solid under the applicable regulation also encountered problems when financial market confidence evaporated.
The challenge is for policy makers to find ways of operating more effectively within the current system, to maximise the opportunities it affords and to manage the risks associated with open capital markets. As a monetary policy maker, I am acutely conscious that a world of large imbalances carries some risk of disruptive market adjustments, even if the probability of them occurring is low. These could have a significant impact on economic activity, especially if they included a sharp reversion of long-term interest rates to something closer to their long-run average. We have been trying to factor this risk in to our thinking about interest rates as long as I have been on the MPC. But it is not a risk that maps easily on to any particular interest rate decision. While the risk of a disruptive adjustment may still be low, the sheer scale of current imbalances increases the potential costs of policy mistakes and misperceptions. Any disconnect between what the markets expect and what policy makers intend to do becomes increasingly hazardous. That puts a premium on excellent policy communication, to reduce uncertainty and minimise the risk of sharp market corrections. And policy makers need to ensure that their policies are robust to the possibility that market expectations may not be consistent with economic fundamentals. Policy makers in systemically important countries also need to be better at factoring wider political risks into their decision taking.

Few have implemented integrated policies, key indicators and metrics, mitigation strategies, detailed monitoring, and risk appetite statements. We recognise that there are some areas where the science, data or tools are not yet sufficient to estimate risks accurately. But in these cases firms can and should explore the use of reasonable proxies and assumptions to work around these issues, rather than leaving risks unrecognised. Imperfection is not an excuse for inaction. Supervisory expectations and working with industry We set out our supervisory expectations of firms’ approach to managing the financial risks from climate change in April 2019, covering governance, risk management, scenario analysis, and disclosure.13  At the time we said we would follow up with further guidance to industry. And today we are publishing that guidance in the form of a Dear CEO letter.14 In which we are being clear that we expect firms to have fully implemented these supervisory expectations by the end of 2021. As I said earlier, addressing the risks and opportunities from climate change in the financial sector is a shared and unprecedented challenge, for which we do not yet have a comprehensive how-to-do-it manual. To help address that, in March 2019, the PRA and FCA established and co-chaired the Climate Financial Risk Forum (CFRF) to work with industry to build expertise and share best practice on managing climate-related financial risks.15  The Forum brings together banks, insurers, asset managers, and other key stakeholders to consider challenges around climate disclosure, scenario analysis, risk management, and innovation in the interest of consumers.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Given the strong progress to date and the positive economic environment, I am confident that the Malaysian takaful operators will continue to make significant strides in becoming world-class players. In the process, this will strengthen the positioning of Malaysia as an international Islamic financial centre. On this note, I wish to congratulate Prudential Corporation Holdings Limited and Bank Simpanan Nasional on the occasion of the official launch of Prudential BSN Takaful Berhad. I wish Prudential BSN Takaful Berhad every success in achieving its objectives. Akhir kata, dengan lafaz Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim, saya dengan sukacitanya merasmikan pelancaran Prudential BSN Takaful Berhad. Terima kasih. 2  BIS Review 73/2006

This slide shows that our bank tellers, vehicle mechanics, hairdressers, and bus drivers earn a good (median) wage that is quite close to the median. In fact, our bus drivers appear to be paid just below the median in Singapore, comparable to their counterparts in Australia, US, UK. And hairdressers in Singapore are doing amazingly well. They earn much closer to the median wage compared to their counterparts in Australia, the US and the UK. The story of our bus drivers is interesting. Since the introduction of the Bus Contracting Model by the Ministry of Transport and the entrance of foreign bus operators, there has been greater competition in the bus industry, raising the game. Bus driving became more professional. The focus is on driving well, increasing fuel efficiency, and meeting the targets set by the Ministry of Transport on frequency and timeliness. More women have also been drawn into the industry with the introduction of flexible working arrangements and maternity leave. The result is that the dependency on foreign workers has been reduced, and productivity and wages have increased. Now our bus drivers are making close to the median wage in Singapore. 15 / 17  BIS central bankers' speeches  In sum, demographics is not destiny and economic dynamism is not about numbers. Dynamism is about quality – the quality of our workforce, the quality of our enterprises, and the quality of our institutions. It is about high levels of efficiency and productivity.
Charles Bean: Central banking then and now Speech by Mr Charles Bean, Deputy Governor for Monetary Policy of the Bank of England, at the Sir Leslie Melville Lecture, Australian National University, Canberra, 12 July 2011. *  *  *  Good evening! It is a great honour to be invited here to give the tenth annual lecture dedicated to the memory of Sir Leslie Melville. As you will all know, Sir Leslie had a most distinguished career, both in academia and as a public servant. Much of his working life was spent as Chief Economic Adviser to the Commonwealth Bank, the ancestor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, where he provided advice to the Board on monetary and exchange rate policy, and also to Prime Ministers and Treasurers on economic matters more generally. In passing, I should record that Sir Leslie’s appointment was in part the result of one of the Directors of the Bank of England, Otto Niemeyer, pressurising the Commonwealth Bank to break with tradition by recruiting a professional economist! Sir Leslie also played a key role in the founding of the post-war economic order, leading the Australian delegation to the Bretton Woods conference, where he earned the fulsome praise of Maynard Keynes, followed by a stint as Australia’s Executive Director at the new international institutions. And, of course, he spent almost a decade as the second Vice-Chancellor of this University. I think you can say that was a professional life lived to the full.

Introducing – or rather re-introducing – financial considerations to the analysis of macroeconomic fluctuations would also be returning the study of the business cycle to its historical roots. This task is already well under way in academia and I suspect the field of macroeconomics will look very different in a decade or so. We are, though, still in the foothills. But to give a broad-brush flavour of how financial intermediaries might affect things, we can look to the graphical extension of the New Keynesian model offered by Woodford (2010). The left-hand panel of Chart 6 shows the demand for funds from ultimate borrowers, LB, together with the total supply of loanable funds from savers, LS. The former is a decreasing function of the cost of borrowing, RB, while the latter is an increasing function of the return on savings, R. For simplicity, I shall take this to be the return on deposits and the same as the central bank’s policy rate. The marginal source of funds to intermediaries, however, is likely to be in the wholesale markets and, if unsecured, these will need to offer a higher return to compensate for the associated default risk. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  In the standard model with costless financial intermediation, the loanable funds market clears at A and the borrowing and saving rates are equal.
BIS Review 5/2004  1  Money and monetary policy can be traced back to the dawn of civilisation itself. In contrast, central banks are a recent development. The first central bank was the Riksbank in Sweden, set up in 1668.2 To celebrate its tercentenary it endowed the Nobel Prize in Economics. The Bank of England, the oldest continuing central bank, opened for business in 1694. Our tercentenary was a more low-key event: we published a book of conference proceedings. By 1900 there were still only 18 countries with a central bank. Today the number is 174. The Federal Reserve has yet to reach its centenary. As institutions go, most central banks are youthful. Indeed, the reputation of central banks as wise and disciplined institutions, in contrast with the wild excesses of finance ministries, belies their respective ages. So the history of monetary policy cannot be equated with the history of central banks. But it is a story about institutions. I.  Externalities in the theory of money  In the history of money, the two key events are the emergence of a medium of exchange and the rise of institutions governing its management. Those events raise two basic questions which are central to understanding the nature of monetary institutions. First, why did money evolve as a social or public rather than a private institution? Second, how can societies reduce the costs of being unable to make commitments about future collective decisions? The answers to these two questions determine the nature of modern central banks.

As he wrote in his autobiography, “When I first went to Germany I seemed to breathe a new and exhilarating atmosphere of freedom … [which] did not exist in [American universities]” (Ely, 1938). Two journeys, separated by a hundred years, reveal much about what occurred in Europe and America between them. Upon his return, Ely “undertook to draw up a project for the formation of a society to be called ‘The American Economic Association’, which should be broad enough to appeal to all the younger economists who, irrespective of their personal views, felt the stirring of the new life in economics”. His actions helped the AEA to develop into the great institution it is today. I have the privilege to work for another great institution, the Bank of England. And, as we celebrate the 150th anniversary of Ely’s birth, I thought it would be appropriate to choose as the theme of my lecture today the role that institutions play in the conduct of monetary policy. In brief, I want to argue that the core of the monetary policy problem is uncertainty about future social decisions resulting from the impossibility and the undesirability of committing our successors to any given monetary policy strategy. The impossibility stems from the observation that collective decisions cannot be enforced so that it is impossible to commit to future collective decisions; the undesirability reflects the fact that we cannot articulate all possible future states of the world.