samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
This is because the current labour market set-up discourages people from spending longer in education since it fails to differentiate  BIS Review 151/2009  5  appropriately between skill levels, leaving the young facing temporary contracts or unemployment, with the adverse effects I have already mentioned. It is also essential to move to boost the knowledge economy so that it may contribute to strengthening technological capital and to bridging the gap afflicting the Spanish economy in this field. This should be done in parallel with pertinent measures to further the liberalisation of goods and services markets, the current regulation of which involves in some cases a diminished level of competition. One key area for progress along these lines is liberalisation in the services sector, as it encompasses some of the most dynamic activities and some of those with most job-creating capacity. Likewise needed is further headway in liberalisation and competition in the network industries, so that the conditions in which inputs are supplied to other productive activities allow Spanish companies to compete on an equal footing with our trading partners. And let us not forget the housing market. Further improvements to rental regulations are needed to make this option more flexible and profitable, so that the purchase of housing for investment purposes is encouraged, thus helping reduce the supply overhang, and broadening the possibilities of meeting the population's demand for residential services. Finally, I must reiterate that the soundness of the financial system is essential for ensuring the financing flows needed to restore economic dynamism.

The discretionary component of budget policy, by contrast, can be measured by the variations in the primary balance adjusted to account for cyclical effects. According to the OECD’s figures, the budget balance in the United States, adjusted for the economic cycle, as a percentage of GDP shifted from a break-even situation in 1998, to a 0.9% surplus situation in 2000, and then to a 4.5% deficit in 2003 (and a 3.2% deficit in 2007; Figure 2). The aggregate deficit in the euro area adjusted for the cycle fluctuated between 2.7% in 2002 and 0.7% of GDP in 2007. The budget balance fluctuation range has thus been significantly 23 narrower than in the United States. To summarise, automatic budget stabilisers are more important in the euro area, while in the United States there is greater recourse to discretionary policies. 3.3  Shocks  As with monetary policy, the difference in the shocks hitting the two economies may explain the varying degrees of fiscal activism. In theory, an economy which is hit principally by demand shocks should make greater use of anti-cyclical budget policies than an economy hit mainly by supply shocks. This is a topic on which, as far as I know, no empirical studies have been conducted to date and it is thus a particularly interesting field of research. A hypothesis worth examining is the extent to which the greater frequency of demand shocks in the United States has justified greater fiscal activism in an anti-cyclical direction.
Prior to the health crisis, the risks of financial instability associated with the large-scale use, as a means of payment, of crypto-assets with unstable value, uncertain convertibility into central bank money, and without a responsible issuer and credible lender of last resort in the event of a destabilising shock, had been clearly identified. With the crisis and the acceleration of the digital transformation, IT risk, and in particular cyber risk, has taken on a new dimension and added an operational dimension of systemic importance to the risk of financial instability, which also concerns cryptoassets. c- Levers for action For a central bank such as the Banque de France, which is responsible for ensuring the smooth functioning of our payment system, the objective is thus to make sure that innovations deliver the expected benefits for users in terms of speed, cost savings and ease of use, but without undermining the efficiency and stability of our overall payment system. As a result, at the Banque de France, we are not ruling out that we might need to issue a digital form of our currency, to preserve the anchoring role of central bank money by providing it in a form that is better suited to the new, highly digitalised payments landscape.

It could undermine banks’ profitability and their ability to meet regulatory requirements, and ultimately affect their capacity to finance the real economy. The issuance of a CBDC could alsoreduce the role of banking intermediaries in client relationships, depending on the architecture chosen by the Eurosystem, which could restrict access to client information. To avoid these undesirable consequences, it is essential that commercial banks be involved. Their input is needed, for example, to set limits and/or remuneration disincentives for CBDC holdings. In addition, choosing an intermediated architecture would allow us to exploit financial intermediaries’ expertise in customer interface management, and thus preserve the essential role they play in this field. b- Avoiding impediments to the conduct of monetary policy  Choices will also need to be made to avoid any adverse consequences for monetary policy conduct. The introduction of an unremunerated retail CBDC with no holding limit could make it difficult for central banks to pursue a negative interest rate policy, as market participants would prefer to hold the CBDC instead of assets remunerated at negative rates. This effect could be avoided by setting an appropriate level of remuneration for the CBDC. c. Improving the efficiency and integration of payment solutions Choices will also need to be made to ensure that the CBDC complements existing payment solutions, so that it can increase the efficiency and integration of certain market segments. This notably applies to cross-border payments.
I believe that economic integration, brought about by market forces, having regard to comparative advantages in production, can best be served by financial integration of a similar degree. BIS Review 14/2006  1  8. I should emphasize, however, that this is as yet merely a belief on my part. I have so far found it difficult to provide empirical evidence to support my hypothesis that the optimal degree of financial integration is the same as, or close to, the degree of economic integration within a region. To start with, there are theoretical difficulties in identifying measures of optimality. In addition, there is no established measure of the actual degree of financial integration, let alone the actual degree of economic integration. 9. Lack of empirical evidence notwithstanding, one intuitively thinks that the synergy driving economic integration can best be harnessed financially by the stakeholders themselves, who know better what they are doing and take a longer term view, rather than by those, motivated largely by relatively shortterm financial rates of return, and acting in accordance with credit assessments, conducted many miles away from where the action is. 10. Regrettably, for a variety of reasons, financial integration in Asia lags considerably behind economic integration. Currently, a sizable portion of gross savings in Asia finds its way into debt instruments of governmental and quasi-governmental issuers in industrialized economies, while investment in Asia is financed, to a significant degree, by capital from those same countries.

Joseph Yam: Financial integration and regulation Remarks by Joseph Yam, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, at the conference: The Euro: Lessons for European and Asian Financial Markets, Hong Kong, 24 February 2006. *  *  *  Ladies and Gentlemen, 1. It is a great pleasure for me to open the proceedings of this conference on “The Euro: Lessons for European and Asian Financial Markets”. It is also an honour for the Hong Kong Monetary Authority to be co-sponsoring this event with the European Commission. The programme is a very rich one and it will be impossible for me, in these opening remarks, to cover all the topics to be discussed later this morning and in the afternoon. I do notice, however, that the words “financial integration and regulation” appear in several of the session titles. These are topics close to my heart, because I have come to believe that they can influence profoundly how Asian economies develop in the years ahead. Well managed financial integration, combined with sound regulatory practices, can help the region maximise its economic growth potential while maintaining financial stability. I have chosen therefore to focus on these topics. 2. I will try and lay out a case for closer financial integration in Asia, both as a means of achieving more efficient allocation of resources in the region, thereby contributing to continued economic growth, and as a means of supporting financial stability.
The costs of fraud may not have reached commercially unacceptable levels, but in some countries they have reached socially unacceptable levels. So, we very much welcome the EPC taking a stance on these issues. The Eurosystem will also continue to monitor also this facet of the work on the integration of European payments. Improving information security, as well as preventing fraud should remain a key focus of attention in 2010. Ambition needed: SEPA for Cards and eSEPA A frequently asked question is whether the financial crisis has had an impact on the SEPA project and the pace of migration. During the financial crisis, banks’ retail payments business  1  Joint Statement of the European Commission and the ECB on the future SDD business model, 24 March 2009. 2  Regulation (EC) No 924/2009 on cross-border payments in the Community and repealing Regulation (EC) No 2560/2001. 3  For non-euro area banks the reachability deadline for euro direct debits is 1 November 2014. 2  BIS Review 151/2009  has proven to be a solid and stable source of revenue. At the same time, I understand that the retail payments are also a costly part of banks’ operations. The aim of SEPA is to make payments in euro more efficient, not just for customers but also for banks, which would strengthen the case for investment in the SEPA project. Despite the financial crisis, cashless payments increased, on a global basis, by almost 9% to 250 billion transactions per year in 2008.

3  See for example this comment which appeared in the July 2005 edition of The Economist: “ […] The pursuit of price stability is a means to an end (to achieve maximum sustainable growth), not an end in itself. While the ECB's prime task is price stability, it is also legally charged with supporting growth. Last year it could have cut interest rates to offset the impact of the rising euro; today it should stand ready to ease monetary policy to cushion the impact of structural reform and fiscal discipline.”  4  See, for example, O. Blanchard e F. Giavazzi (2005), “Credibility does not require dogmatism - only clarity of purpose”, at www.voxru.org. 5  S. Cecchetti, H. Genberg and S. Wadhwani (2002), “Asset Prices in a Flexible Inflation Targeting Framework,” NBER Working Paper No. 8970, June, and N. Roubini (2006), “Why Central Banks Should Burst Bubbles”, International Finance 9, No 1. 2  BIS Review 66/2009  harder to interpret financial asset prices and to derive from them indicators regarding the risks of instability. And it is even more difficult to adjust the course of interest rates on the basis of these indicators. For this reason, the proposition of leaning against the wind remains an abstract concept for now. It would be important to develop economic models which give a more precise idea of the quantitative dimension of these phenomena, in particular of the correlation between monetary policy variables and financial asset prices.
Its demand, trade and cross-border investment activities will reinforce this potential. The recent trend for the use of the renminbi for settlement of trade and cross-border investment activities will facilitate this potential. It is my pleasure to welcome you to this Seminar on “Renminbi Trade Settlement and Investment”. I would like to take this opportunity to extend a warm welcome to our guest speakers from the People’s Bank of China and the Ministry of Commerce (Mofcom) of the People’s Republic of China. I also wish to welcome our panellists from the financial industry and the corporate sector that are here today to share their experiences in operating in the current challenging economic and financial environment. The economic relationship between Malaysia and China is longstanding and grounded on strong foundations. Today, China is Malaysia’s largest trading partner accounting for 14% of our country’s total trade. Malaysia also ranks as China’s most significant trading partner in the Asean region. Our trade with China has continued to expand, increasing by 20% annually, in this recent two decades. Our bilateral trade with China is now seven times higher than the level in the early 1990’s. Our economic relations have also evolved and expanded beyond the area of trade – into the services sector, particularly the financial sector, tourism and education. China is among the top five tourism markets for Malaysia and Chinese nationals represent the largest foreign student population in Malaysia’s private universities and colleges.

We are also working on the inclusion of these risks in the stress test methodology for the Spanish financial sector. In sum, banks and supervisors alike are moving along this path, which poses all sorts of challenges. For instance, it is in no way straightforward to envisage these risks as part of the commonly used valuation and measurement methodologies. Moreover, there are cultural factors hampering their inclusion, which calls for involvement from the uppermost levels of organisations. And, above all, one of the main challenges is the lack of information, which enormously hinders further progress. Allow me briefly to refer to these valuation-based aspects and the absence of data. Traditionally in finances there is a tendency to value investments exclusively from the standpoint of economic return. The classic focus of study in finances would be cash flows; once capitalised or discounted, these enable us to compare different investment options. From a theoretical standpoint, responsible investment reminds us that we should not value and compare different investments looking solely at an Excel chart. Rather, we should perhaps look at variables that are not directly monetisable in the expected return on each investment. Measuring this “non-monetisable” return is clearly not straightforward. The approach being followed focuses on the measurement of “impact”. For example, environmental sustainability has for some time used measurements that take “footprints”, be they carbon, hydric, environmental, etc.
I do not think, therefore, that the new capital requirements will be much of a problem for the Swedish banks. We have now made some progress in clarifying what regulations should apply to the banks in the future. This is good. A lot of the earlier criticism from, for example, the Swedish banks, stemmed from the great uncertainty about the form of the new regulations and how they would affect the future playing field. I am also convinced that well-capitalised Swedish banks will do well in the fact of international competition in the period ahead. Central banks should play an important role in macroprudential policy In Sweden, both the Riksbank and Finansinspektionen have a responsibility to maintain financial stability. However, although the objective is the same the areas of responsibility differ. Finansinspektionen is responsible for supervising individual institutions, in particular those that can affect the stability of the entire financial system. The authority should also work to promote orderly financial markets by supervising securities trading. The Riksbank has a broader assignment and monitors the development of the financial system as a whole. How responsibility for macroprudential supervision should be divided is now being studied by the Financial Crisis Commission. Some guidance can be taken from the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB). The ESRB was set up in early 2011 to manage macroprudential policy at the EU level. However, the body has no binding instruments; it can instead issue warnings and recommendations to various players.

This statistical information is confirmed by the quarterly survey on lending conditions which the SNB has been conducting with the 20 most important Swiss banks since the beginning of 2008. The survey shows that a third of the banks questioned tightened their lending conditions slightly. This proportion is a little higher for loans granted to large companies than those granted to small and medium-sized companies. To summarise, the situation on the bank lending market remains relatively relaxed and clearly better than that in the US or in the euro area. Nonetheless, deterioration cannot be ruled out for the future. We now move on to monetary developments. For more than eighteen months now, the demand for liquidity on the interbank market has increased substantially and – as I mentioned before – the loss of trust among banks has brought the market to a standstill. The SNB has been forced to take the place of the lending banks and provide the market with generous amounts of liquidity through a major expansion of its repo lending. Moreover, additional liquidity has been created by purchasing foreign currency on exchange rate markets and bonds issued by private sector borrowers, and by making Swiss franc funding available through swap arrangements with the European Central Bank and with the central banks of Poland and Hungary. Consequently, in May, the monetary base was up by 132% within the space of one year and now amounts to CHF 105 billion.
The most likely explanation is that the foreign exchange market believes that, when it does actually occur, leaving the EU will raise costs in 13  Bloom et al (2007); for more on the impact of uncertainty on sunk-cost investment decisions see Dixit and Pindyck (1994); Handly and Limao (2013) consider the specific case of uncertainty about tariffs. 14 For example Goldberg (2007). 12  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  12  the UK’s tradable sector. Whether this occurs through explicit tariffs, non-tariff barriers or lower productivity growth, the currency would need to be weaker in compensation. But the UK’s trading rules are for the time being unchanged. The result is that the costs and ease of exporting are unchanged but the returns to it significantly higher. With the world economy looking better than for some time the circumstances for the tradable sector could hardly be more propitious. One would expect firms in the more open parts of the economy both to use up any spare capacity and, in the normal course of events, to invest significantly more in that capacity as well. Over the longer run, this reallocation of resources is what the positive impact of an exchange-rate depreciation relies upon. It’s possible, of course, that Brexit won’t be as bad as the foreign exchange market appears to believe.

The increase in the number of banks, branches and their agencies, as well as the growing number of bank employees have caused the coverage of the population to improve significantly. Thus, the number of inhabitants per bank, banking unit and per bank employee has decreased considerably. 2  BIS Review 101/2006  Table 2: Coverage with banking services 2003  2004  2005  2,236  2,816  3,479  161  188  250  149  176  217  13.9  15  13.9  bank  206,851  194,971  184,410  banking unit  20,815  16,593  12,539  bank employee  1,388  1,108  901  Number of employees Number of branches, agencies Number of employees per: bank banking unit 1  Number of inhabitants per :  Table 3: The expansion of the banks’ network by the end of the 9-month period of 2006Banks Nof No. Banks No. of Branches No.
I will first discuss recent developments in jobs and pay, before providing an account of them centred on movements up and down the jobs ladder. I will then turn to recent developments in the world and UK economies and their potential implications for monetary policy. The Jobs Boom The past few years have been a jobs bonanza in the UK. Since 2012, 3.4 million net new jobs have been created. Table 1 compares job creation across previous periods of UK economic recovery. No economic recovery since the Second World War has seen as many new jobs created. This leaves the UK employment rate at its highest (61.5%) and the unemployment rate at its lowest (3.8%) in half a century (Charts 1 and 2). 1  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48365241 2  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  2  Table 1: Job creation in different UK recoveries Recovery dates  Job creation (millions) 3.4 2.9 2.7 0.3 0.5 0.7  2011 Q4 - present 1993 Q1 – 2003 Q2 1984 Q2 – 1990 Q1 1977 Q4 – 1979 Q2 1972 Q1 – 1973 Q4 1952 – 1955  Sources: ONS and Bank of England Millennium of Data. Notes: Data taken at quarterly frequency from 1970s and measure change in whole economy employment period during periods of sustained falling unemployment. Other definitions of recovery would of course suggest different amounts/periods of job creation, but it remains true that the current phase of job creation is high by historical standards.

But insolvency had generally been avoided by the Bank of England twisting arms to ‘encourage’ other banks, to support a rescue ‘lifeboat’, as in the secondary banking crisis of 1973 or to take over the failing bank as with Barings in 1995. The failure of BCCI in 1991 did lead to a protracted and difficult insolvency. But the bank’s activities in the UK were not of a scale that posed risks to the UK financial system and economy The Bank of England’s approach to bank failure, an approach shared by many central banks, was one of ‘constructive ambiguity’. The aim was to guard against moral hazard by maintaining uncertainty about whether a bank in trouble would get liquidity support with the threat of insolvency in the background. In the event the threat of insolvency proved neither credible nor effective. When Northern Rock got into trouble with £ in customer deposits and a balance sheet of £ the UK financial authorities were left with no way of rapidly transferring parts of the failed bank’s business to another bank; or of recapitalising the bank by imposing losses on shareholders and creditors without serious risks to financial stability. 3  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  3  And so, on 17 September 2007, the Chancellor was compelled to guarantee all Northern Rock deposits. Subsequently the bank was nationalised to avoid insolvency and to allow the bank’s critical functions to continue while a buyer was found for its deposits.