samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Taken together with the supply chain disruptions that accord firms pricing power in supply chains, this tightness creates conditions conducive to the emergence of the second-round effects we fear. Behind the labour market tightness lies a decline in participation rates among the working age population, particularly those in the 50-65 age group. The reasons behind this decline remain the subject of controversy, but the impact of the pandemic on early retirement and long-term health, as well as underlying demographic developments, all seem to have played a role.10 Crucially – and just like the rise in gas prices – rising inactivity among the working age population represents an adverse supply shock, which adds to the difficult shorter-term trade-offs facing monetary policy.11 Looking back to a year ago, the MPC debated whether the prospective end of the furlough scheme introduced during the pandemic would release furloughed workers into the labour market and ease the tightness emerging in the labour market. This was a difficult judgment to make, given that the furlough scheme was without precedent. As it turned out, that easing did not materialise: through the middle of this year, the labour market has continued to tighten and has proved tighter than we had expected, largely owing to the adverse developments in participation that we did not fully foresee. Now that the economy has slowed (and probably entered recession), we are starting to see labour market indicators turn. Vacancies have stabilised and there are tentative signs they will fall from their historically high levels.

21  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  21  Chart 8: Financial markets’ inflation expectations (5 year – 5 year breakevens)  Per cent  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0  1985  1988  1991  1994  1997  2000  2003  2006  2009  2012  2015  2018  Sources: Bloomberg and Bank calculations  Chart 9: Involuntary part-time share of employment and average net desired hours, alongside unemployment  Per cent  Hours per person  10  0.7 0.6 0.5  8  0.4 0.3  6  0.2 0.1 4  0 -0.1  2  -0.2 -0.3  0 2001  -0.4 2003 2005 2007 2009 Involuntary part-time share (LHS) Net additional desired hours (RHS)  2011  2013 2015 2017 Unemployment rate (LHS)  Sources: ONS and Bank calculations. Notes: Involuntary part-time workers are those that would like a full-time job but haven’t been able to find one. Average net desired hours is the average number of additional hours that employed individuals would like to work at their current hourly rate.
Developments in recent years are similar to those which caused the imbalances in wage formation in the 1970s and 1980s. Wage increases in this year’s settlement were high. Wage settlements in internationally exposed sectors did not set the trend for wages. Wage increases in these sectors were around 5 per cent, while they were appreciably higher in a number of sheltered industries. In the education sector, wage growth is nearing 8 per cent this year. Adjusted for inflation, this is the highest level of wage growth in any single year since the early 1960s. The central and local government sectors, including the education sector, employ 1/3 of all employees in Norway. In 2002, wage growth for these three groups combined was 6.3 per cent. This is close to 1 percentage point higher than the average for the remaining two-thirds. In rural areas, where local government employment is an alternative to working in agriculture, the fisheries, local service production or small-scale industry, the public sector, with its nationwide agreements, is a wage trendsetter. High wage growth in the public sector will thus determine wage growth in other local sheltered enterprises. Many of these industries may pass on higher labour costs to customers. Wage growth in the public sector may therefore be an important source of higher inflation. Public enterprises can only pass on higher labour costs to customers to a limited extent. On the other hand, the rise in costs can intensify pressures to increase central government allocations.

Today, capital flows freely across borders between economies throughout the world and also contributes to growth in prosperity in many countries. In many Norwegian industries, other countries’ markets and foreign capital have been used to create jobs and generate economic growth. For example, the development of the petroleum sector in Norway, which started thirty years ago, was financed by international capital. In addition, we drew on the knowledge and experience of other countries. Foreign companies and labour played an important role during the development of the Norwegian continental shelf. Norway currently invests a large share of its petroleum revenues in foreign equities and bonds in order to be able to convert the substantial petroleum revenues we have today into greater room for manoeuvre for fiscal policy in the future. Without global goods and capital markets, it would not have been possible for the Norwegian state to diversify risk in its wealth management as it does through the Government Petroleum Fund. Globalisation also means a change in trading patterns. The lowering of trade barriers between countries has created new opportunities for many countries and industries. The textile industry is one example. Over the past decade, Norwegian clothing imports have shifted from high-cost countries in the West to low-cost countries in Eastern Europe and Asia. These developments have occurred in parallel with the gradual removal of quotas and a reduction in tariff rates on imports from these countries. Globalisation is to the advantage of Norwegian consumers.
This would increase the potential for a more diverse range of products and services to meet the changing requirements in corporate, retail and investment activities. Given the universal nature of the Islamic banking licence, the attention given to the capacity for innovation will become an important defining factor in the progress of Islamic finance. With the rapid progress on the issuance of prudential and supervisory standards by the Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB), Islamic finance is now governed by its own international best practices. The establishment of the Islamic Financial Services Board in 2002 was part of the efforts to strengthen the international Islamic financial architecture. Thus far, two standards have been issued, namely the standards for Capital Adequacy and the Guiding Principles for Risk Management for Islamic financial institutions. Bank Negara Malaysia will be implementing these IFSB standards for adoption by Malaysian Islamic banking institutions. The harmonisation of the prudential standards across borders will also enhance the process of global financial integration in Islamic finance. The Islamic financial institutions are also able to benefit from maximising their balance sheet structure, by leveraging on the Profit Sharing Investment Accounts in addition to their own capital. Under the IFSB Capital Adequacy Standard, the total risk weighted assets funded by the Profit Sharing Investment Accounts will be deducted in the determination of the overall Risk Weighted Capital Ratio of the institutions.

It is our hope that AmIslamic Bank would be able to contribute effectively in the development of the Islamic financial system. I wish AmIslamic Bank Berhad every success in its endeavours. Dengan lafaz Bismillahirrahmanirrahim, saya dengan sukacitanya merasmikan pelancaran AmIslamic Bank Berhad. Terima kasih. 2  BIS Review 43/2006
If there is a large number of job openings at the same time as unemployment is high, it suggest that those who are 10 [16]  unemployed cannot for some reason fill the openings. In other words, there are problems matching job-seekers to the job openings on the labour market, i.e. the labour market is not functioning particularly well. What then does the Beveridge curve look like in Swedish data over the last decade? As we see in Figure 6, the correlation is negative, exactly as expected. But we also see that the correlation from 2011 is higher than previously, i.e. for each given level of unemployment, there is a greater number of job openings. In other words, it seems as though matching on the Swedish labour market is now worse than it was before. Figure 6. Job openings and unemployment  Annual percentage change and as a share of the labour force 2.5  2.5  2018  Job openings  2  2  1.5  1.5  1  1 2011  2007  0.5  0  0.5  5.5  6  6.5  7 7.5 Unemployment  8  8.5  9  0  Note. Moving averages over 12 months. Sources: Swedish Public Employment Service, Statistics Sweden and the Riksbank  What overall conclusions can we therefore draw from these simple correlations I have presented? Well, if we look merely at the data, lower unemployment has not led to higher wage increases.

It has, on the other hand, been associated with a rise in the number of job openings. It is not altogether easy to interpret this development. One interpretation could, however, be that companies after the financial crisis have, to a greater extent, been looking to recruit workers with different types of cutting-edge expertise. This is unfortunately a type of labour that is often difficult to find. This is also the impression I get when I have travelled around the country and talked to different companies. If higher wages are offered, it is for this type of labour, but this nevertheless does not appear to have prevented a shortage of labour from emerging in this segment of the labour market. 11 [16]  On the increasingly dominant “traditional” labour market, however, labour shortage does not seem to have been such a major problem. There, a flexible labour supply has helped to restrain wage increases, in the way I described earlier. Why has inflation risen? The Phillips correlation measured in terms of inflation has been negatively sloped since 2011, while in terms of wage increases, it has been completely flat. How then has inflation risen despite wage increases not having done so? Inflation rose steadily between 2014 and 2017, measured in terms of the CPIF, from around 0.5 per cent to a level consistent with the inflation target of 2 per cent.
Comparing the past 10 years as a whole, real pay today is lower at every point along the wage distribution and, with the exception of the bottom decile, by broadly similar amounts of around 5% (Chart 10). These real pay falls have been felt by both men and women, by the young, middle-aged and young, and by the low, medium and high-skilled. The lost decade of pay was an equal-opportunity disaster. Alongside this period of stasis in real pay have been some important on-going shifts in the nature of work. There has been strong growth in Alternative Working Arrangements (AWA), such as self-employment, zero-hours contracts and agency work (Chart 11).4 The number of self-employed, zero-hour contract and agency workers in the workplace has increased by 1.1 million, 0.7 million and 0.6 million, respectively, over  4  For example, Taylor (2017). 9  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  9  the past decade. There are now close to 1 million agency and zero-hours contract staff and 5 million self-employed. Chart 10: Real pay along the pay distribution Gross average weekly earnings (2018 prices) 1200 2008 (2018 prices)  1000  2018 800 600 400 200 0 10  20  30  40  50  60  70  80  90  Sources: ONS and Bank of England calculations. Notes: Nominal pay data for 2008 translated into 2018 prices using CPI.

Reflecting the strength of the US dollar, the Sing dollar, along with most other major currencies, depreciated against the US dollar in the first half of this year. However, the Sing dollar appreciated against the euro, the Australian dollar, pound sterling and some of the regional currencies over the same period. The external environment has since strengthened. The industrial countries except Japan are enjoying strong economic growth. The regional economies have shown more vigour and resilience than was expected. Against these positive developments, Singapore’s GDP rose by 5.4% in 1999. The economy grew further by a robust 8.4% in H1 2000. Both external and domestic demand have expanded strongly. Real non-oil domestic exports grew by about 12% in the first six months of 2000, boosted by the continued strength of global electronics demand. The turnaround in the regional economies has underpinned strong service exports and boosted the commerce and transport and communications sectors. Domestic consumption has grown steadily in tandem with labour market conditions and overall sentiment, while investment spending has recovered strongly on the back of a surge in investment in machinery and equipment. Despite the robust economic recovery, inflationary pressures remain subdued. CPI inflation was 0% in 1999, rising moderately to average just 1% in the first six months of 2000. (Based on the old CPI basket before the revision introduced early this year, measured CPI inflation in 1999 would have been slightly higher at 0.4%.)
As with other forms of economic activity the financial services sector is subject to government intervention; indeed because of the sector’s critical importance such intervention - in the form of regulation and supervision of both the prudential behaviour and the business conduct of financial intermediaries - is more intrusive than in many other areas. And in this case, too, there is a need to strike a balance between the needs of social protection in its various relevant forms and market efficiency. Here, too, there are certainly areas where these objectives run in the same direction: market regulation can, for example, improve user confidence in the market and contribute to its depth and liquidity; and minimum capital and liquidity standards applied to individual financial institutions can protect not just the depositors or investors with that institution but the stability of the financial system as a whole. But clearly intervention can - if we are not careful - go too far, imposing excessive costs or reducing effective competition, which can impair the ability of the system of financial intermediation to fulfil its essential purpose. It is a particular - if rather special - case of the general proposition which I made earlier. Statutory regulation is not, of course, the only means of seeking to reconcile free market and social concerns. In many areas - including the financial services sector - dialogue and persuasion can be effective complements or even alternatives.

Certainly we need to reform the system to try to ensure greater stability - and a great deal of effort has been expended on precisely that over the past few years - by developing standards and codes of best practice by national authorities, for example, designed to help them to help themselves to take greater advantage of the opportunities presented by globalisation. More certainly needs to be - and is being - done, recognising the particular problems facing different countries at different stages of development. But it would be a terrible mistake to turn the clock back and retreat from “globalisation” into a world of nation states linked together predominantly by official financing. None of the poorer countries themselves are arguing for that, yet that is what some of the protests seem to imply. And so it is with some of the more specific issues - like pushing for higher labour standards in developing countries, which is fine up to a point, but if pushed too far could mean lower activity and higher unemployment in those countries; or debt forgiveness not tied to programs designed to improve the lot of the people living in the debtor countries; or the appropriateness of particular development projects and so on - we cannot simply focus on particular aspects of the problem in isolation, we need to examine both the pros and the cons in each case to try to find the best means to what is quite likely to be an agreed end.
In turn, the stabilising arm of the autonomous national fiscal policies was tasked with addressing idiosyncratic shocks and cyclical slippages, while guaranteeing fiscal sustainability. However, the independent conduct of fiscal policy in a monetary union has inherent externalities that warrant some constraints. The EMU was built on the basis of placing full responsibility for fiscal policy decision-making and implementation on the governments of the individual Member States, without interfering with the conduct of monetary policy. In this sense, the independence of the central bank was reinforced by two means: i) the prohibition of monetary financing and ii) a virtuous conduct of fiscal policy to avoid calling into question the independence of the monetary authority. The consequences of fiscal actions were thus the sole responsibility of the individual Member States. For this reason, a “no bail-out clause” was included in the Treaty. The main objective of this clause was that financial markets should play a disciplining role by requiring different risk premia according to the underlying fiscal fundamentals. At the same time, limits were set to the deficit and public debt of the Member States that where later complemented by the provisions of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). There were two additional reasons for this. The first is that financial markets could not always be trusted to act as a deterrent against unsound policies.

10.02.2023  Moving the economic governance framework of the EU: towards more efficient fiscal rules in a more complete monetary union Warwick Economics Summit 2023 University of Warwick – Coventry, United Kingdom Pablo Hernández de Cos Governor  Thank you to the Coordination Team for inviting me to speak at this 2023 edition of the Warwick Economics Summit. I would like to congratulate the University of Warwick’s Department of Economics on encouraging its students to run this initiative, which has benefited from the words of highly distinguished participants since 2002. I am honoured to join this group of speakers that have shared with you their views on various matters that are key not only to our present but also to our future. Allow me to add that I am particularly glad to be able to do so this year in person after the recent pandemic years. In my remarks today I will address what I consider to be the key role that the fiscal governance framework of the European Union (EU) plays, or ought to play, and the ongoing review for its reform. I will also touch upon the European Commission’s recent orientations for the reform of the fiscal rules that were published last November. Please note that my words today are merely one more voice in the ongoing debate involving academics and other policymakers on the reform of the EU’s fiscal governance framework. Introduction The current economic context is one in which economic activity, even if more resilient that initially expected, is losing steam.
In the short term, forces operate in opposite directions; on one hand, the significant fall in the oil price and, on the other, the depreciation of the peso. On the latter, it is important to stress that, unlike the depreciation driven by the social unrest, this time the depreciation is not idiosyncratic, but responds to the global appreciation of the dollar. Thus, its transmission to local prices should be less. Meanwhile, although in the current situation price increases could originate in supply-side issues (e.g. products in short or null supply), projections are that the sharp fall in demand for other goods and services will predominate in the inflationary dynamics over the medium term. In the baseline scenario, inflation follows a downsloping trajectory in the coming quarters, down from 3.9% in February to around 3% annually in the last quarter of this year, to remain in the neighborhood throughout 2021 (Figure 10). In this scenario, medium-term inflationary pressures have fallen substantially, so the convergence of inflation to the 3% target requires that monetary policy remain in this highly expansionary stance for an extended period of time. Accordingly, during March the CBC Board lowered the policy rate by 125 basis points to 0.5%, its technical minimum. In doing so, monetary policy has attained a high level of expansion, exceeding that of some comparable economies (Figure 11).

And the G20 fulfilled the most optimistic anticipations as it reacted promptly and strongly to the crisis. Beyond this, the G20 has also agreed on an ambitious policy agenda, aiming for the long run. The G20 Roadmap does not only aim at one particular aspect of the global economy; it is very encompassing. One aspect of it is macrorebalancing, another is on financial regulation and global financial safety nets. The G20 agenda is focused on crisis prevention by coordination in order to avoid, or at least dampen overheating and boom/bust cycles. How are these issues related? First I will briefly tackle the important question of the link between the financial crisis and global imbalances. Second, I will go through the main implications of this link and outline the key features of the policy agenda of the G20. In this second part I will mostly focus on the so-called “G20 Framework for a Strong, Sustainable  BIS Review 93/2010  1  and Balanced Growth” and on financial safety nets. In the last section I will focus on financial regulation issues more specifically. Why and how do the financial crisis and global imbalances interact? An overwhelming body of research has established the clear relation between global imbalances and financial issues, some of which were behind the financial crisis. Indeed, global imbalances were not just the result of cyclical factors, such as business cycle fluctuations, changes in oil and other commodity prices, etc.
Philip R Lane: Interview with RTÉ (Ireland’s National Television and Radio Broadcaster) Interview with Mr Philip R Lane, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, and RTÉ (Ireland’s National Television and Radio Broadcaster), conducted by Mr Robert Shortt on 13 February 2020 and broadcast (in part) on 13 February 2020. * * *  There has been some criticism of ECB policy when it comes to quantitative easing and negative interest rates. Some people have described it as an experiment in monetary policy. There’s been this assertion that interest rates are no longer an effective tool for stimulating economic activity. People have painted the scenario of the Japanification of the eurozone economy. What’s your response to all of that? We don’t agree with that analysis. If you go back to 2014, which is when this policy started, since then ECB monetary policy has been very effective. We have seen very low interest rates for firms and households. We have seen a big increase in employment in the euro area economy. And we do see inflation moving upwards. Without these policies these disinflationary pressures would be more severe. We would not only have lower inflation: we could even have the risk of deflation. And without these policies the recovery in Europe we have seen in the last five or six years would not be so far advanced. So we think ECB policy is still effective.

So even though the trade deal focuses on trading goods and services, we also have an agenda to make sure we can work together post-Brexit in terms of supervising the euro area financial system and the UK financial system. Final question, just on a personal level: how are you finding the new job? Are you enjoying it? Is it everything you thought it would be? What’s Frankfurt like? Let me say two things. One is that of course I very much miss working at the Central Bank of Ireland, which is a great institution. But as an economist, leading the economics work of the ECB is a tremendous personal challenge and tremendously fulfilling. I can tell you that residentially, Frankfurt as a city is fantastic to spend time in. They may have historically a reputation of being a bit quiet, but I think anyone who spends time there is pleased with it. It is a really nice city to visit. 4/4  BIS central bankers' speeches