samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Interest rates have been on the increase recently in most parts of the world and capital is not as cheap as before, although it can still be procured at very low rates. Conditions in capital markets in general are therefore more likely to tighten in the coming years. Influential as economic developments on both sides of the Atlantic may be for the Icelandic economy, the way we handle our own affairs is still important. The crucial consideration is to achieve a rapid reduction in macroeconomic imbalances and restore stability. To do so, domestic demand must be reduced. Part of this process will occur automatically with the completion of ongoing investments in the aluminium and power sectors. Much has changed since the meeting a year ago, some things for the better, and others not. The current account deficit run up last year will not be forgotten for a long time – it even managed to trump the most pessimistic forecasts. Fortunately, clear signs of a gradual contraction are now visible, but this improvement is likely to be slower than we had previously expected, especially on account of foreign debt service. The Board of Governors of the Central Bank decided yesterday to leave the Bank’s policy rate unchanged at 14.25%, at the level where it has been since December. By contrast, the day before last year’s annual meeting, the Board of Governors raised the policy rate by 0.75 percentage points.

They responded positively to the Bank’s recommendations, and there was no question that credit growth slowed substantially. However, there are now many indications of a return to the earlier situation, so the Bank must reiterate its words of warning. At the same time as the Central Bank announced its interest rate decision yesterday, it published Monetary Bulletin. This outlines the main assumptions behind the Bank’s decision along with indications about its policy in the near future and the viewpoints it considers important to bear in mind for economic policy. In the current edition, major changes were made to the assumptions behind the baseline forecast, which enhance both the credibility of the forecast and monetary policy transparency. By doing so, the Central Bank of Iceland joined the vanguard of the inflation-targeting central banks. Monetary Bulletin reveals that inflation developments have turned rather more favourable than the Bank’s previous forecast had indicated, and although underlying inflation was somewhat higher in February and March than was hoped, the Bank expects both headline and underlying inflation to decrease rapidly in the next months. By both measures, inflation will be close to target from the middle of 2008. There is no doubt that this outcome is largely thanks to the tight monetary stance, which included raising the policy rate by 3.75 percentage points last year. As usual it should be pointed out – and especially in the current climate – that exchange rate uncertainties can complicate this picture.
The banking sector in the Balkans is dominated by foreign-owned banks. In Albania, subsidiaries of foreign banks account for around 78% of banking sector assets, while those from European countries account for 48%. The Bank of Albania is the Resolution Authority for seven subsidiaries of EU based banking groups, of which four are classified as systemically important under the mandate of the Single Resolution Board (SRB). Due to this, the signing of cooperation agreements between the resolution authorities of the banking group and the local authorities where the subsidiary operates is very important for coordinating actions, exchanging data for planning and implementing the resolution, and coordinating crisis management. I have the pleasure to share with you the news that the Bank of Albania has signed an important cooperation agreement with the Single Resolution Board, i.e., the Resolution Authority of the Banking Union, on 3 October 2018. Dear ladies and gentlemen, This Conference is the culmination of our work over the past 18 months for developing a complete framework for bank recovery and resolution. For this reason, the presence of colleagues from supervisory and resolution authorities from various entities assumes special importance. We have representatives from the European Union at the central level, from individual countries of the European Union and representatives from countries of the region, national and foreign bankers as well as the representatives of the media. This presence means sharing experiences and opportunity to evaluate what has been done.

However, the indications are that overdue payments pose a huge problem for businesses in general and in particular for VSEs: at end-2014, outstanding payment claims amounted to EUR 600 billion, of which some EUR 420 billion were owed by private sector firms… and the remainder by the public sector. This requirement should of course apply equally to the public sector, both at national and local level. Various surveys and qualitative assessments show that the situation has stopped improving in the past few months, and that payment times are no longer falling, and in some cases may even be increasing again. Long payment times are not just a financial problem for VSEs, they also place a brake on their expansion, as they spend too much time chasing up overdue invoices, time that could better be devoted to growing the business and investing. The government is acutely aware of this issue and, in conjunction with the Observatory for Payment Times, is taking decisive action to resolve it. The Banque de France intends to help reduce these difficulties by drawing attention to all the solutions available to help small businesses. It will work actively with the Observatory for Business Financing, as well as through its day-to-day contacts with credit institutions and financing companies, to help develop financial products that can better reduce this obstacle to VSE growth. The determined efforts that the Banque de France intends to undertake or to participate in, will of course benefit greatly from your input here today at this symposium.
As we noted in the presentations we made before this Commission and the Senate in full last December, the world economy is undergoing a process of recovery in two speeds, generating significant foreign exchange tensions. In early January the Board announced a program of foreign-currency purchases to alleviate these tensions and increase Chile’s international reserves to match those of other emerging economies. Such program involves the purchase of 12 billion US dollars over a period that ends in December this year. Three months into the process, the Bank has bought a little over 3 billion dollars. The peso/dollar parity is now around 3 percent above the level that prevailed before the purchase announcement, fluctuating in the range of 465 to 500 pesos per dollar. The overall trends that have determined an appreciation of the currencies of most emerging economies – including the Chilean peso – are still present. We believe that without the intervention the peso would have appreciated even more. The resolution of growth imbalances around the world will probably take some time, but sooner or later the differences between emerging and developed economies will narrow, mitigating pressures on our currency. Beyond these fluctuations, the gains in competitiveness that our country needs in order to remain on the path to development will be achieved not with actions that artificially increase the level of the nominal exchange rate, but rather with structural reforms that will improve productivity and, therefore, the competitive stance of our exports.

8  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Figure 6 GDP growth (percent) 8  8  6  6  4  4  2  2  0  0  -2  -2  -4  -4  -6  08  09 Annual change  10  11 (1)  -6  Quarter-on-quarter change (2)  (1) Dark blue shows growth range for GDP forecast for 2011 in Monetary Policy Report of March 2011. (2) Seasonally-adjusted series. Source: Central Bank of Chile. Table 2 Economic growth  (annual change, percent)  2009 GDP Domestic demand Domestic demand ((w/o inventory change) Gross fixed capital formation Total consumption Goods and services exports Goods and services imports Current account (% GDP)  -1.7 -5.9 -2.9 -15.9 1.9 -6.4 -14.6 1.6  2010 5.2 16.4 11.5 18.8 9.3 1.9 29.5 1.9  2011 (f) 5.5-6.5 7.6 8.7 13.9 7.0 6.8 9.6 1.2  (f) Forecast. Source: Central Bank of Chile. BIS central bankers’ speeches  9  Figure 7 MPR and expectations (percent) 9  9  8  8  7  7  6  6  5  5  4  4  3  3  2  2  1  1  0  0  07  08  09  10  EES Mar.11  11  FOS 2Q Mar.11  12  13  MPR  Source: Central Bank of Chile.
Ex ante, they won’t know for sure which is which. Plausibly, it might not be economical to put controls in place for every single innovation on an assumption of ‘exponential growth’. So when exponential growth occurs, controls can sometimes be left behind. Maybe something like that helps to explain the backlog in credit derivative confirmations, which the FSA cautioned banks about a few months ago. Growth in the market has been relentless. And to the concerns about confirmations have been added concerns, amongst practitioners, about unnotified assignments of credit derivative positions, related in part to the growth of hedge fund participation in the structured credit market. If something really bad were to happen, the system would, perhaps, be less robust than otherwise if dealers were not sure about who their counterparties were, etc. This is the type of challenge where collaboration across the industry is needed; and where individual firms’ incentives are stronger if they can each be confident that their peers are taking broadly the same actions. What I have in mind is the disincentive a firm faces in being tough with a hedge fund client if they doubt their peers will take the same line. Bodies such as ISDA have a role to play here, and I understand are doing so. Collective elements in atomistic markets So, where are the risks? They are all around us all of the time, of course. Some will crystallise. But that need not lead to disorder.

In particular, the Riksbank follows a direct inflation targeting strategy in which monetary policy is almost exclusively guided by inflation forecasts of about two years ahead. In contrast, the Eurosystem relies on two pillars, thereby focusing on the medium term, and does not give such a predominant role to inflation forecasts as the Riksbank. In our view, the Riksbank has achieved high standards with regard to transparency and accountability, as is for example evidenced by its comprehensive quarterly inflation report. In more recent years, the Riksbank has enjoyed a fair measure of success in gaining control over domestic price developments, as supported by its strong performance in fighting inflation, and in overcoming a deep recession in the early 1990s. Its track record also demonstrates that price stability in Sweden was given a high priority long before this was formally recognised by an amendment to the Riksbank Act at the start of 1999. The Eurosystem’s stability-oriented monetary policy strategy rests on two pillars, which are both important when the Governing Council discusses monetary, financial and economic developments at its biweekly meetings. The first pillar, which is a prominent role for money, takes into account the essentially monetary origins of inflation over the medium to long term. It recognises that empirical studies show a stable long-term relationship between money and prices in the euro area. Therefore, in the euro area, monetary developments constitute an important guide for the conduct of monetary policy and it is essential to analyse and monitor the development of monetary aggregates closely.
Further advancement towards greater international integration will be considered to provide Malaysian consumers with greater access to world-class products and services, while further catalysing the development of the domestic industry towards meeting international best practices and standards. This will include the issuance of new licences in specialized lines and greater opportunities for internationally-reputed insurers to acquire equity interests in, or forge strategic alliances with domestic players, both in the direct insurance as well as re-insurance sectors. The progression towards further deregulation and liberalisation will continue to be managed at an appropriate pace, taking into account the development of the supporting infrastructure and the level of substantive progress achieved by domestic institutions, in order to ensure market stability. Next on the agenda in the development of the domestic financial system is the formation of investment banks. This is aimed at further enhancing the delivery of financial services to the wholesale and corporate sector. With this rationalisation, the business community will have a more streamlined access to banking services to fulfil their wider range of requirements. Comprehensive changes to the organisational structure of the development financial institutions have also been undertaken to provide a clearer scope and focus to service the needs of targeted sectors. At the same time, measures were also instituted to expand the role of the credit guarantee agency to further facilitate the development of the small and medium enterprises, a critical component of the nation's economy.

Mojmír Hampl: A digital currency useful for central banks? Speech by Mr Mojmír Hampl, Vice Governor of the Czech National Bank, at the 7th BBVA Seminar for Public Sector Investors and Issuers, Bilbao, 27 February 2018. * * * Ladies and gentlemen, Let me begin by thanking BBVA for their kind invitation to this event. It is a pleasure to speak in front of this knowledgeable and receptive audience, and it is a pleasure for me in particular to be in Bilbao for the first time in my life. Cryptocurrencies, digital currencies, and especially bitcoin have become almost household names over the last couple of months. What is especially interesting and curious for this place – as some of you might know – is that among the hundreds of cryptocurrencies introduced in the last couple of years is one called “bilur”, which means “chain” in Euskara, the Basque language. Bilur is unique for being the first cryptocurrency explicitly linked to the price of oil. By the way, the second part of the label “cryptocurrency”, namely the currency part, is a misnomer in my eyes. No existing cryptocurrency for the time being conforms to the three basic functions of money: a store of value, a unit of account, and a medium of exchange. One cannot store value in an asset that can get 30%–50% cheaper or more expensive in a matter of days.
Looking at the prospects and having in mind the country’s strategy for expeditious accession to the euro area, however, this is a macroeconomic variable which faces the country with the greatest challenges. The inflation criterion, as defined in the Maastricht Treaty (this is not the place to deal with the issue how good this definition is), is very strict and requires a purposeful policy going beyond the monetary and fiscal policies. In Bulgaria’s case, under the currency regime of fixed exchange rate and extremely conservative fiscal policy, untapped prospects should be sought in encouraging competition and improving the business climate, thus ensuring to the economy the flexibility to respond to exogenous changes (including with regard to the prices of raw materials) and enabling supply to react more promptly to increases in demand (both domestic and external). In the past year, inflation reached 6.5 % under the strong proinflationary impact of the increase in the prices of energy resources (direct contribution of 1.0 % in the overall price increase).In addition, the largescale floods resulted in an unexpected increase in foodstuff prices (contribution of 2.6 % in the overall price increase). This year, inflation is expected to decline to 6.0%. The slow process of decreasing inflation is mainly determined by the harmonization of indirect taxes with the minimum levels in the EU, pursued early in the year.

Consistent with this, we can see that in their published accounts, banks are placing a fair value on some of their assets which is below the book value. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  This evidence, while informative, does not, for me at least, get to a conclusion on the need to add more nominal capital, or more particularly how much capital to add. To do that, we need to know more about the contribution of these various possible causes of market values of banks’ capital, and that must be the key next step in the work. On this, I would ask for the insights of banks themselves and analysts, because as I always say, I know one thing for sure, we don’t have a monopoly of wisdom, and this is a tough question. But, it is a key question, because the danger of a very slow resolution of the capital gap is that new lending to the economy is seriously restrained. This is the Japanese threat, based on the recent history of Japan, and the basis of the argument that a more aggressive approach to re-capitalising banks will create more support for new lending. Moreover, it does illustrate why we see a close interaction of the FPC’s two objectives, of resilience and growth. I need to see more evidence and analysis of why market values of banks’ capital are low before I can determine what and how much needs to be done.
32  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  32  Table 3: Regressions of labour share on UK-listed firms’ mark-ups Log labour share  Log labour share  Log labour share  Log mark-up  -0.094*** (0.019)  -0.093*** (0.024)  -0.067*** (0.020)  Log mark-up squared  -0.024 (0.019)  Concentration Log mark-up * concentration (interaction term)  -0.033 (0.020) 0.061 (0.074)  0.062 (0.073)  -0.225 (0.151)  -0.233 (0.151)  Firm fixed effects  Yes  Yes  Yes  Time fixed effects  Yes  Yes  Yes  N  21997  17218  17218  0.013  0.014  0.015  R  2  Sources: Thomson Reuters Worldscope and Bank calculations. Notes: Standard errors in parentheses; * p < 0.10; ** p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01 Labour share defined as nominal wage bill divided by nominal value-added, where value-added is defined as the sum of operating income (before depreciation, depletion and amortisation costs) and labour expenses. To deal with outliers, we trim observations where the measured labour share is less than zero or greater than one before running regressions. 33  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  33  Chart 13: Impact of mark-up shock on annual inflation, output gap and policy rate Annual inflation:  Output gap:  34  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  34  Policy rate:  Sources: Bank calculations. Notes: COMPASS contains various mark-ups shocks. For simplicity, the shock shown here is the value-added mark-up shock.

And it is also clear that that transition in thinking needs to lead soon to transition in action, if we are to reduce these financial risks in a timely manner and so avoid a late and abrupt transition to the low carbon economy to which governments have committed. To make this happen, we need to learn by doing, to identify decision-useful information that will support the necessary transition; and we need to identify the barriers to the mainstreaming of green finance so that the transition can be financed in practice. It’s a tough ask that gets more pressing by the day. The prize could not be more important. We must keep up the good work. 7  https://www.banque-france.fr/en/financial-stability/international-role/network-greening-financial-system 7  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  7  References Carney, M. (2015), “Breaking the Tragedy of the Horizon – climate change and financial stability”, speech given at Lloyd’s of London, September 2015. Carney, M. (2016), “Resolving the climate paradox”, Arthur Burns Memorial Lecture, Berlin September 2016. Climate Bonds Initiative (2017) “Bonds and Climate Change, The State of the Market 2017”. Climate Bonds Initiative and UNEP Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System (2015) “Scaling up green bond markets for sustainable development”. OECD (2016), “A quantitative framework for analysing potential bond contributions in a low-carbon transition”. PRA (2015), The Impact of Climate Change on the UK Insurance Sector. Scott, M., Van Huizen, J. & Jung, C. The Bank of England’s response to climate change. 98–109 (Bank of England, 2017).
The gap between actual and potential growth does not appear to be completely closed, while the Riksbank and others perceive that this gap is well and truly closed in the USA. 5  BIS Review 89/2000  There are thus a few pieces of the puzzle remaining before we can feel convinced that Sweden is moving towards a US development: how large is the IT sector in the Swedish economy? How important is the IT sector to the rest of the Swedish economy? What does IT mean to productivity in Sweden? Unfortunately I have to say now that we know too little about this. We know that productivity in Sweden has developed unevenly during the 1990s - a disjointed period disturbed by a bank crisis, currency crisis and problems with public finances. Investment has developed more weakly than in the USA, although it has picked up in recent years. Capital intensity does not, therefore, explain the growth in productivity. What does become more evident, on the other hand, is a break in trend in that part of productivity attributed to technology and more efficient organisation, ie total factor productivity TFP (slide 5). This showed a weak and tentative development up to the mid-1990s, but has really picked up over the last five years. 5.

8  S weden US A 9 G e r m a n y1 0  s o u r c e s : N e t p r o f it, F T  11 12  U s e r s o f in te r n e t b a n k in g s e r v ic e s s o u r c e s : S a lo m o n S m it h B a r n e y , F T  S weden 13 US A G e r m a n y1 4 15 16  M o b ile u s e r s s o u r c e s : N e t Pr o f it , F T  S w e d e n1 7 US A G e r m a n y1 8 19 20  Users of m o b i l e in t e r n e t s o u r c e s : N e t Pr o f it , Ip s o s , F T  S w e d e n2 1 US A 22 G e rm a ny 23  However, Sweden’s relatively high growth rate and low inflation rate can at the same time be partly explained by the fact that we are still absorbing spare resources and labour laid off in connection with the crisis at the beginning of the 1990s.