samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Energy  Green Buildings  n/a  P5 0.37  0.05  0.17  0.36  P4 0.19  n/a  0.18  P5 0.55  n/a  0.34  0.34  P4  n/a  0.02  P3  n/a  0.33  n/a  P2  P5 n/a  P4 0.26  P3 0.22  P1  n/a  P5  0.47  0.19  P4  P4 0.28  P3 0.22  P3  n/a  P2  P3 n/a  P1  P2 n/a  P5  P2 0.40  P4  P2 0.25  P3  P1  P2  P1  P1  P1  P5  Greenhouse Gas Emissions  A key decision for investors is whether to make use of the raw climate data disclosed by firms, or packaged summary measures from ratings providers, such as those illustrated in Chart 4. Summary measures have obvious attractions, since they delegate to specialists the daunting task of data gathering, analysis, gap-filling and aggregation. But in so doing they also risk injecting further inconsistencies: fully half of the variation in the aggregate ratings shown at the top of Chart 4 reflects decisions on the composition or weighting of those aggregate measures, as opposed to variations in how firms’ raw disclosures are measured. A recent paper from the Bank of Italy suggests that investors can construct better-performing portfolios by combining the raw data themselves.25 The final TCFD criterion is that disclosures should be forward looking.

28  See in particular the recently launched Task Force on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets: https://www.iif.com/tsvcm/MainPage/Publications/ID/4061/Private-Sector-Voluntary-Carbon-Markets-Taskforce-Established-to-Help-Meet-Climate-Goals 29 See discussion in the CFTC’s report on Managing Climate Risks in the U.S. Financial System: https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8234-20 30 Fannie Mae is currently the world’s largest issuer of green MBS: https://multifamily.fanniemae.com/media/8616/display 12  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  12  Green bonds come in different flavours, illustrated in Chart 7. The dominant model is the ‘use of proceeds’ bond, designed to raise funds for specific earmarked investment projects that the issuer sees as climate-positive. This earmarking, coupled with regular reporting on project progress, provides debt investors with targeted transparency on the credentials of the projects their funds are supporting. The first such bond, issued in 2007 by the European Investment Bank, coupled the use of proceeds structure with a number of other innovative features, and other supranationals and government agencies helped develop the market further in subsequent years. But the concept only really took off after the agreement of the Green Bond Principles in 2014, which established market-wide standards of transparency, disclosure and reporting.31 There are now approaching $ trillion of such bonds across a wide range of issuers (Chart 8) – and, while that stock is so far just a tiny fraction of the $ trillion global corporate bond market,32 green issuance is growing several times more rapidly than conventional bonds. UK companies currently lie well down the issuance league table (Chart 9), and have primarily issued in euros (Chart 10).
Public authorities – at least in Europe – have tended to come to the aid of weak institutions, thus confirming the existence of an implicit guarantee for banks’ liabilities. This guarantee distorts the incentive system for the managers of banks and for their creditors, generating considerable costs for the public finances of the countries concerned. A key factor in encouraging the suitable risk perception of each liability instrument, and thus in minimising the cost for taxpayers, is bail-ins. These establish a clear order for the incurring of losses by shareholders and creditors, and provision is made for this arrangement to be activated prior to any injection of public funds. In Europe, given the political agreement reached on the Recovery and Resolution Directive, a set of common rules will be adopted in the near future establishing a clear and homogeneous order of seniority of liabilities in the event of bank resolution, and it will ensure the administrative power to impose losses on the holders of each instrument. That will notably minimise the cost to taxpayers of bank bail-outs. But common rules are not enough. The only way to ensure the possible homogeneous application of these rules is through the creation of a common resolution authority for all countries. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  Similarly, it is important to have a common resolution fund in place which ensures, under similar conditions, that there is the necessary financial support for those institutions which might need it, irrespective of the budgetary situation of the State concerned.

Its stability and proper functioning depend directly on the adoption of far-reaching reforms to heighten the integration of the participating national economies. We can take hope from the fact that European leaders have understood that banking union is key to the reform process and have, through the creation of the single supervisory mechanism, paved the way for its full operationality. The challenge now is to complete the project as soon as possible by setting in place a single resolution mechanism, in order to optimise the capacity of the single supervisory mechanism to contribute effectively to strengthening monetary union. In the coming months we must step up the required preparatory work. It is not a simple project. It will undoubtedly keep us busy – in both the official and the private sector – for some time. But it is an exciting undertaking in view of its importance for Europe and for Spain. Thank you. BIS central bankers’ speeches  5
The EU already has many channels through which its citizens can exercise democratic control, via national authorities in the EU Council and Members of the European Parliament, who hold EU institutions accountable on behalf of the people who elected them. In fact, for the first time on record, a majority of Europeans now feel that their voice counts in the EU. [35] It is to be hoped that accountability arrangements to hold EU institutions in check continue to be strengthened, because the perception of the legitimacy of their actions depends on it. The role of the European Parliament is vital here. Of the institutions with a democratic mandate to exercise control, it is the only one with a European perspective. The European Court of Justice provides a second avenue of democratic control. Its role in ensuring that EU institutions are following their mandates becomes all the more important in the absence of a European government. Adherence to the judgments of the ECJ is a necessary condition of the rule of law. Consistency and uniformity in the interpretation of EU law across 28 Member States are the bedrocks of EU law as an effective and autonomous legal order. [36] A basic function of the law is to stabilise expectations by providing a reliable foundation upon which citizens and companies can organise their activity and plan for the future. [37] And such predictability and certainty is especially important for Economic and Monetary Union today.

True sovereignty is reflected not in the power of making laws – as a legal definition would have it – but in the ability to control outcomes and respond to the fundamental needs of the people: what John Locke defines as their “peace, safety, and public good”. [3] The ability to make independent decisions does not guarantee countries such control. In other words, independence does not guarantee sovereignty. Countries that are completely shut off from the global economy, to take an extreme but instructive example, are independent but not sovereign in any meaningful sense – often relying on external food aid to feed their people. Yet being connected through globalisation also 1 / 10  BIS central bankers' speeches  increases the vulnerability of individual countries in many ways. They are more exposed to financial spillovers and to the aggressive trade policies of foreign states, while increased competition makes it harder for states to coordinate with one another to enforce regulations and set standards so as to achieve their social goals. This restricts their control over domestic economic conditions. In this environment, countries need to work together to exercise sovereignty. And this applies even more within the EU. Cooperation within Europe helps protect states from external pressures, and it helps enable their policy choices. Working together to protect Globalisation has profoundly changed the nature of global production and deepened the ties that exist between countries. Cross-border holdings of financial assets are now around 200% of global GDP, compared with about 70% in 1995.
Figure 2 shows our interest rate adjustments on the vertical axis and our inflation forecasts’ deviation from the target two years ahead on the horizontal axis. As we can see there is a clear relationship between forecast deviations from target and our decisions, but there are also points in Figure 2 that deviate from the average behaviour. These points chiefly relate to the forecasts we produced when we chose not to counter the effects of energy prices on inflation. So it seems that we have essentially acted in line with how we have said we will normally act. Yet another way to evaluate the result of our policy is to investigate whether it is credible. The most important factor here is that inflation expectations 2 years ahead and beyond have been firmly anchored to our target since the regime was stabilised in 1997-1998. That conclusion holds up fairly well regardless of the method used (see Figure 3). Our ambition to be transparent derives, among other things, from a desire to avoid unnecessary movements or unease in the financial markets. To illustrate our performance in this regard the Riksbank has conducted a number of studies over the years, of which some have been published.3 The picture we’ve received is that our policy has essentially been intelligible and that it hasn’t resulted in any sharp fluctuations in financial prices that could have been avoided.

I should also mention here that a couple of other inflation-targeting countries with which we have an extensive professional exchange – the UK and Norway – have recently begun to attach much greater importance to forecasts based on other assumptions than a constant policy rate and that this appears to have worked well. We expect to be able to make use of our development work as early as the next Inflation Report. In that Report we intend to publish forecasts based on implied forward rates, a measure that may not be exactly the same as market expectations of the future repo rate, due, among other things, to maturity premiums, but that nevertheless are a reasonable approximation. It doesn't really matter that much whether one chooses to condition the forecast on implied forward rates, surveys that attempt to give a more direct reading of market expectations, or some other fairly reasonable assumption about future monetary policy. We have chosen, however, to use implied forward rates, since this is a relatively  4  See, for example, Svensson, L., ”Monetary Policy and Real Stabilization” in Rethinking Stabilization Policy, A Symposium Sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, August 29-31, 2002, 261-312. 5  The only exceptions were Inflation Report 2001:1 and 2001:2 when no such estimates were published, since market expectations largely coincided with the assumption of an unchanged repo rate. 4  BIS Review 11/2005  simple way to get a fairly reasonable idea of future monetary policy.
Most people who need insurance and takaful products may not have the time or access to information to even know that it’s there for them. Agents create that awareness. For many, their first contact with insurance would have been through an agent-initiated meeting. For this reason, customers tend to rely on agents to a large degree for information to help them make the right decisions, quite often ones involving lifelong commitments. While competition will only intensifies moving forward, agents who will excel are those that are knowledgeable, diligent and trustworthy. However, findings from the Bank’s recent supervisory reviews are rather disappointing – three in four agents were found to have failed to complete a comprehensive fact-finding process for more than 80% of their customers. This may be a symptom of a product-pushing mentality at the expense of customer welfare. The lack of objectivity increases the risk of unsuitable products being sold to customers, and could well permanently taint the industry’s reputation in the long-run. Things can, and must be done better. With the new Balanced Scorecard developed in consultation with the industry – including NAMLIFA, the incentive structure has been improved so that agents work more effectively and objectively in the best interest of their customers. The Scorecard also reinforces our vision for agents to move towards higher value-add activities that involve advice, sales and customer support for more complex products.

A system like ours, with high income taxes and transfers, naturally also influences the extent to which private safety-nets or reserves are built up. This includes everything from saving by households to contractual unemployment insurance. For the automatic stabilisers to function in full during future downturns it is important to stick to the current rules for fiscal policy and ensure strict compliance when times are bad as well as good. There may also be grounds for being even more ambitious about the budget surplus and aim for a level of, say, 3 per cent over the business cycle. Debt could then be repaid more quickly, giving us more room for manoeuvre in the future. The spending ceiling has functioned well both by breaking what was previously an almost automatic increase in government expenditure and by maintaining discipline in the central government finances. The same applies to the requirement that the local government finances are balanced; there is less talk of this requirement in contexts like the present but it has been an essential part of the framework that has held back the expansion of public spending in recent years. It is therefore important that these rule systems are not eroded. On top of all this there may be a  BIS Review 6/2002  3  case for some changes in the arrangement of budget work. Some of the proposals put forward recently by Svante Öberg can be considered as a way of strengthening the process still more.
Losses in investors’ confidence could erupt much more quickly and spread across markets in a matter of days. Unfortunately, the economic and social costs of the new crises also increased substantially. I think we can safely say that the Fund, like anybody else, was caught by surprise by the virulence of the turmoil that hit Asia in the 90s. When Thailand and even more so Korea were on the verge of financial collapse the Fund looked very much like those generals always ready to fight the previous war. Not even its financial means were adequate, and governors were rushed to decide a speedy 45 percent increase in quotas in January 1998 to supplement the rapidly depleting Fund resources. It didn’t take the Fund long, however, to react, to pick up the challenge and, all things considered, to come out of that difficult situation relatively unscathed. No-one should claim that everything went smoothly, though, or that no mistake has ever been made. From the side of the Fund, too, it was a particularly bumpy trial and error process. Quickly restoring market confidence became the name of the game. How? This is the difficult question. I shall not elaborate on the design of the various programs over that period. A very extensive, at times quite critical, economic literature on this matter, with pieces signed by the best pens in the profession, is readily available for those of you interested in more details.

And even when such information disclosure requirements are successfully imposed in a particular market in a particular jurisdiction, and regulatory measures put in place, would there not be the danger of the market migrating offshore? Market participants are quite willing to take advantage of opportunities for disclosure or regulatory arbitrage that individual offshore centres may be keen in introducing so as to attract business. These are among the questions now being asked in international discussions. The task of achieving greater transparency in international finance is no doubt a difficult one, but it is in the interests of all developed and emerging markets - to support this initiative, to light up the dark room. And without going into the technical details, let me say this: with adequate international cooperation, involving all 5  BIS Review 120/1999  the significant financial centres, this is achievable. Regulatory authorities from these centres may just have to be a little more forceful. They could collectively say that these are the disclosure rules we have laid down on the basis of international consensus, under the auspices of an authoritative institution on international finance. * They could further emphasise that the disclosure rules are essential safeguards for systemic stability in international finance that is in the interests of all.
The CBT foresees that inflation will follow a fluctuating course significantly above the target and then reassume a decreasing trend in the last quarter of the year once the temporary factors taper off and come back to levels consistent with targets in the first months of 2011. In the last part of my speech, I would like to mention about the general framework of the monetary policy exit strategy that we shared with the public yesterday. As you all know, recently, one of the most discussed issues in monetary policies has been “exit strategies”, which include the withdrawing measures taken during the global crisis and normalization operations of monetary policies. We believe that the exit strategy of the CBT will be simpler and easier as no need for radical measures arose and the balance sheet structure was not damaged during the crisis period. I would like to handle the exit strategy of the CBT in two groups as foreign exchange and Turkish lira. The basic principle of the CBT on foreign exchange liquidity is that the Central Bank, which is the lender of last resort for Turkish lira and has broad flexibilities related to Turkish lira liquidity management, is not be considered as the lender of last resort for other currencies. For this reason, the banking system has to be much more discreet and prudent in its management of foreign exchange liquidity.

Mr McDonough comments on the implications for the strong US growth for the world economy  Speech by Mr William J McDonough, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, before the Japan Center for Economic Research, Tokyo, on 30 March 2000. *  *  *  Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It is a great pleasure to be invited to speak before such a distinguished audience. My thanks to the Japan Center for Economic Research for extending such a kind invitation. This afternoon I would like to share with you some of my thoughts on the US and the world economies as we move forward into the 21st century. To do so, it is helpful to step back and take a somewhat longer-term view of how the stage was set for much of the current strong economic performance the US economy has enjoyed in recent years. In addition, I would like to comment on the implications of the strong US growth for the world economy. The United States is now experiencing the longest economic expansion in its history. This expansion, which began in April 1991, not only has reached record length, but also has done so in a far stronger manner than had been expected. Most notably, inflation has been subdued, notwithstanding the most favorable labor markets that the United States has experienced in a generation, and the country’s fiscal accounts are in surplus. There is no question that this expansion reflects some remarkable changes in the US economy.
Chart 13 plots a measure of the leverage ratio for the UK and US banking systems over a long historical sweep,10 while Chart 14 plots a simple measure of the liquidity ratio for UK banks over the past half-century (see also Jordà et al (2017)). Both solvency and liquidity ratios have exhibited a long, downwards drift. Between the end of the  10  Chart 13 is not directly comparable with Chart 5 because it is based on a different definition of leverage and sample of banks. 8  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  8  19th century and the troughs prior to the financial crisis, leverage ratios fell by around three quarters in the US and the UK. Liquid asset ratios among UK banks underwent an even larger fall in less than half the time. Given the scale of these falls, even with the regulatory reforms of the past decade, levels of capital and liquidity in the banking system are at levels significantly below those 100 and 50 years ago, respectively. On the face of it, this gives grounds for questioning whether even these revamped regulatory standards are sufficient to withstand likely future shocks. We should, however, probably be cautious about jumping too quickly to that conclusion. Over the past century, there has been significant change in the structure of the financial system, including in the structure, scale and scope of financial regulation and the safety net. Those changes could mean that simple, historical comparisons of regulatory standards are misleading.

But serious thinking and a willingness to contemplate radical change will be necessary. BIS Review 36/2008  3