samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Good progress is being made. The share of BAME and female staff below senior management in the Bank currently stands at 19% and 46%, respectively, compared to targets of 20% and 50%. At senior management, BAME and female representation is 5% and 31%, compared to targets of 13% and 35%.14 A wide array of initiatives are underway to ensure the Bank meets these targets. Other central banks have also made a further push towards improving their staff diversity, although few publish pay gaps. The ECB’s Executive Board introduced gender targets in 2013 in order to double the share of women in management by 2019. As of the end of 2018, 29% of management positions were held by women compared with a target of 35% for the end of 2019. For the most senior management roles the share was 22% against a target of 28% for the end of 2019. The ECB announced additional measures last  14  Carney (2019a) discusses diversity and inclusion in the Bank. Carney (2019b) notes that the Bank’s gender pay gap is lower than for most companies in the financial sector. 33  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  33  year. The Fed announced a Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan for 2016-19, aimed at fostering diversity in the organisation. In order to foster transparency and accountability, they report the composition of their employees by diversity statistics annually. Looking beyond central banks, the analysis presented here suggests some clear directions of travel.

As witnessed in Japan, protracted and large-scale balance sheet adjustments can weaken economic activity over a protracted period of time. Repairing the financial sector was an important element in improving the Japanese economy. The lesson for the euro area appears to be clear: the overhaul of the financial architecture – including the establishment of a procedure for resolving failing banks – needs to be accomplished in its entirety; selective mending will not be enough. In my view, we should make use of the momentum offered by the crisis to turn these challenges into opportunities – opportunities to put our economies on a sounder footing. To underscore why I think that we need to address today’s challenges in a comprehensive manner and why institutions are crucial in achieving this, I will first briefly review the build-up and adjustment of financial imbalances both in Japan and in Europe. Then I will elaborate on how to manage the deleveraging process and the institutional changes to be implemented, before touching upon the role monetary policy has to play. Imbalances in Japan and the euro area The Japanese experience provides important lessons as it demonstrates the difficulties of emerging from a “balance sheet recession”.1 With the euro area still battling the impact of the financial crisis, an important question is: how does the current euro area economy compare with the dynamics in Japan during the 1990s?2  1  Termed by Richard Koo in Koo, R., The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics: Lessons from Japan’s Great Recession, Wiley, 2009.
There is an equally great risk that developments will be better than forecast as that developments will be worse than forecast. Previously I have mainly seen risks of poorer developments than in our main scenario. Downside risks primarily include two factors that could indicate a poorer development in the real economy. One is that the economic recovery abroad could take time, which would have negative effects on Swedish exports. The other is that the situation in the Baltic countries could deteriorate and cause larger loan losses for the Swedish banks than we have anticipated. This could indirectly dampen the recovery in the Swedish economy. Upside risks include the expansionary fiscal and monetary policy measures taken in most countries and which may lead to the international recovery taking place sooner than anticipated. This could also hasten the Swedish recovery by means of an increase in exports. The new information received during the summer also indicates a slightly stronger development in economic activity than we had assumed. One could interpret the recent signs of increased optimism to mean that the need to increase the repo rate will approach sooner. However, one should take into account the fact that resource utilisation is very low and will remain so during the forecast period (see Figure 23) and that our monetary policy task primarily concerns ensuring that inflation remains close to the target. At present it is difficult to see any indications that inflationary pressures are increasing.

Exchange rates SEK per EUR and per USD respectively 12  12  SEK/ EUR SEK/ USD  11  11  10  10  9  9  8  8  7  7  6  6  5  5 04  05  06  07  08  09  Source: Reuters EcoWin  16  BIS Review 98/2009  19. Unit labour costs Annual percentage change 7  7  6  6  5  5  4  4  3  3  2  2  1  1  0  0 -1  -1 Unit labour costs Labour costs per hour Productivity  -2  -2 -3  -3 94  96  98  00  02  04  06  08  10  Sources: Statistics Sweden and the Riksbank  Note. Broken lines and columns represent the Riksbank’ s forecasts. 20. Inflation expectations Annual percentage change 4.0  4.0 5 years 2 years  3.5  3.5  3.0  3.0  2.5  2.5  2.0  2.0  1.5  1.5  1.0  1.0  0.5  0.5  0.0  0.0 96  98  00  02  04  06  08  10  Sources: The NIER and Prospera Research AB  BIS Review 98/2009  17  21.
Therefore, our macroeconomic forecasting and monetary policy analysis models prescribe an important role to the exchange rate. Furthermore, in financially euroized economies, such as ours, exchange rate movements tend to have financial stability implications. Rapid depreciation increase NPLs, while prolonged periods of appreciation tend to impose financial risks and encourage further euroization. In designing the appropriate monetary policy response, we have to distinguish between trend movements driven by fundamentals, and short term volatility driven by sporadic factors or market imperfections. Inflation targeting central banks should strive to avoid leaning against trend movements in the exchange rate. As long as these movements are in line with fundamentals, these trends represent structural adjustments that do not move the economy away from equilibrium. On the other hand, short term exchange rate volatility is normal in a fully flexible exchange rate regime. The reaction of central banks should depend on their impact on inflation, which in itself depends on the intensity and duration of such volatility. The stronger the duration and the higher the intensity of the shocks, the bigger would be the expected impact on inflation, the greater the risk of rapid shifts in inflation expectations, and the higher the need for a systematic reaction of monetary policy. 3. Exchange rate movements and the Bank of Albania reaction to them  The above mentioned facts have guided our reaction to the recent appreciation of the exchange rate in Albania. The trend appreciation started around the second half of 2015, but it gathered considerable pace in 2018.

A re-assessment of its implication on price stability indicated this appreciation was not compatible with our price stability target over the medium term. Under these premises, the Bank of Albania was forced to act. We lowered the policy rate to a new historical minimum of 1 percent. We clearly communicated the Bank of Albania did not assess this appreciation to be in line with fundamentals, anymore. Lastly, we announced the initiation of an FX purchase program in the domestic market. This program was aimed at controlling the pace of appreciation, removing the excessive short term FX supply and reversing expectations and one-sided bets in the market. In regard to this last one, I would like to emphasize the main features of it: First, it was undertaken as measure of last resort, when the space for further conventional policy rate cuts was limited. Therefore, any additional monetary policy stimulus would need to make use of unconventional instruments. Second, it was clearly communicated to the market to be of both an exceptional and a temporary nature. Therefore, it does not represent a shift from our commitment to a flexible exchange rate regime, and should not be represented as such. As a result, these measures proved to be efficient and now the exchange rate movements are going back to normality. Thank You! 3/3  BIS central bankers' speeches
The strict regulation of the rental market also means, for instance, that households may feel forced to buy a home even at stages of their lives when ownership and a mortgage may entail taking a major risk. Although a mortgage is a longterm undertaking for both the borrower and the lender, the households mainly choose variable-rate mortgages; only around one percent choose fixed rates at maturities longer than five years. In addition, the banks largely fund their lending using mortgage bonds with maturities that are significantly shorter than the maturities of the loans.1 I see the specific aspects I have just listed as risk factors, even though arguments can easily be found for each aspect to explain why this particular one does not actually constitute a risk. For example, one can point out that the high level of household debt is offset by the high level of household saving and households having assets that are substantially larger than their debts, or that the low level of construction over several decades limits the scope for a fall in housing prices.2  1  In many countries, mortgages are amortised over periods of 20 to 40 years. This was also the case in Sweden a few decades ago, but it subsequently became increasingly common with interest-only loans. Over the past few years, a larger proportion of new mortgage borrowers have chosen to amortise their loans, but still at a slow rate.

At the same time, it is of course desirable that the measures targeted at household indebtedness and the housing market do not in themselves lead to an economic downturn or unnecessarily obstruct monetary policy. The primary aims of policy in this area must be to ensure that the build-up of household debt slows down, that the households gradually become more resilient to shocks of various kinds and that the housing and mortgage markets become more effective. This is thus a question of a long-term adjustment process that must take place in suitablylarge steps. The amortisation proposal – a step in the right direction I see last week’s amortisation proposal as one such suitably-large step in the right direction. As only new mortgages will be covered, increased amortisation will be phased in over a long period of time. In combination with many new mortgage borrowers already amortising, and because the proposal entails only a moderate increase in amortisation rates, this means that the macroeconomic consequences will probably be small during the first few years. According to the Riksbank’s estimate, the amortisation proposal will have reduced the household debt ratio by 0.6 percentage points after five years compared with a base scenario. This means that the proposal will increase amortisation payments by less than 0.1 per cent of GDP per year during the period.5 The amortisation proposal thus appears to be well balanced at the moment, but work on the long-term adjustment process must continue. There are many factors to take into account when considering further measures.
Model use and misuse Speech given by David Rule, Executive Director of Insurance Supervision  Association of British Insurers Prudential Regulation Seminar 14 May 2019  I am grateful to the following for contributions to this speech: Liam Clarke, Chintan Patel, Paul Collins, Amanda Istari, Brian Howell, Sarah O’Sullivan, Anu Ralhan, Peter McIntyre and David Phillips. 1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/default.aspx  I would like to start by thanking the ABI for the invitation to make this keynote address. Today I want to talk about insurance models and the growing importance of model risk management. In doing so, I will describe some recent findings from the PRA’s work to guard against weakening over time of capital requirements calculated from internal models or ‘model drift’. A model applies theories, techniques and assumptions to process input data into quantitative estimates for a particular purpose.1 Make that purpose providing insurance and it is close to a definition of what insurers do. No surprise therefore that insurers are big users of models. But models can go wrong. They might have fundamental errors. Probably more commonly, they can be misused: for example, because management do not understand the limitations of a model. In insurance, a model going wrong might mean under-pricing of products, under-reserving against risks or treating certain customer groups unfairly. In the particular case of internal models used to calculate regulatory capital requirements, it could result in insufficient capital to protect policyholders. Insurance Capital Models  Let us start with capital models.

Our tight monetary policy stance since October prevents a deterioration in the price setting behavior by keeping inflation expectations under control. Thus, we expect that inflation will follow a downward trend as the accumulated effects of the temporary price movements on annual inflation gradually fade away. Thus, we estimate that inflation will display a notable decline particularly in the last quarter of 2012. Before moving on to the risks regarding the inflation outlook, there is a particular subject I would like to touch upon. As you might have noticed, I have given an inflation forecast that exceeds our end-year inflation target of 5 percent. This is because we think that pulling inflation towards the target by end-2012 would prove to be quite costly. Reducing inflation from the current level of 10.45 percent to 5-percent-target within 12 months would lead to unfavorable fluctuations in economic activity; accordingly we think that it is more reasonable to bring inflation back to the target in one and a half year. Thus, our baseline scenario envisages inflation to reach the target of 5 percent by mid-2013 (Chart 17). However, the target might be attained by the end of 2012, should the risk appetite improve markedly in the forthcoming period and the capital flows towards emerging economies re-accelerate, leading to a stronger appreciation of the Turkish lira than assumed in our baseline scenario.
The history of our housing market for the last 25 years is one in which the supply of housing in the place and of the type that people want has not kept up with demand. In 2004, Kate Barker – a former MPC member – concluded in her extensive report on the housing market that, if we wanted to reduce the trend in annual real house price growth to 1%, we needed to build an additional 120,000 private sector homes annually in England, an increase of almost 100% relative to the 2002–3 level. In the end, and despite a credit boom, the increase in annual housing completions up to the crisis was only 25%. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  There are many reasons for the failure of the supply of housing to keep up with demand in the UK which go well beyond the remit of a central bank. But the effect is that when demand grows strongly house prices can keep rising quickly for a long time. This is a movie that has been seen more than once in the UK. So it is not surprising, given the history of our housing market that the recent sharp increase in house prices and transactions appear to have fuelled growing expectations of an ever accelerating market. Contrary to the received wisdom in the rest of the world, the strength of housing market rather than the weather may be the dominant topic of conversation in the UK.

I am hopeful for two-days of productive workshop interactions. I invite you to join the panels of presentations and become part of the fruitful comments and discussions! 2/2  BIS central bankers' speeches
Paper presented at the BIS annual conference on “Financial Systems and Macroeconomic Resilience: Revisited”. BIS Review 119/2009  7  is ample and provides room for brisk growth in lending. In a downturn, earnings decline, losses increase and banks tighten lending. Banking sector behaviour is thus procyclical. This first implies that a higher level of equity capital must be required for a given risk assessment. Second, capital requirements must reflect risk through the entire business cycle. Third, banks must build up solid buffers above the minimum requirement in normal periods. Today the capital requirements for mortgage loans are very low. NOK 1 in equity capital can actually be behind as much as NOK 250 in mortgage loans. House price fluctuations are amplified as a result because access to mortgage finance becomes almost unlimited in favourable periods. The requirements imposing an upper limit on banks’ capital-to-loan ratio can remedy this to some extent. Tax rules Improved tax rules can also counteract credit cycles and promote housing market stability. The household debt-equity ratio and house prices are influenced by the tax system. A sound principle is that the net return on capital, after deduction of capital costs, should be taxed. Net return is indicative of the capacity to pay tax. But households are not taxed on the net return on their housing capital. Deductions are allowed for capital costs without taxation of a rise in the value of the property or the imputed value of owner-occupied housing.

Over the years, taxation of the value of owner-occupied housing in Norway has gradually been reduced. The tax benefit for owner-occupied dwellings, introduced in 1882, was abolished in 2005. The tax allowance for debt interest, however, was retained. This system subsidises household borrowing, it subsidises owning rather than renting a dwelling, it leads to higher house prices than would otherwise have been the case and to overinvestment in housing capital. Households inflate their balance sheets and housing capital in order to take advantage of the tax benefit. Taxation of housing in line with other forms of capital implies taxation of the value of owning a dwelling, the rent saved and the rise in the value of the dwelling. Housing taxation reform can contribute to curbing the house price fluctuations that successive generations seem to be exposed to. 4. Conclusion  Developments in recent months indicate that the financial crisis in Norway will not turn into a crisis in the real economy. There has been no recurrence of the solvency crisis in the banking sector twenty years ago. The Norwegian economy has nonetheless been exposed to major shocks. Oil prices and prices for other important export goods rose sharply through the upturn. The liquidity crisis hit the banking sector as growth started to slow. The impact on unemployment has not been pronounced and inflation has remained low and fairly stable throughout. We can safely say that fiscal and monetary policy have been fairly effective so far.
The first gold sales by the SNB were promptly executed the day after the new law came into force. Meanwhile, the market environment was far from optimal for the SNB’s gold sales. While the SNB had merely announced its intention to sell gold, the central banks of Argentina, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Luxembourg, the Czech Republic and India had all initiated actual sales. Against this backdrop, the gold market had been under pressure since 1996. Here in Washington, intense discussion revolved around the question of whether the IMF should sell gold. Moreover, the gold policy of the future European monetary area had been subject to intense speculations. The market feared that once the European Monetary Union came into force, the participating central banks or governments would lose their inhibition about selling off parts of their 12’000 tonnes of total reserves. In May 1999, the announcement by the UK Treasury that it planned to sell 415 tonnes set a new wave of producers hedging activity and front running speculation. The gold price dropped by 10% to 252 USD/oz, a 20 year record low (see Figure 3). It is against this background of heightened speculation about wide-ranging central bank gold sales and corresponding market anxiety that the joint statement on gold was signed at the IMF meeting in Washington on September 26, 1999. The participating central banks undertook to sell a total amount of no more than 2,000 tonnes of gold in the next five years, with annual sales limited to approximately 400 tonnes.

Administering a systemically important benchmark is a new departure for the Bank – but it is a role we accept given our statutory ability to collect the underlying data. We will administer SONIA as a utility, for the benefit of the market, on a cost-recovery basis. I know François will say more about how the Sterling Working Group made its decision. For my part, I would like to take this opportunity to thank François, members of the Working Group, and their institutions, for their commitment and hard work in getting to this point. However the task is not yet finished. Attention now turns to the adoption of SONIA as an alternative to sterling Libor. The Working Group has an important ongoing coordination role to play. The main focus so far has been on the derivatives markets. Indeed we invited dealers to form the Working Group in the first place because our experience of derivatives reform suggests they can be most influential in catalysing a transition. But it is stating the obvious to say that demand for derivatives stems partly from the desire to hedge underlying cash market instruments. That reinforces the need, ultimately, for a broadly-based transition. 5  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  5  That can be to the benefit of any user of Libor who bears exposure to bank credit risk not through preference but through lack of established alternatives. I personally suspect that many users would be in this category.
Although it has already been activated due to the special situation we find ourselves in regarding the process of lifting capital controls, for the longer term we see it very much as a third line of defence after macroeconomic policies, and micro and more usual macropru. It is no panacea and comes with distortions. All of this remains a work in progress, and history will tell whether it will be sufficient to preserve monetary and financial stability in the rougher seas of freer capital movements that we intend to embark upon. 2/2  BIS central bankers' speeches

Prasarn Trairatvorakul: Financial crises and the future of global and Asian banking Statement by Dr Prasarn Trairatvorakul, Governor of the Bank of Thailand, at the Sasin Bangkok Forum 2012 Plenary Session “Financial crises and the future of global and Asian banking”, Bangkok, 9 July 2012. *  *  *  Theme: “Strategy for Known-Unknown”. The critical success factors are 3 Cs: Coordination of regulators, Commitment forged by Inclusiveness, and Communal responsibility to restore market mechanism as a pillar of governance and financial discipline. Good morning. It is an honor to join all of you today. I would like to thank Sasin for organizing this forum and for inviting me. Over the past three decades, Sasin has played an important role in grooming business and policy leaders who have been instrumental in building Thailand’s open and competitive economy. Today, we are facing another critical juncture for Thailand and the global economy. This forum has brought together the world’s leaders in public policy, businesses, as well as academia, and is therefore a rare opportunity for dialogue on our strategy going forward. Ladies and gentlemen, This brings me to the topic of my remark today. The future of banking industry at the global level and in Asia is being shaped by three major forces, namely, the fragile global economy, global financial regulatory reforms, and the rise of Asia which faces its own developmental challenges. These forces are interrelated and complex, no one can claim to fully understand the final outcome.