samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
That would tend to show itself as labour securing a smaller slice of the income pie, as we have seen. In sum, the third industrial evolution appears to have resulted in an intensification of trends already fledgling in the first two: a hollowing-out of employment, a widening distribution of wages and a fall in labour’s income share. The key question is what happens next? A re-run of the 19th century, with productivity gains eventually boosting wages and the labour share? Or, different than in the past, a permanent re-shaping of the labour landscape? Race against the machine A number of authors have recently argued, persuasively, that it is the latter. Based on past patterns, it is argued that information technology may be poised for exponential growth, as its full fruits are harvested. Indeed, we may be on the cusp of a fourth Industrial Revolution or Second Machine Age (Brynjolfsson and McAfee (2014), Ford (2015)). Its defining feature would be that new-age machines will be thinking as well as doing, sensing as well as sifting, adapting as well as enacting. They will thus span a much wider part of the skill distribution than ever previously. As robots extend their skill-reach, “hollowing-out” may thus be set to become ever-faster, ever-wider and ever-deeper. Or that, at least, is the picture some have painted painted. How much wider and deeper?

Global data reveal that close to 95 million people during 2020, fell below the threshold of the poverty line, more that it was expected or projected at the start of the crisis. In this context, labor market data clearly indicate that youth, low skilled workers and women particularly in emerging and developing economies, have been hit harder. There is statistics pointing to a global employment rate for men below the pre-pandemic level by about 5 percentage points, while the women employment rate is still 7 percentage points below the prepandemic level. Given the nature of the crisis, Western Balkan region was not shielded from this global shock. Economies in the region are small and highly open in trade and financial terms, heavily exposed to external developments. GDP in the region declined by 3.4% in 2020, but with intensity that differs across counties in the region, ranging from –1% in Serbia to –15.2% in Montenegro. Henceforth, the disproportionality of the impact of the crisis pertains to the region, as well. Let me use labor statistics to illustrate some important aspects of how COVID affected women. First of all, in general, I can say that this crisis hit women more heavily than men, and this has come on top of the fact that women faced pre-crisis gaps in many respects on the labor market. Couple of numbers in this segment.
Measures taken by the Eurosystem to fight against the financial crisis  Our analysis of the recent situation suggests that the weak outlook for economic activity in the euro area is weighing downward on costs, wages and prices. Accordingly, the Governing council decided twice to lower the key ECB interest rate by 25 basis points, in its early November and early December Meetings. Changes in the ECB rates ultimately affect inflation through changes in bank lending rates, monetary and financial conditions and aggregate demand. Under normal financial-market conditions, monetary-policy transmission mechanisms work properly and non-standard measures are unnecessary. But when transmission mechanisms are impaired, standard policy is likely to be less effective. In such exceptional circumstances, extraordinary, or nonstandard, measures must be implemented. It is in that spirit that the Eurosystem has constantly and reactively updated its set of non-standard measures, keeping pace with the crisis’ developments. On December 8, we have announced extensive measures to contain the refinancing risks of Euro area banks. The Eurosystem has announced in particular two longer-term refinancing operations with a maturity of 36 months which will be conducted as fixed rate tender procedures with full allotment as well as the extension of the collateral it considers eligible to borrow its liquidity. We also have reduced the rate of reserve requirements from 2% to 1%, which is also contributing to stem collateral constraints of parts of the euro area banking system.

Among cryptoassets are what are generally known as cryptocurrencies, conceived for use as a means of payment, and those known as digital tokens, conceived for obtaining financing and which confer on the purchaser the right to receive remuneration, or to exercise certain rights. The Bitcoin is an example of the former. The so-called ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) are an application of the latter. Both have been the subject of growing interest, and there are at present numerous and highly heterogeneous initiatives. While their impact so far on global financial stability is considered to be limited, they pose a series of risks, in areas such as consumer protection and the prevention of moneylaundering and the financing of terrorism, which the authorities monitor closely and on which they have issued warnings and statements. In this connection, it should be stressed that these are assets of a marked speculative nature, without the backing of supervisors and susceptible to fraud or price manipulation. They cannot be considered as money or as deposits, and they do not enjoy the protection of the regulations governing banking and investment products. It is worrying that, in a setting in which less than half the population understands the concept of compound interest rates, there is such demand for complex assets with these characteristics. Lastly, I wish to refer to the risk of authorising – owing to a lack of knowledge or of due care – access to personal information that would preferably have been kept private.
A new dimension of competition has also emerged in the form of non-bank providers, begging the question of valid regulatory framework and forcing us to rethink our definition of financial institution and role of central banks E-Banking represents a new challenge to the overall competitiveness of the banking industry. Notwithstanding the inherent risks of this cyber reality, potential benefits from such services are likely to outweigh its costs, and therefore we must resign ourselves to the role of supporting and nurturing this new tool. Such parental support will continue to include our duties toward systemic security, consumer protection, risk management, and privacy. Thus, E-Banking fits the a regulator's age-old conundrum of striking the right balance between regulatory oversight and innovation. Ladies and Gentlemen, I hope that I have presented to you an abbreviated version of the common challenge we all face. It is my hope that this seminar will provide us all with the opportunity to dip into the vast pool of knowledge possessed by our resource persons to provide us with new-found understandings, essential for strengthening our interconnected financial infrastructure, as well as close network. Lastly, I hope you will have some time to see the beautiful Chiang Mai, orchid of the North. It is with great pleasure that I declare the opening of this "SEANZA Workshop on the New Capital Accord and E-Banking." Thank you. 2  BIS Review 102/2001

I am confident that these improved fundamentals will help lessen the impact of the global slowdown on the economy, enhance the ability of the private sector to manage and deal with economic volatility, and provide the economy with a strong foundation to continue with stronger growth and stability in the years ahead. This is all I want to say this evening. I hope it has been useful. And I want to end by wishing the year of the Rat to be a year of plenty, bringing opportunities and good prospects to all of you at the FCCT. Thank you. BIS Review 29/2008  3
These include the traditional agriculture and fisheries sector, transport and media, management and marketing consultancy services, wholesale, health, maritime, archaeology, restoration, fair trade, tourism, youth services and community care. Our cooperatives are affiliated with the International Cooperatives Alliance (ICA), and so abide by the Seven Basic Principles established by the Alliance mentioned previously. Banks too have been with us for a long time. Indeed one can trace the origins of banking in Malta to the times of the Knights of St John, though more rapid development took place under British rule, helped by the island’s strategic and central position in the British Empire. In 1826, the Anglo-Egyptian Bank started operations here, and through a series of mergers and acquisitions this later became Barclay’s Bank DCO (Dominion, Colonial and Overseas), which soon established an extensive branch network on the island. A number of smaller Maltese-owned banks were also established, and some of these eventually merged to become the National Bank of Malta, which also established a branch network. There followed a period when these two major banks were nationalised, but following the subsequent  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  liberalisation of the economy they were again privatised, with the Government retaining only a 25% share in Bank of Valletta. More banks began to operate here after Malta joined the European Union, but these were all commercial, joint stock banks. No one, till recently, seems to have thought of setting up a cooperative bank in Malta.

But the point has been made, and I think it is a valid point, that competition – so necessary to ensure that customers get the best possible service at the least possible price – depends more heavily on the variety of business models rather than on having a large number of institutions giving roughly the same kind of services in more-or-less the same way. Increased competition does not result from just adding more firms with the same business model, but also, indeed perhaps more, by adding firms with different business models. Where there is more diversity, and where there are more alternatives to choose from, competition is enhanced and its benefits increased. Perhaps I should point out that several decades ago there were many people, including many of the local business community, who were afraid to approach a bank for a loan. They were prepared to give and receive credit directly to and from each other, believing they were neither charging nor being charged interest, but not to borrow from a bank that explicitly charged interest and made a profit “at their expense”. Never mind that the implicit rate of interest in the credit being given and received in this way was probably higher than that being charged by the banks. I should not be at all surprised if there were still people around, potential entrepreneurs, who still reasoned that way, and who therefore may be “financially  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  excluded” from the economy.
These mainly consisted of extraordinary budgetary items to reinforce their health systems and provide liquidity support to households and firms, including guarantees, loan servicing payment deferrals, capital injections, additional public spending and forgone revenue, including temporary tax cuts. Turning to monetary policy, nearly all of the region's central banks have cut interest rates to record lows. Further, they have provided liquidity in local currency and in dollars, conducted banking interventions and some of them have even established asset purchase programmes,6 which have reduced the volatility in longer-term interest rates and in exchange rates. 5  For a description of the pandemic transmission channels in the region, see Banco de España (2020), “Report on the Latin American economy. Second half of 2020”, Analytical Articles, Economic Bulletin, 4/2020. 6 For a description of the asset purchase programmes run by central banks in emerging economies, see Banco de España (2020), “Asset purchase programmes of Latin American central banks”, Box 1, “Report on the Latin American economy. Second half of 2020”, Analytical Articles, Economic Bulletin, 4/2020. 4  Likewise, the corresponding economic authorities adopted a set of macroprudential and supervisory measures to foster the flow of credit, provide liquidity to the banking system and mitigate the adverse impact of the crisis on financial institutions’ capital.7 All of these measures have helped to ensure that the main indicators of the most important Latin American banking systems for Spanish banks have not deteriorated significantly.

25.02.2021  Latin American economies: developments and challenges Consejo Empresarial Alianza por Iberoamérica (CEAPI) Pablo Hernández de Cos Governor  Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. First of all, I would like to thank the Consejo Empresarial Alianza por Iberoamérica (CEAPI) and its President, Núria Vilanova, for the kind invitation to participate in this event. I should also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the role that the CEAPI plays to support the business and investment of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American firms. As you all well know, Latin America is a very important region for Spain owing to our close cultural and economic ties. It is likewise important for the Banco de España, as evidenced by one of the initiatives in our Strategic Plan for 2020-2024:1 positioning the Banco de España as a leading central bank for Latin America. This objective entails engaging in a series of actions, such as organising events, entering into and implementing cooperative agreements with central banks and institutions in the region, and the provision of services and international cooperation, all with a medium and long-term strategic view. It also means working to extend and improve our institution's analytical capacity and its visibility vis-à-vis the region’s economies and financial systems. Fortunately, it is already viewed as a benchmark in this regard within the Eurosystem.
In practice, discretionary prudential measures pose difficulty in the form of potential regulatory forbearance, market distortion, timing effectiveness, and the difficulty in modeling early warning system. Rule-based prudential measures, on the other hand, pose difficulty in policy calibration. That is to say, calibrating this type of policy tools has so far proven difficult for emerging markets where data availability is limited and large structural breaks are usually present. Let us now turn to the longer-term challenge in the pursuance of monetary and financial stability in emerging markets, that is, the issue of structural reform and its implementation. From a longer-term perspective, the attainment of monetary and financial stability is determined predominantly by the embedded structural features of the economy. These matter not only with regard to how shocks are propagated through the system but they also influence the effectiveness that policy stabilization efforts can cushion the economy from such shocks. In what follows, I will discuss two key aspects of the structural features that are important for the pursuance of monetary and financial stability. These are the financial development and the policy institutions and framework. First, financial development. One important requirement to ensure that the risk management capacity of the economy evolves with the changing nature of risk is to enhance the risk management ability of economic agents. The key to this would be to strengthen the efficiency and the robustness of the financial system.

The first is the greater income and consumption volatility that have been observed in emerging markets, both in terms of the level and in terms of growth relative to developed economies. And the second is the fact that economic agents in  1  The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Thailand or Bank of Thailand policy. I would like to thank Piti Disyatat, Ashvin Ahuja, Sarawan Angklomkliew, Jaturong Jantarangs, Nawaporn Maharagkaga, Don Nakornthab, Kobsak Pootrakool, Mathinee Subhaswadikul and Supradit Tangprasert of the Bank of Thailand for their substantial contribution to the drafting the original paper. BIS Review 98/2008  1  emerging markets face greater limitations in the ability to smooth consumption in response to shocks. The empirical evidence from two recent studies are summarized in Table 1. As documented by Aguiar and Gopinath in 2007, consumption is around 40 percent more volatile than income at business cycle frequencies for emerging markets, while the ratio is less than one for developed economies. The same is true when comparing relative volatility in growth rates of consumption and income. A study by Kose, Prasad, and Terrones in 2005 also shows greater income and consumption volatility in emerging markets relative to developed economies. Such heightened volatility in macroeconomic outcomes undoubtedly has adverse implications for welfare.
This, because if it continues to grow at the present rates, the debt and financial burden of households could rise substantially if a negative risk scenario materializes. In this context, having a consolidated data base is particularly important, to allow proper risk administration by suppliers and enhance the monitoring capacity of supervisors. The second factor is the behavior of credit-risk indicators. Although moderately, since mid-2011 there have been increases in banks’ non-performing consumer loans and in delinquency rates of commercial stores (figure 4). This element, as well as the sustained growth of credit-card financing and car loans should also be taken into account when evaluating the credit risk of households. Medium-sized, retail, and investment banks are persistently dependent on institutional financing sources. Besides, and despite the smaller relative weight of foreign banks in the external debt of local banks, the reduction in credits from banks based in peripheral Europe has resulted in greater concentration in banks from abroad. The complexity of today’s scenario calls for prudent monetary policy making and careful risk administration, in order to be prepared to deal with significant changes in the macroeconomic scenario. The international economy’s situation is worrisome and a further worsening could have major effects in Chile. Domestically, some risks persist relating to inflation, and it is the Central Bank’s task to be vigilant.

Strategic decisions about the future needs to be made to sustain the ability to offer and deliver unique value propositions to customers whilst at the same time effectively managing customers’ expectations. An area that banking institutions may venture into is micro-financing. Micro-enterprises perform an important economic activity for a large segment of the country’s population. While institutional arrangements are being put in place to increase access to financing for such micro-enterprises, the banking sector with its large network of branches can become an important channel for such financing. 4  BIS Review 28/2004  These could be provided via a micro-financing window. Global experience has shown that such microfinancing operations can be successful and profitable with good loan portfolio quality. As part of the efforts to raise the quality performance in the financial services sector, Bank Negara Malaysia initiated a nation-wide survey in 2003 to assess the requirements, expectations and the satisfaction level of consumers on the quality of products and services offered by banking institutions. While the primary objective of the study is to develop an index on the levels of quality of customer service, the findings indicate that the real issues in enhancing the industry’s level of performance goes beyond this, towards developing a stronger customer-centric orientation. The findings provide a discernable indication of the differences in customer needs and requirements, and identify specific areas where customer-orientation issues tend to arise. Let me briefly share some of the key findings of the survey.
On that day, all 57 outstanding issues of Exchange Fund Notes, with a total value of more than $ billion, will be so listed. I very much hope that this joint effort by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the Hong Kong Securities Clearing Company and the HKMA will successfully stimulate retail interest in our Exchange Fund Notes and, more importantly, retail interest in debt instruments generally. Let me now take this opportunity to do a bit of advertising. The Exchange Fund Notes are, of course, issued for the account of the Exchange Fund. Furthermore, all issues of Exchange Fund paper are fully backed by foreign reserves. For every $ worth of Exchange Fund Notes there is $ held in the Exchange Fund. Investors therefore need have no concerns about the ability of the Exchange Fund to repay this debt. At this time, the Exchange Fund Notes also attract a yield higher than that for US dollar Treasury securities of corresponding maturity. Interest income from holding the Exchange Fund Notes will be exempt from profits tax and trading in the paper will be exempt from stamp duty. The Stock Exchange has also offered to lower the brokerage commission on these products. For a community that has always had a keen and very wide participation in the stock market, the convenience of being able to buy and sell the Notes on these terms, through the brokers on the Exchange, speaks for itself. So much for the advertisement.

In this year in particular, we are seeing a strengthening of the international dimension of our financial sector. This essentially serves to strengthen our economic and financial inter-linkages with the global economy. Some notable developments in this direction include the liberalisation of the foreign exchange administration rules earlier this year to allow for greater flexibility and efficiency in foreign exchange transactions as well as to increase foreign participation in issuing ringgit papers in our bond market and thus contribute to contribute toward enhancing the depth of the market. Another major development this year was the move to a managed float exchange rate regime for the ringgit. This is essentially to better position the nation to respond and benefit from the structural changes occurring in the region and the global economy. Other further developments to strengthen our international integration include the increase in foreign participation in our domestic financial system. This includes the issuance of new licences for foreign Islamic banks to operate in Malaysia, the issuance of new stock-broking licences to foreign players as well as increases in the permitted foreign interest in our Islamic subsidiaries and investment banks. All this will serve to enhance the international integration of the domestic financial system. The launch of the ABF Malaysian Bond Index Fund is also aimed at promoting greater integration among the regional bond markets. On the domestic front, the year 2005 marks a significant milestone for the merchant banking industry.