samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The number of unfilled tech jobs across the economy is an estimated 19,000 each year, according to IMDA. Our pipeline of technology graduates is not enough to meet this demand. Undergraduate enrolment for Information and Communications Technology (ICT) across the six autonomous universities was 2,800 last year. Another 4,500 ICT students graduate from polytechnics and ITE each year. Of course, technology jobs can also be very well filled by engineering and science graduates but many of them go on to non-tech jobs. This large mismatch between demand and supply of technology workers means two things. One, we have to continue to depend on foreigners to fill the growing vacancies for technology jobs over the next few years. If we tighten this inflow excessively, it will impair not just the competitiveness of our financial centre but dampen the prospects for creating good jobs in the future, especially for Singaporeans. Two, we need to build a strong local tech talent pipeline – as a collective eﬀort involving individuals, financial institutions, and the government. How can individuals equip themselves for technology jobs in the financial sector? MAS spoke to many chief technology and information oﬀicers and technology specialists to better understand the attributes that financial institutions are looking out for in their technology professionals. We even looked at job descriptions of various tech roles and the resumes of successful applicants for these roles. Four attributes stood out for a successful career in technology in the financial sector.

Digitalisation is an ambivalent process in that it also offers banks tools to control these risks. For example, artificial intelligence is a valuable tool in the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing, as it can be used to analyse large volumes of data quickly in order to spot unusual transactions more swiftly. 1.2 Vulnerabilities in relation to the transition to a sustainable economy [SLIDE 3]  The other structural challenge, namely the green transition, exposes banks to a number of vulnerabilities. The exposure of banks to climate-related risks is now well established, in part thanks to work by the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System, or NGFS. In particular, banks may be exposed to physical risks and transition risks. Physical risks stem from the rise of extreme weather events such as droughts, flooding and storms. These events can weaken the businesses and households to which banks are exposed, potentially generating losses. Transition risks are related to the measures that are taken by public authorities or the private sector to support the move to a low-carbon production model, which oblige economic participants to restructure their activities and cause some assets to become impaired. Coal mines, for instance, are destined to become stranded assets. Since transition risks materialise over a longer time horizon and are less visible, they are challenging to identify and model. In addition to climate risk, the financial system is also affected by the risks linked to ecosystem disruption, such as biodiversity loss.
The decrease in Swiss interest rates makes the holding of Swiss franc assets more expensive relative to other currencies. This makes the Swiss franc relatively less attractive and counteracts the upward pressure. Introducing negative interest rates on sight deposits at the SNB is designed to allow interest rates to take on an important role in monetary policy transmission again. Since 2000, the short-term interest rate at which banks borrow and lend liquidity to each other has been the SNB’s main policy instrument for fulfilling its mandate of price stability. Negative interest rates on sight deposits at the SNB affect interest rates of different maturities and the  BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  economy as a whole through financial markets and the banking sector. This change in overall yields on Swiss assets influences their attractiveness and thus exchange rates against the Swiss franc. The current policy of negative interest rates differs from the exceptional measures taken by Swiss authorities in the late 1970s. At that time, negative rates were levied directly on deposits in Swiss francs made by non-residents. Moreover, private persons or companies residing in Switzerland were not allowed to sell domestic securities to non-residents. These measures and restrictions – directly targeted at foreign customers – were, however, not very effective since too many loopholes existed. Moreover, they created serious distortions and had a negative impact on Switzerland’s position as a financial centre and on its international wealth management.

In order to meet these challenges, we have had to use unconventional instruments for the implementation of monetary policy. Our current monetary policy is based on two pillars. These are designed to dampen upward pressure on the Swiss franc. The first pillar is the negative interest rate on sight deposits at the SNB. The second pillar is our willingness to intervene on the foreign exchange market as required. The SNB monitors developments in the foreign exchange market and their potential effects on the Swiss economy very carefully. At a global level, interest rates have been on a downward trend for more than two decades (cf. chart 4). This development reflects, on the one hand, an overall decrease in inflation. On the other, quantitative easing programmes implemented by various central banks in response to the financial crisis have brought global interest rates close to zero. In an interconnected financial world, it was impossible for Swiss interest rates to diverge from this strong and persistent downward trend. Very low global nominal yields have reduced the interest rate differential between foreign and Swiss interest rates. By the end of last year, the spread between short-term interest rates on assets denominated in euros and those denominated in Swiss francs had almost vanished. As I mentioned earlier, interest rates have traditionally been lower in Switzerland than abroad. However, during the financial crisis, foreign interest rates decreased to a greater extent than their Swiss counterparts.
On the subject of the fundamental value of the exchange rate. It’s true that this concept is employed by many experts, and so too by us; we have expressed this on several occasions. However, this concept must be treated with great care. My view is that this is a very conditional concept. We at the Bank of Russia have a number of models to measure this basic reading of the exchange rate. It would be fair to say that we estimate this deviation to be much smaller than does the Ministry of Finance. According to other models these deviations appear smaller. But in any case, what exactly is the fundamental rate of exchange? This is the rate of exchange necessitated by the current balance of payments, current account and capital outflow combined. Yet it is anyone’s guess to gauge the exact influence of basic and short-term drivers on this value. This is, as I have previously stated, a very conditional concept. As we see it, in a floating exchange rate environment, as we see it, no matter what deviations are in place, the impact from objective factors will ultimately result in an equilibrium which brings the interests of exporters, importers and borrowers into balance. In our view the issue should be addressed in this way. Second. Our reserve replenishment policy.

But the Germans and the European citizens do not need to be afraid: We have delivered and we will deliver price stability. Inflation in Europe rose to 2.2% in December, the highest rate for two years. We are always concerned if inflation rises and are following developments very closely. But the figures for December can be accounted for, above all, by rising energy prices. Let me say something about the longer-term figures. In the last 12 years the average rate of inflation in the euro area has been 1.97 %, and in Germany only 1.5 %. Those are better figures than at any time in the 50 years before the euro was introduced. In Germany, inflation was 2.2 % in the 1990s, 2.8% in the 1980s and even higher in the 1970s. These figures speak for themselves. But why does nearly everybody have the impression that the euro has made life more expensive? That may have been the case ten years ago. I do not believe that this perception is shared today by a significant number of fellow citizens. The ECB has ensured that the euro is a credible and stable store of value. Why then do you think that one in two Germans wants the Deutsche Mark back? Once again: The euro has ensured stable prices. In the last 12 years the price level has been more stable in the Federal Republic than over the previous 50 years. The Germans, too, are aware of how valuable it is.
3  A more detailed analysis is provided in the article “Financial imbalances in the monetary policy assessment” in the Riksbank’s Monetary Policy Report published in July 2013. 4  See, for instance, IMF “World Economic Outlook”, April 2012, A. R. Mian, K. Rao and A. Sufi (2011), “Household Balance Sheets, Consumption, and the Economic Slump”, Chicago Booth Working paper, November 2011 and K. Dynan, (2012) “Is a Household Debt Overhang Holding Back Consumption?” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, spring edition. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  imbalances that can affect confidence in the country, the currency and the banking system. I consider the assessment we made in July to entail on the whole a good balance between these difficult questions. Macroprudential policy needs to be implemented without delay... At the same time, I consider it important to emphasise that the repo rate is a blunt instrument. Other policy areas have more effective tools for influencing household debt. One such policy area is macroprudential policy, which entails limiting the risks in the financial system as a whole. If there were more effective tools available for managing and preventing financial imbalances, monetary policy would not need to take such risks into account to the same extent. At present, several countries and international organisations are working on producing and implementing a new framework for financial stability, where macroprudential policy will be in focus and the central bank will be given an important role. However, the design is slightly different in different countries.

In this period, annual inflation of the B index, which is a core inflation indicator and obtained by excluding unprocessed food, energy, alcoholic beverages and tobacco from the CPI, decreased by 0.05 points to 18.46%, and that of the C index, which excludes processed food from the B index, declined by 0.46 points to 16.76%. In August, while annual inflation increased significantly in the food group, it posted a limited rise in services and receded across other main groups. Meanwhile, producer inflation continued to increase due to commodity prices, disruptions in supply chains, and demand conditions. 7  At this point, I would like to note a couple of points regarding pricing behavior. Recently, price increases in certain products have far exceeded their historical averages. Considering the products with the largest contributions to inflation, we see that the annual price increases in August may have been more than three to four times the average price increases in the last 10 years. While factors such as the pandemic-driven rise in commodity prices and supply constraints are some of the reasons for this development, as I mentioned earlier, these factors per se may fall short of explaining the price increases in some products. In particular, we see higher rates of price increases in sectors that were adversely affected by the pandemic and registered brisk demand after the pandemic. However, we assess that such pricing behavior will converge back to its pre-pandemic state in the upcoming period as the economic and social normalization gains pace.
That has to be the job of the management of the institution - indeed the taking and management of financial risk is the essence of their contribution to society; it’s what they are paid for! Nor is it the job of the supervisor to prevent each and every bank failure. Indeed, if the supervisor were to attempt to do so, it would inevitably involve such rigorous prudential standards and enforcement that it would effectively stifle innovation and competition, at the cost of reducing the efficiency of the financial system in meeting the needs of the wider economy, but ultimately also of weakening its structure - reducing rather than increasing the safety of the system. So effective supervision is a vitally important part of the answer to improving the safety of the banking system but it is not a complete answer. Secondly, national authorities can introduce deposit protection arrangements which can reduce the risks of the panic withdrawal of deposits or some other forms of investments - though here too a balance needs to be struck. Overly generous deposit protection carries the danger that it will damage market discipline, by making the depositor indifferent to where he places his deposit, encouraging him simply to look for the marginally higher return. Thirdly, as I noted earlier, national authorities can do a good deal to strengthen the legal and accounting as well as the corporate governance infrastructure as it applies to the financial system.

That in turn could result in unnecessary economic and financial instability. If, on the other hand, IMF assistance were too readily forthcoming, both the member countries, and their creditors, might be encouraged to take excessive risks in the belief that the IMF would in the end bail them out. This is a particular form of the familiar problem of moral hazard. It, too, could result in unnecessary economic and financial instability. What does seem clear is that, given the scale of private international capital flows today, the IMF’s resources are certain to be limited in relation to the problems that could emerge. At some point therefore - depending on just where the balance is struck - the onus for resolving the situation has to fall back on the borrowing country and on its creditors, who cannot avoid taking ultimate responsibility for their own lending decisions. So there is a link between the review of the IMF’s facilities and what has come to be called - in the jargon - PSI, or private sector involvement in crisis resolution. And that link remains to be clarified. Just how these issues are resolved will have an important bearing upon global economic and financial stability, and in turn, upon the safety of our national banking systems. Somewhat similar considerations apply in the narrower national context.
Such as the infrastructure for centralised addressing for real time mobile payments. And the efficient and secure storage of data in the cloud. And critically – no one has done this very well in in an organized way, having open APIs, whether private or public APIs in each of our established players. Open APIs can spur innovation in banking and finance. There will be tensions as we go forward with FinTech, tensions inherent in a new wave of innovation, that we must accept and manage. First, the tension between new players and established players, or the tension between disruption of existing players and collaboration with them. Many FinTech players see themselves as disrupters. But there’s also a fair bit of collaboration that’s taking place. Established financial institutions have been partnering or acquiring new, smaller players with new technologies. Acquiring them either as a defensive mechanism or as a way of bringing disruptive technologies within their own organisation with the hope of strengthening what they offer customers. It’s hard to say how this will play out in the years to come – hard to say whether the disrupters will indeed disrupt the existing financial business in a significant way. I think it’s too early to say. In China, we have some major FinTech players, they are no longer new now, those like Alibaba and Tencent. They have become established names. Elsewhere it hasn’t made too much of a difference yet. It is early days.

Moreover,  BIS Review 5/2010  11  foreign-currency-denominated loans (Chart 6) posted a fast-paced growth and any rapid and excessive depreciation of the domestic currency would have generated negative chain reactions across the banking system. Hence, the central bank’s policy on forex market intervention was further steered in this new environment by the philosophy that a high volatility of the exchange rate is detrimental to the inflation target as well as to the financial soundness of the real and financial sectors. A small emerging economy with a significant openness is exposed on an ongoing basis to the threat of capital movements likely to adversely affect the stability of the financial market, the foreign exchange market in particular. Firstly, the NBR’s interventions in the foreign exchange market were meant to avoid an excessive weakening of the domestic currency, while also linking the level and the pace of the depreciation to the progress in the current account adjustment. With this goal in mind, the central bank monitored the developments in the real effective exchange rate of the domestic currency, along with the pressures on external competitiveness stemming from wage bargaining. Secondly, foreign exchange market interventions were calibrated in line with developments in foreign currency reserves. The foreign currency reserves resulting from market interventions during the overappreciation period, to which added the funds received under the financing arrangement concluded with the IMF, the EU and other international financial institutions, enabled the central bank to support the domestic currency; despite these interventions, official reserves stood constantly at safety level.
To date, however, the economic upswing in Sweden suggests that the labour market is functioning better than one might expect. That in itself is a sign that the output gap has been larger than estimated earlier, so that our economy has coped for a time with higher GDP demand. It is conceivable that the crisis in the early 1990s taught firms that they can, in fact, cut costs if they need to. That may mean that their propensity to recruit now that demand for goods and services is rising is stronger than might have been feared. Moreover, various labour market measures, the willingness of the parties to improve the wage bargaining system and, not least, the real wage increases in recent years, may have strengthened the propensity to look for work as well as the possibility of finding it. Of course, this process cannot continue for ever. Sooner or later, shortage figures will show that there is simply no additional labour available. To date this year the number in employment has risen by 70,000 from the year before, which is over 50,000 persons more than the underlying increase in labour supply. Unemployment is accordingly falling and more and more persons who did not seek work actively before are now available in the labour market. While that is a good thing, the time will come - though when that will be is not certain - when the available supply of labour is smaller than the jobs  3  BIS Review 84/2000  that are vacant.

In fact, I see fintech as the nexus between finance and entrepreneurship. Finance is essential in helping startups and entrepreneurs get off the ground and scale up. Likewise, entrepreneurs can help to reinvent finance by providing ideas to develop innovative financial solutions. This morning, I would like to share some of my thoughts on fintech and on how the finance industry, especially Islamic finance can gain from technology-driven solutions. I will also elaborate on how multisided platforms are facilitating the interaction between investors and ventures. I will then briefly touch on the efforts that Bank Negara Malaysia is taking in promoting fintech. While Islamic finance has made significant progress domestically and globally, the next growth phase requires the industry to ride the fintech wave. At present, Islamic finance fintech is still in its infancy and growing. Encouragingly, we are seeing increasing number of fintech start-ups, innovation labs and incubators that are based on the values and principles of Islamic finance. However, they are not as visible and omnipresent as their conventional peers. The case is compelling for Islamic finance to take on a more prominent role in the fintech ecosystem. The technology is ripe, with higher penetration of mobile and internet across markets. Consumers are also becoming more and more tech-savvy. Digital-banking consumers stand at an estimated 670 million in Asia alone and are expected to reach 1.7 billion by 2020. In Malaysia, within a population of 31 million, there is high mobile and internet penetration rate at about 141% and 81% respectively.
In this connection, I should pay tribute to the foresight of Bernie Fraser, then Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, who called for the establishment of a new regional institution -- for want of a better name, an Asian BIS -- to promote Asian monetary co-operation. Bernie saw quite rightly that “globalisation is elevating the international dimension of monetary co-operation”. In response to his call, EMEAP convened a working group to study the proposals and, at its first Governors’ Meeting in Tokyo in July 1996, further established two working groups and a study group to share knowledge and expertise on financial market development, central bank operations and banking supervision issues respectively. Although the question on the establishment of a regional institution to further Asian monetary co-operation has been put aside for the time being, the progress achieved by the various groups was commendable, with ambitious plans to produce the Asian equivalent of the Green Book on banking supervision, the Red Book on payment systems and a Gold Book on reserve management practices. 20. Meanwhile, greater international monetary co-operation involving the Asian economies was also advanced when the BIS admitted the People’s Bank of China, the Reserve Bank of India, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Bank of Korea, among others, to its membership in 1996, the first new Asian members after the Bank of Japan. 21. All these initiatives were unfortunately overshadowed by the advent of the Thai crisis, which erupted in May this year.

The cost level with the current krone exchange rate is close to 15 per cent higher than in the mid-1990s and about 6 per cent higher than the average for the past 30-35 years. Norwegian businesses are losing market shares in domestic and foreign markets partly because of the strong real krone exchange rate. In the face of major restructuring as a result of shifts in the international division of labour, it is a disadvantage for Norwegian business and industry that costs are high. Reports from Norges Bank’s regional network confirm the picture of an expanding economy. In the September round of interviews, our contacts throughout the country reported continued growth in all the main industries. Our contacts here in western Norway report continued recovery in all industries. Suppliers to the petroleum sector report solid growth, while the export industry reports somewhat lower growth now than before the summer. Growth is picking up in the building and construction sector. New developments include activity in commercial construction, which has also increased this time. Growth in retail trade is solid, and reports of increased willingness to invest apply primarily to this sector. Signals from the regional network indicate some increase in employment in retail trade and the building and construction sector. Manufacturing now reports no change in employment after a moderate rise in the last couple of rounds. Directorate of Labour figures show that unemployment in Region South-West is a little lower than in the country as a whole.