samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Let me also say a few words about how we work to be able to carry out these tasks in a good way. 5 Riksbank's Annual Report 2009, Figure 11;  http://www.riksbank.se/Upload/Dokument_riksbank/Kat_publicerat/Rapporter/2010/ar2009_en.pdf 6 https://www.riksgalden.se/en/aboutsndo/Guarantees-and-lending/Our-guarantees/  6 [12]  Regular analysis of the stability of the financial sector and good crisis preparedness To be able to fulfil our liquidity supporting role in a crisis, we must have good knowledge of the financial system and its participants. We therefore analyse financial companies, infrastructures and markets, as well as the links between them, both under normal circumstances and in times of crisis. In the initial stage of a crisis – when the Riksbank needs to make a decision on liquidity support of several billion in the course of a day or so, or in the worst case a few hours – it is not possible to start analysing the bank that is in distress and what links it may have to other participants in the financial system. Being a slow starter does not work, as the course of a crisis can be very rapid. A regular analysis of banks and other financial companies even during normal circumstances is needed also to ensure that the institutions that are members of RIX have good risk management, so that they are stable and do not subject the system to major risks.

By maintaining a smoothly functioning payment system and an efficient credit market, the Riksbank thus contributed to both general financial stability and to the narrower monetary policy targets of price stability and stable resource utilisation. In other words, it is seldom meaningful – particularly in a crisis or in times of financial unrest – to make a distinction between measures taken for reasons of financial stability and measures taken to improve the impact of monetary policy. The Sveriges Riksbank Act is narrow with regard to the areas of use for different tools, but the preliminary works to the act make it possible to extend the areas of use in a crisis. This meant that the Riksbank could take the necessary measures in the crisis. However, it would be desirable for the actual text of the law in future to provide the Riksbank with a broad and clear task of promoting financial stability and flexibility to take the necessary measures in a crisis. As no two crises are the same, and experiences show that different crisis situations require different measures, I am doubtful about linking the tools available to the Riksbank to specific purposes. Another aspect speaking in favour of flexibility in the use of the various tools is the fact that there is a lot of work under way in the central banking world to develop new liquidity instruments. These often have a monetary policy purpose, but several central banks are now also developing tools that have a clearer link to financial stability.
The decisive factor for the setting of rates would be the inflation prospects for the euro area as a whole. As Riksbank Governor, I would become a member of the ECB Governing Council and take part in the monetary policy decisions there. Naturally, this would affect our work on monetary policy. Prior to taking its interest rate decisions, the ECB does not perform its own assessments of inflation prospects for smaller Member States such as Sweden, so this would remain our responsibility. In light of this, it is natural that we should continue to publish assessments of the Swedish economy a couple of times per year. In this way, we would be able to make a contribution to the economic policy debate in Sweden. These assessments would also be important when we motivate, explain and justify the single monetary policy in Sweden. As part of the Eurosystem, the Riksbank would participate in the comprehensive analysis activities of the ECB. If we are to have any influence in this process, it is important that we have performed good analyses that are tailored to the essential, relevant issues prior to the ECB’s meetings. This points to a certain shift in focus from our day-to-day forecasting activities to in-depth analyses that are also of relevance to policy. One consequence of the Riksbank no longer setting the interest rate level in Sweden would undoubtedly be a decrease in the level of attention paid to our activities in the media and elsewhere.

The Riksbank also has an internal preparation process with broad participation. Finally, we publish the minutes of Executive Board meetings in which the opinion of each member is evident. The latter issue has a different “charge” at European level since there is a risk that a genuinely single monetary policy would be undermined if individual positions were made public. Monetary union and financial stability in Sweden The Riksbank not only has the task of maintaining price stability but also that of promoting a safe and efficient payment system. In light of this, allow me also to say something about the potential implications of entry into monetary union from this perspective. The financial markets in Europe have developed rapidly over the past decade, partly as a result of the fact that the freedom to trade financial services is fundamental to the cooperation in the EU. Competition for the national banks has hardened. The single currency has contributed to the evolution of a far better capital market outside the banks, which has increased competition further. In several large European countries, a process of structural transformation in the banking systems is underway, much like that experienced in Sweden in connection with the banking crisis at the beginning of the 1990s. When competition grows stiffer, it can of course pose a threat to stability, especially if the banks are not accustomed to competition and are also weakly capitalised.
1 But what are we to expect from the Riksbank’s balance sheet in the future? This is the question I would like to discuss today. My discussion will be based on a monetary policy perspective, which means that the focus is on the holdings of Swedish government bonds built up by the Riksbank in recent years and on the monetary base and the liquidity surplus that is now on the liability side of the balance sheet. There are other components that also have a major impact on the Riksbank’s balance sheet but I will not discuss these in any particular detail. Here, I am thinking mainly about the foreign exchange reserve. I will also refer to the international discussion, in which arguments have been put forward both for and against “large” central bank balance sheets. The arguments  I thank Henrik Erikson, Jesper Hansson, Björn Lagerwall, Marianne Sterner, and Anders Vredin for discussions and comments on previous versions of the text. *  1 [16]  concern two related questions: Should the purchase and sale of bonds be an active monetary policy tool even in the future? Do large bond holdings strengthen the transmission of central bank policy rates to market rates? Before I analyse these questions in more detail, I would like provide some background by describing both what central bank balance sheets looked like before the crisis and how they have developed since, and how the design of monetary policy interacts with the balance sheet.

The vertical line marks the shift between forecast and technical projection. Source: The Riksbank  14 [16]  1  See Sveriges Riksbank (2017a). 2  See Archer and Moser-Boehm (2013). The major features of the Swedish operational framework are not unique, but common to monetary policy in most countries. 3  Regulatory frameworks set other liquidity requirements for banks, but the liquidity need not consist of central bank money. 4  Up until 2009, banks’ remunerated liquidity surplus was not part of the monetary base in Sweden, but in 2009 the definition was changed to include the liquidity surplus (see Sveriges Riksbank, 2009). The new definition is more in line with international recommendations and practice, but, in my opinion, is a poor measure of what the literature refers to as the “monetary base”. 5  This is a simplified description of the Riksbank’s operational framework for the implementation of monetary policy. More detailed descriptions can be found in Nessén, Sellin and Åsberg Sommar (2011) and Sveriges Riksbank (2014). 6  Goodfriend (2011) calls this way of conducting monetary policy “interest on reserves policy” which he differentiates from the textbook model’s “monetary policy”. See also Woodford (2000) for an analysis of how monetary policy works in a world without a monetary base. 7  There was a liquidity deficit in Sweden before the financial crisis. At that time, the Riksbank supplied liquidity to the market by lending to banks via repos (hence the “repo” rate).
2 I should be clear at the outset, to borrow a well-worn quotation, that “the map is not the territory”.3 The forecast summarises what is likely to happen on the journey, but it is the economy itself that we as monetary policy makers must navigate, using the forecast alongside many other inputs, including a wide range of data and intelligence from the Bank’s network of agents. And as can sometimes happen when walking in the mountains, different MPC members can interpret the territory in different ways, supplementing the use of a map with the equivalent of a compass and GPS as well as their own judgement.4  The job of economic forecasting has become increasingly tricky over recent years, as the economic territory underfoot has become less and less familiar. The 2007-09 financial crisis was characterised by very large impacts on the supply side of the economy, as well as complex financial sector interactions and new forms of monetary stimulus in response. That was followed the decade after by Brexit, which combined acute political and economic uncertainty with a multidimensional and shifting set of actual and anticipated impacts on demand, supply and the exchange rate. And most recently we have had the Covid crisis, a one-in-ahundred-year health and economic crisis, which has left monetary policy makers firmly in unknown territory. Of course the MPC have not been the only ones to find ourselves in this situation.

A key impetus behind these centers is to bring together a group of individuals with different skills, interests, and experiences in an environment that encourages independent and innovative thinking. These individuals bring their unique questions and knowledge to the task of finding new ways of using the enormous amount of electronic data that exists today, as we did with the CCP. In addition, they can collaborate to identify efficient ways of creating new data, as we did with the SCE. A second lesson is that it is important to offer clear incentives for data innovation. Giving researchers the flexibility and the resources to use new unique data in their research and policy analyses is a strong motivating factor. In fact, we have found the availability of unique data to be an important recruitment and retention tool for talent in research. A final lesson is that data innovation can be costly, both in terms of required staff hours and effort and in direct cost, especially when it involves data purchased from vendors or data collected through surveys. The gains should therefore be carefully weighed against the overall costs. Data stewardship Data innovation as I’ve described it here comes with some costs. In an environment with rapidly growing numbers of large and complex datasets, efficient data utilization requires an ability to easily find, trust, use, and share the data.
Higher interest rates, the high exchange rate, and lower international shipping costs will also contribute to this. By the end of 2022, it will be reduced by more than 2pp of GDP —accumulating 6.3% in the year— and by 2023 it will be between 3% and 4% of GDP. Measured at trend prices, the deficit reduction will also be rapid and significant: from around 9% in 2021 to around 3% in 2023. (figure 12). The external impulse to the Chilean economy will be reduced mainly due to less favorable financial conditions and terms of trade, along with lower global demand. The central scenario anticipates that the Fed's monetary policy will contract somewhat further, and for a longer period of time, than the Fed announced in the June Fed dots, which will result in long-lasting restrictive international financial conditions. This is the main factor behind the lower growth forecast for our trading partners, which will be at 2.6% this year and next. Copper price will also fall short of previous estimates, averaging around $ per pound next year. $ in June) (figure 13). This projection considers no changes in the structural parameters. The Chilean economy has been stricken by important shocks in the last couple of years and the levels of uncertainty about their medium-term extent are significant. This has made it complex to evaluate their implications for estimating the structural parameters. In any case, even considering the current degrees of uncertainty, these parameters will be evaluated in the December Monetary Policy Report.

To a large extent, the convergence of inflation to the 3% target in two years’ time is based on the assumption that the economy will continue to adjust the significant imbalances it accumulated in 2021. In the central scenario, the economy will grow below its potential for several more quarters, so that the gap will continue to narrow and will turn negative beginning at the end of this year. In this scenario, GDP will post annual variations between 1.75% and 2.25% this year, between -1.5% and -0.5% in 2023, and between 2.25% and 3.25% in 2024. For this three-year period, our projection contemplates a fiscal spending trajectory that is consistent with that described in the last Public Finance Report. Activity outlook foresees that private consumption will continue to tighten, a result that largely stems from the expiration of the massive income-support measures adopted in 2021, as well as from the tightening of monetary policy. About investment, weak performance is anticipated through the remainder of 2022 and all of 2023, reflecting less favorable financial conditions, increased business pessimism, a higher real exchange rate, and declining, albeit slowly, uncertainty (table 1). The current-account deficit will decrease in the coming quarters, in line with the continued adjustment of spending on tradables and a much more favorable savings-investment balance than in 2021. As income stimulus measures will not be repeated, both public and household 5  savings will improve drastically compared to 2021, triggering a significant drop in the current-account deficit from the second half of this year onwards.
One step in this direction is to harness the ample immovable property of the government which presently may not be rendering an adequate return. It appears that the setting up of special purpose vehicles may be addressing in part this issue. Perhaps, however, we should go a step further by considering the establishment of a development bank which would utilise various assets of government that are presently underutilised as well as other sources of funding, on similar lines that exist in many EU countries, particularly Germany, where development banks at the regional level undertake very successfully a role in promoting the economy and assisting the government in social and environmental projects. Let me turn now to the domestic banking system. On taking on my responsibilities as Governor of the Central Bank of Malta, I actively involved myself in financial stability issues given my concern with financial markets overseas that were characterised by volatile trading conditions and the contagion effects of the sovereign debt crisis. There is no doubt that the impact of the sovereign debt crisis highlights the importance of ensuring a stable domestic financial system. In fact the case of Ireland shows us that imprudent bank policies can have devastating effects on the economy. In contrast, the domestic banking system played a crucial role in preventing a more severe downturn in economic activity after 2008, and in averting a sharper deterioration in public finances, because of prudent behaviour on the part of the banks in both asset and liability management.

Josef Bonnici: Lessons from the crisis Address by Professor Josef Bonnici, Governor of the Central Bank of Malta, at the annual dinner of the Institute of Financial Services, Saint Julian’s, 25 November 2011. *  *  *  Hon. Minister, Excellencies, Members of the Institute, Distinguished Guests I would like to thank the Malta Institute of Financial Services for inviting me to address this distinguished audience. Mr President, I am aware of your Institute's leading role in banking and financial education in Malta and of its endeavours to establish forms of collaboration with other educational institutions with the aim of increasing the variety of courses offered to professional staff within the financial services industry. I understand that a notable development over the last year was the relationships you established with the University of Bangor and other strategic partners in order to launch a Chartered Banker MBA course locally. This is certainly an achievement and I augur you further success in expanding your reach to all members of the financial community through the activities that your Institute organises and the training facilities it provides. This evening I shall dwell on the sovereign debt crisis in the euro area, a topic which has persistently made news headlines over the past 18 months, and unfortunately continues to do so today. There are lessons from this period of crisis that are relevant for both policymakers and the banking community.
And the new member states are not much different in this respect. They have experienced a decade of incredible structural change, and yet more is ahead. Furthermore the new member states have great infrastructure needs and, coupled with high unemployment, there will be continued pressure for fiscal expansion, even in a cyclical upturn. So what is the solution? Let me first note an interesting development: since 1999 the average fiscal deficit in the euro area has been 1.6 per cent of GDP while the average surplus of the three old outcountries (the UK, Denmark and Sweden) has been 0.5 per cent of GDP. Some Euro-sceptics will of course attribute this difference to monetary union itself but I think the difference is that all three out-countries have been forced to find new ways of building a strong national macroeconomic framework based on clearly stated goals and a transparent evaluation of how these goals are to be met, in addition to the common EU rules. The part that has been much in focus has been the monetary policy regime - in Sweden and the UK, inflation targeting with a specific target for inflation and regular and transparent inflation forecasts has worked well. But inflation targeting, or for that matter Denmark’s euro peg, would never have been as successful had fiscal policy not been reformed in parallel, with clear rules and budgetary ceilings in all three out-countries, which put the problems squarely in the sight of the public.

But the dilemma goes further - given that it is rational for others to expand their budgets it becomes rational for your own country to do so too - even if your instinct is not to “free ride”. Otherwise you might rationally expect to end up among the small minority that does not expand and at the same time still have the tighter monetary policy that results from everyone else expanding. This is the classic “prisoner’s dilemma” from game theory. The conclusion is that it is necessary to have rules for fiscal policy that limit deficits and debt when monetary policy is united and fiscal policy divided, and that these rules need to be followed. But the conclusion is also that the pressure to over-expand is as strong during an upturn as during a downturn. In fact this is what we have seen in the euro zone during the heyday of the late 1990s - a much too expansionary fiscal stance in some euro zone countries, which led to tighter monetary policy and thus an incentive for others to weaken fiscal discipline. The euro zone then started the downturn with large deficits, considering the earlier boom, instead of surpluses. What the Pact then required, a 180-degree turnaround in fiscal policy to a tighter stance, reinforcing the downturn, was considered by some as stupid. In fact it was the lack of savings during the boom that was stupid.
The developments in the Middle East, Iraq in particular have resulted in soaring oil prices reaching highs of about $ per barrel, due to the insecurity and uncertainty pertaining to the global oil supply. Both gold and oil prices are expected to maintain high prices throughout 2004. Increased foreign assets obtained from export earnings from the real sector will in effect improve the capability of oil exporting African countries to release more funds towards the achievement of their environmental goals. In line with the expectations of the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative, many heavily indebted African states have cut their fiscal expenditure and are focussing on staying within their set targets. Attainment of the HIPC initiative completion point, will lead to the much needed debt  BIS Review 74/2004  5  cancellation by Paris Club members resulting in an overall improved financial position of these economies. Failure to reach the target will however prolong reduced fiscal expenditure. Despite the long-term economic benefits of the HIPC initiative in achieving the MDGs, short and medium-term growth strategies of development concerning the environment and other areas will be constricted. 4.1  Prospects of economic growth  The prospects for economic growth in Africa remain bright. The African Union (AU) is currently making efforts towards ensuring political stability in the continent aimed at promoting both foreign and domestic investor confidence.

General concerns for all regions in Africa primarily encompass the problems of deforestation, scarcity of water resources, access to clean water sources, and access to non-pollutant energy sources such as electricity. Primary concerns of the northern and some parts of the eastern, western, and southern  3  The World Summit on Sustainable Development (Rio +10), African Preparatory Conference for the World Summit on Sustainable Development Nairobi, 15-18 October 2001. 6  BIS Review 74/2004  sub-regions however include the effects of desertification on human development and economic growth. Regional government policies in Tanzania, have led to implementation of environmental management policies aimed at promoting waste management, urban planning, and impact assessments for large projects. Government authorities have created designated protected areas aimed at conserving forests as well as supporting community-based income. This initiative is also being implemented in Zambia. Africa now has a total of 1,254 protected areas, or 7% of the landmass. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) plays an important role in the implementation of programmes aimed at improving the environmental sustainability of the region. Acknowledging the importance of water in development, the SADC Water Sector Coordination Unit was established in 1996. Prior to the formation of this Unit a Protocol on Shared Water Course Systems was ratified by the majority of the SADC Member States. This Protocol aims to promote the availability of fresh water resources in the region.