samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Other elements were:   fiscal policy – the management of public spending and revenues – was oriented towards full employment    credit regulation within limits specified in a separate credit budget    channelling of loans through state banks    regulation of cross-border capital movements    low nominal interest rates stipulated by the government authorities    a fixed, though adjustable, krone exchange rate    use of price regulation    an active business policy through state ownership and state grants and subsidies. The proposal to establish an incomes policy council did not receive support. There was just too much state control and coordination. Today, 40 years later, little remains of the management system that was built after the war. The structure was not sufficiently robust. Detailed management and regulation of the economy was not able to deliver sustainable growth and welfare. On the contrary, the result was poor efficiency and wide fluctuations in the Norwegian economy in the 1970s and 1980s. The wide fluctuations culminated in a credit boom in the mid-1980s, which was followed by a banking crisis and a deep recession with high unemployment at the end of 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. The way the economy is organised has changed considerably over the past 20–25 years. It would therefore be incorrect to say that one economic model has applied to Norway through the postwar period.

Financial education initiatives must aim to increase consumer understanding of insurance, including how to navigate in an environment with multiple delivery channels and how to seek avenues for redress where products and services fall short of expectations. Governance and risk management Insurers pursuing new distribution strategies will need appropriate governance and risk management to ensure that emerging sources of financial and operational risks are well contained. Insurers’ strategic planning process must take into account their competitive positioning, the target risk / reward trade-off and financial capacity to absorb losses. Prior to introducing a new distribution channel, insurers must ensure they have the capacity, including the appropriate expertise and resources, to adequately manage and control the  17  BNM Payment Systems Policy Department. 18  BNM IFAS and TOSS System. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  risks associated with that channel and possible spillovers onto existing business. Policies and procedures for managing and mitigating new types of risks will need to be developed and implemented across the whole value chain, including product development, authorisation, pricing, marketing, sales, post-sales servicing and portfolio management. These will need to be designed to ensure that the insurer continues to operate within its predetermined risk appetite and limits. Success in the new insurance distribution landscape will require strong internal communication flows to ensure that the governance and risk management across all distribution channels are fully integrated with the insurers’ operations and control functions.
It was enacted on June 11, 1930 as the Law on the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey. Accordingly, the Bank started to operate on October 3, 1931 and Mr. Selahattin Çam was appointed as the first General Director, or as we now refer to, as our first Governor. The Law did not involve any explicit provision for the independence of the CBT. However, this did not mean that Lawmakers then did not have any idea about the relationships among money, politics and price level. On the contrary, the founders of the Republic were fully aware of the idea that a central bank should be independent in order to get the best outcome from its policies. Let me quote, for example, _smet _nönü, the Second President of the Republic, in one of his various speeches on the establishment of the Central Bank; “I knew from the very start that the Central Bank had to be an independent institution, operating with the integrity and robustness that would be required against even the Government and the Ministry of Finance, let alone its relations with other private banks”. The law did not stipulate any provisions for granting short term advances to the government to prevent the use of the Central Bank resources for financing government expenditures, and thus to avoid inflation and to maintain fiscal discipline. These are enough evidence that despite no formal provisions for the independence, the CBT was de facto an independent authority in conducting monetary policy.

Trade restrictions were eliminated and the Turkish currency was made fully convertible. There were also notable changes on the domestic financial market infrastructure. For the monetary policy to be effective what is needed is the existence of well-developed financial markets. For this purpose the Central Bank played a leading role in the creation of domestic money, foreign exchange and government bond markets. To further strengthen the financial markets infrastructure the Central Bank established a well-functioning electronic payments and securities settlement system. Contrary to these developments, the performance of the Turkish economy in terms of inflation and growth was not satisfactory. Aside from short-lived periods of relative stability, loose fiscal policies along with accommodative monetary policies were the main causes of high inflation. Under these circumstances backward indexation became a common practice in pricing behavior; inertia evolved in inflation, which was very difficult to eliminate. As inflation increased, inflation expectations also increased and a self-nurturing inflation cycle began. In the meantime, there were number of attempts to get out of this impasse. First, there was a monetary program introduced in 1990. This was very important in that it reorganized and re-structured the Central Bank balance sheet and explained to the financial community and to the general public how the monetary policy operated. It was the first time when certain monetary concepts like base money or central bank money were brought to the attention of the public. However external developments like the first Gulf war brought this program to an end.
I intend today to describe in broad terms the design of, the background to and the effects of the Swedish regulations and then go on to discuss the deregulation process. After this I shall point out which factors led to the crisis and what it entailed for Sweden. This is because I believe that our experiences in Sweden are in many respects relevant to other countries. Although conditions tend to differ somewhat between countries, financial crises usually have similar causes and similar results. For example, comparisons have been made between the crises in South East Asia at the end of the 1990s and the crisis in Sweden. It appears that at least three quarters of the crisis causes were the same, including the excessively rapid credit boom, insufficient credit assessment and overheating in the economy. The sequence of events for the actual crisis was also similar; with large currency outflows, rapidly increasing loan losses and insolvent banks. I therefore hope you will have the patience to listen to my account of the Swedish experiences. I believe you will be surprised at how many similarities there are! The Swedish regulations During the period between the Second World War and up to the 1980s, the Swedish financial system was subject to a number of regulations. I shall mention some of the most important ones. Credit regulation was one of these. Around half of the Swedish banks' lending must be directed to the Government and provided at a low interest rate and with a long duration.

Of course, considerable resources were required to administer all of these regulations. My description here shows clearly how thoroughly regulated the Swedish financial system was. Furthermore, the regulations applied over a long time. They were for a good purpose. The aim was to create stable markets for credit and foreign currency, secure and sound banks and also to achieve redistribution of wealth effects through prioritising economic policy measures. However, the result was the removal of necessary incentives for the banks to develop their operations in a professional manner and it also reduced the opportunities to compete, which prevented new banks from entering the market. Thus, short-term stability was attained at the cost of the build-up of long-term tensions, which would gradually result in a crisis. The emergence of a market economy… The idea behind the regulations was good, but they led to the central government having too much control over the banks’ operations. This put the banks’ functions out of operation. The banks’ most important task is to borrow money from the general public and then lend it to companies who wish to invest. They must therefore be able to assess the creditworthiness of their borrowers. However, the regulations that had prevailed for almost forty years meant that the banks had not needed to develop thorough credit assessment competence. The central government had controlled their risk-taking. The limits to lending growth also meant that they could choose to only provide credit to the customers with the highest credit ratings. Loan losses were thus small.
But to the extent that we are only ten years old, this test is of course particularly important for a young institution. FT: What was the most difficult moment for you at the ECB in terms of crisis management? Trichet: I would certainly say that these were the first hours at the outset of the financial turmoil. The Executive Board had to make a diagnosis of the situation in a very short time span, assess what kind of problem we had to deal with, and take decisions almost instantaneously. FT: …this is July/August 2007, yes…. Trichet: This was on 9 August 2007. We had a very important decision to take, which was in a way the first important decision that central banks had to take in order to confront these exceptional circumstances. I remember I was keen on thinking, “This is a grave situation that calls for appropriate responses”. And then we had a great number of important decisions to take in the subsequent months, which were largely “firsts”, in terms of supplying liquidity at fixed rates and even in terms of expanding our collateral framework which, from the outset, was already a very comprehensive collateral framework. It has been a big challenge. One of our challenges is that we had to take decisions very rapidly at the level of the Governing Council. And we again proved that, thanks to teleconferencing, in one hour and a half or two hours we could make a full judgment and take a decision.

So on that point, there is no ambiguity at all. We are also strongly thinking that better coordination for big cross-border institutions is absolutely necessary; even if we could cope with all the issues at stake in the present circumstances, we should not forget that. It's clear that we can improve the present framework and we have to improve it. Some avenues have already been suggested by Ecofin. There has already been a consensus on appropriate Memoranda of Understanding. But going further in this direction also seems important. At this stage, I have to say, I do not have a full-fledged Governing Council position. We are still reflecting, and we will see what will be the position of the Governing Council. But I understand that the European Parliament has carried out several works which have been done within the suggestion that the ECB would play a particular role in this domain for the coordination of surveillance for cross-border institutions – a little bit like in the US. The Federal Reserve has a position which concentrates very much on the big cross-border institutions. And I see also suggestions coming from the private sector, coming from the industry, that we could play a more important role in this domain.
These research programmes will lead to solutions that seek to overcome Singapore’s constraints in energy and land arising from our small size and limited resources. More importantly, the outcomes from these programmes can contribute to addressing some of the global challenges in urban development and the growth of megacities, both within Asia as well as in other parts of the world. Demographics Third, uneven global demographics will present countries with both challenges and opportunities. Developing countries with young and growing workforces will face the challenges of creating enough jobs and investing adequately in infrastructure, industry and institutions. If they succeed, they will be able to reap their “demographic dividend” and grow rapidly into middle-income economies. If they fail, high unemployment will cause increasing restlessness and agitation for political change and revolution. The International Labour Organization, in its “Global Trends for Youth Employment 2012” report, attributed the Arab Spring protests partly to high levels of youth unemployment. Such instability could similarly affect other countries, and a demographic dividend could turn into a demographic curse. At the other end of the spectrum, many advanced economies are experiencing rapidly ageing populations. Decades of low birth rates coupled with affluence and access to medical care and nutrition mean that the elderly live much longer even as fewer babies are born. Even as life expectancy in the EU and North America increased, the average retirement age has fallen from 68 to 63 (from 1970 to 2010).

As China’s consumption increases, its rising import demand will have a positive impact on Asia and on the rest of the world. Besides China, India’s middle class is estimated to grow to almost 600 million people by 2025, and almost 60% of Indonesian households, in a country of 240 million people, are expected to reach middle-class status by 2020. The Asian Development Bank projects that, by the middle of the century, Asia will account for more than half of global GDP and will own half of the world’s financial assets and financial institutions. I’m sure all of you are cautious about long-term extrapolations, but this projection is one of many which are reflective of the optimism and growth potential that we see not just in China, but Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries. As these countries in Asia power ahead, they will drive further economic integration within this region. PricewaterhouseCoopers’ “Future of World Trade” study describes how new trade corridors will form within Asia as a result of this integration. In 1990, 20 years ago, the developed economies dominated the world trade map. Europe was responsible for over half of the world’s exports, although these were mainly intra-Europe flows. In 2010, this map has changed with the global shift in manufacturing to Asia, with China accounting for 9 out of the top 25 bilateral trade routes by value.
Zeti Akhtar Aziz: Expanding ASEAN-EU economic links - the role of the euro Speech by Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz, Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia, at the Euro Conference “Expanding ASEAN-EU Economic Links - The Role of the Euro", Kuala Lumpur, 14 July 2005. *  *  *  Your Excellency Ambassador Thierry Rommel, Head of the EU Commission Delegation in Malaysia, Your Excellencies, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, Good morning. It is my great pleasure to welcome you to the "Euro Conference: Expanding ASEANEU Economic Links -- The Role of the Euro". Bank Negara Malaysia is indeed honoured to co-host this event and would like to especially thank the European Commission for the opportunity. The purpose of this Conference is to bring together recognised experts to discuss the important issues affecting economic, monetary and financial interests in ASEAN and the EU. I believe that the exchange of ideas and views over the next two days would contribute towards an increased understanding of the developments and issues important to our respective regions. Our agenda is for the further strengthening of the close ASEAN-EU partnership that offers mutually reinforcing benefits to both regions. It is our hope that this Conference would serve as a catalyst to promote greater appreciation of the potential for an expanded ASEAN-EU economic relationship - a relationship in which trade and investment flows between our regions can be enhanced. The ASEAN-EU partnership has developed steadily over time through a number of well-established forums.

In April this year, the ASEAN countries also doubled the size of its regional financing facility, the ASEAN Swap Arrangement (ASA), from $ to $ billion. The ASA is a further initiative to maintain regional economic and financial stability through a mechanism that provides short-term liquidity support to member countries facing temporary balance of payments difficulties. Strengthened strategic partnership as a natural way forward Ladies and Gentlemen, As we advance forward, both the EU and ASEAN through the rebalancing of global growth have the potential to contribute towards alleviating the imbalances in the global landscape. The process of increased inter-linkages between our two regions has already begun. As a pre-cursor to the establishment of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA), our regions have embarked on the TransRegional European Union-ASEAN Trade Initiative in 2003. Work is also already underway to expand trade and investment flows through closer ASEAN-EU co-operation in trade, investment and regulatory issues, among others. While barriers between our regions will continue to be lowered under a future FTA, it is also important to maintain coherence between liberalisation and economic stability. New areas in specific sectors of mutual interest that would complement the path to greater growth for both regions need to be explored. This would contribute towards reinforcing the sustainability and effectiveness of the ASEANEU partnership and, thereby, increase the potential to contribute to global economic stability. Allow me to conclude my remarks here. Thank you for your participation in this Euro Conference.
8 [30]  Well, the Silicon Valley Bank run resulted in the US authorities deciding to guarantee all deposits in the two worst affected banks. They felt they had to do this to prevent the problems from spreading. The bank run in the United States also happened very fast. Technological developments allow depositors to move their deposits with a few keystrokes, to other banks, to money market funds or to crypto-assets. Social media also makes the information spread faster than before. All this raises the very fundamental question of whether the deposit guarantee scheme actually fulfils its purpose of providing security to depositors, reducing the risk of bank runs and, on the other hand, reducing the problems of moral hazard. These are difficult trade-offs and need to be carefully analysed. Ways forward? So how should we proceed now? I note that when large price changes occur in the stock market, for example, so-called "circuit breakers" are introduced, i.e. trading is shut down for a short time to allow traders the opportunity to reassess the situation. I am not convinced that this approach can be applied to banks, but perhaps it would work if a larger proportion of deposits were fixed in time so that depositors do not have the right to withdraw them until at maturity. A larger interest rate difference between regular deposit accounts and accounts with a fixed maturity might lead more depositors to choose the latter option.

Milesi-Ferretti (2010), “The cross-country incidence of the global crisis”, CEPR Discussion Paper, No. 7954. 2  See H. S. Shin (2012), “Global banking glut and loan risk premium”, mimeo, Princeton. 3  See V. Acharya and P. Schnabl (2012), “Do global banks spread global imbalances? The case of assetbacked commercial paper during the financial Crisis of 2007-09“, NBER Working Paper, No. 16079. 4  See V. Acharya, P. Schnabl and I. Drechsler, “A tale of two overhangs: The nexus of financial sector and sovereign credit risks”, 15 April 2012. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  financing in foreign currency of long-term investments (maturity mismatch) and insufficient prudential standards leading to excessive risk taking and rent seeking behaviour. Unfortunately the warnings were not taken seriously until the issues and risks materialised first with the depreciation of the Thai baht in July 1997. Perhaps we have not learnt enough from the past! As growing financial market tensions made the financing of these deficits ever more difficult, the last and most unexpected layer of the iceberg – namely the so-called “redenomination risk”, the possibility of a break-up of the euro area – came to the surface in the middle of last year. By that time, the sovereign spread of high-yield euro area countries relative to other euro area countries had widened to an exceptional extent, hardly justified by fundamentals and fundamentally incompatible with a well-functioning monetary union.
Indeed, it  is evidence of the lower tail of companies with flat-lining productivity having lengthened during the crisis and by more in the UK than in competitor countries, consistent with the long tail hypothesis. Why might the UK’s long tail, and hence technological diffusion, problem be more acute than elsewhere? Several reasons have been posited and probed. 73  One interesting window on this issue is provided by  looking at the intensive and extensive diffusion margins, to see if these provide clues. Looking at a range of ICT technologies, the data suggests that high and relatively consistent levels of technological adoption, but low and variable rates of technological penetration, mimicking the international evidence. Take internet access. Almost all UK businesses – in excess of 90%– now have internet access. But the UK 74  ranks poorly compared to other OECD countries in terms of broadband penetration (Chart 9). That is true  not only for standard broadband connectivity, but also for more advanced infrastructure such as optical fibre connections. Those low rates of penetration largely reflect large/small firms differences. As with other OECD countries, broadband usage by large firms is almost 100%. But for smaller firms that falls to 93%. Similarly, the share of UK businesses with a website is above the OECD average, at around 83%. But that masks sizable large/small firm differences. Almost 100% of UK large firms use websites, which has been the case for a decade. Only two-thirds of small firms had a website in 2007.

In other words, looking at a cross-section of UK companies, secular innovation (for the upper 1% or 0.1%) has co-existed with secular stagnation (for the remaining 99%). The two are engaged, not so much in a secular struggle, as a secular stand-off. Technological diffusion, and hence productivity growth, has been the casualty. There have been one or two recent studies which have been quoted as questioning the importance of this “long tail” issue for the UK. 71  These pieces use the same data used here. The problem arises not from the  data but from the (mis)interpretation placed on them by these studies. All of these studies show, very 67  Andrews, Criscuolo and Gal (2016). Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (2017). 69 Haldane (2017). 70 Productivity figures refer to the non-financial business sector, but other sectors for which data are not available over the full ten-year period are also omitted. 71 Swinney (2018), Giles (2018). 68  19  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  19  clearly, that the UK has a significant long tail problem. Appropriately defined, they also demonstrate that this tail has lengthened during the course of the crisis. To give one example, my Bank colleague Patrick Schneider recently published a blog post showing that a good chunk of the slowing of productivity growth since the crisis could be accounted for by workers in the top quartile of the productivity distribution. 72  This is entirely consistent with the tale of two companies.