samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Your Founder Chairman, Dr K B Lall, whom I am delighted to say is with us this evening, worked tirelessly over the years in so many areas of international economic policy, including a period as Chairman of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Your current Chairman, Dr I G Patel, served India not only as Governor of the Reserve Bank but also at the International Monetary Fund. It is a great personal pleasure to see I G, as we all know him, here tonight because I owe him a great debt for his help and support at the London School of Economics during his period as Director in the 1980s. And the new Independent Evaluation Office of the IMF, an important development in improving the accountability of the Fund, will be led by Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, one of India's most distinguished economists, and the husband of your Director, Dr Isher Judge Ahluwalia. India was one of the 44 countries which participated in the meetings at Bretton Woods which led to the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The Bank of England archives contains some fascinating material on the Bretton Woods Conference and, in particular, on the role of the Indian Delegation. Sir Chintaman Deshmukh, the Governor of the Reserve Bank, was reported to have made a big impression on the delegates at Bretton Woods.

Much has been said, and, more importantly, achieved in the area of transparency in recent years. There has been an explosion of codes and standards on different aspects of economic and financial policy in recent years. So much so, that some countries are claiming that the process needs to slow down. It is certainly important to recognise that the appropriate codes and standards for a country at one stage of economic development may not be appropriate to countries at other stages. I say advisedly "may", because in each individual case the argument has to be made. But if it is accepted that codes and standards are likely to reflect different stages of development, then it is even more important that countries make clear to which codes and standards they are actually adhering. That is why countries should not be able to opt out of "transparency about transparency". Following the production of pilot transparency reports on a number of countries, including the UK and Argentina, the IMF has now made rapid progress in producing reports on the observance of standards and codes (ROSCs). As of April 2001, 110 ROSC modules had been completed for 43 countries, of which 76 have been published covering 31 countries. India has recently had a ROSC published on fiscal transparency. It is critical that monitoring of the observance of standards and codes be fully integrated into IMF surveillance under Article IV. Here implementation is urgent.
Mugur Isărescu: Transition – how to secure a stronger economic future for the constituency? Speech by Mr Mugur Isărescu, Governor of the National Bank of Romania, in the panel on “Transition: How to Secure a Stronger Economic Future for the Constituency?”, during the annual meeting of the IMF and World Bank Constituency, Kyiv, Ukraine, 4 June 2016. *  *  *  Ladies and Gentlemen, In my address I would like to focus on the challenges in conducting monetary policy in a way that will contribute to securing a stronger economic future for countries in our constituency. Obviously, my account is shaped by Romania’s experience, but I hope it will still keep you interested, as it may be relevant for other small to medium-sized emerging economies. 1. Brief account of monetary policy regimes in Romania  At the time when the National Bank of Romania had to choose a strategy for conducting its monetary policy, i.e. in the early nineties, monetary targeting was actually the only feasible option. Not only did the low forex reserves preclude a fixed exchange rate arrangement, but, even if possible, the alternative was not suitable given the widening external imbalance. However, by the end of the decade, monetary targeting had reached its operational limits given the break in the relation between monetary aggregates and inflation, a phenomenon which matched developments elsewhere in the world. At that point, we took into account pegging the exchange rate, but neither the hard nor the soft version was deemed appropriate.

Sweden also tops the United States in the domain of mobile Internet, as witness both Microsoft’s decision to locate the development of such systems here and the first WAP phones in Swedish shops. Internet use in Sweden is also well in line with the United States. Market surveys by IT consultants admittedly indicate that in relation to total retailing, Internet shopping for goods is somewhat higher in the United States but Sweden is ahead of many other countries in Europe. Most of the portals and e-commerce sites are also American. But a considerably higher proportion of Swedish banking is done on the Internet and Sweden has been an early starter with models for Internet business-to-business transactions. We also know that in the latter part of the 1990s, IT-related sectors, including the successful telecom industry, accounted for almost a tenth of manufacturing output in Sweden. Figures from the Association of Swedish Engineering Industries show a remarkable increase during the decade, from a share of just over 2% in 1993 to more than 12% in 1999. According to the same source, one fifth of Sweden’s GDP growth from 1995 to 1998 came from the IT and telecom sector. Comparing statistics can be difficult but a similar indicator - from the Department of Commerce - of the IT and telecom sector’s share of GDP growth in the United States shows that in the same period this sector made approximately the same contribution there. 3.2 Another important aspect in America has been efficient markets and strong competition.
Starting with the economic reasons, academics have been arguing that scale and scope economies are limited in banking and perhaps even negative once a certain size has been reached. The standard argument goes like this: banking is a “relationship business”, where a large part of a bank’s value lies in its customer-relationships. It is from these relationships the bank’s value-added comes in the form of its expert knowledge about the financial needs and risks of its customers and its understanding of the local economy. So a bigger bank cannot create more value, because it’s all about being close to and knowing your customer. Size just increases bureaucracy. And, if the bank would expand abroad, the sources of value are less obvious, since it would lose its natural expert knowledge, and be disadvantaged compared with the incumbents. Hence, the economic case for integration would not be as strong in banking as in other sectors. I question this view. On the academic side, more recent banking research actually finds evidence of scale economies. After all, to a large extent, modern banking is about efficiency in running huge operations consisting of vast branch networks, IT-systems and thousands of employees. That scale economies exist is also supported by the domestic consolidation taking place in the US as well as in individual EU countries. The banks that are best at running their operations should have plenty of good reasons for expansion.

Our regulators agreed to enhance information sharing and cross-border supervision of futures exchanges and intermediaries, as well as the substantive areas for cooperation in supervising exchange-trade derivatives. A MOU on staff exchange was also signed. c . Just two weeks ago, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visited Singapore for the 33rd ASEAN Summit and related meetings. A key outcome of the visit was the signing of the Protocol to Upgrade the China-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (“CSFTA”). As part of the visit, MAS signed a FinTech Cooperation Agreement with the People’s Bank of China (“PBC”), and a MOU for the Cooperation and Exchange of Information on Regulation of Derivative Activities with CSRC. 3 To celebrate the success of China-Singapore financial cooperation over the last five  years and to tie-in with the commemoration of China’s 40 years of reform and opening up, we will be releasing an infographic during my visit here in Shanghai. This is a reflection of the close bonds with our partners in China, which MAS greatly values. In the next five years, we look forward to broader and deeper financial cooperation with China, reaching more milestones in a range of areas including Belt and Road collaboration, capital markets connectivity,  RMB internationalisation, and FinTech cooperation. 1/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  Singapore – Shanghai Economic Relations  Against this backdrop, we expect Shanghai-Singapore cooperation to grow from strength to strength, building on the strong economic and financial relations between both cities. 4  a .
In particular, we observed an imbalance among the key elements of the credit risk management process, with too strong an emphasis on the role of collateral to protect against credit loss. This undue emphasis caused many banks to neglect other critical elements of effective risk management, including in-depth credit analyses of counterparties, effective exposure measurement, and the use of stress testing. To make sound credit decisions, banks need to obtain sufficient information about the borrower to provide a comprehensive and timely picture of its risk profile and credit quality. This is true regardless of whether the extension of credit occurs via a loan or through a counterparty trading relationship. Yet the Basel Committee’s report found that banks did not obtain sufficient financial information to assess the types and extent of risk assumed by large, highly leveraged institutions. In particular, banks did not BIS Review 126/1999  2  obtain the information needed to assess leverage, risk concentrations in particular markets, or the liquidity risk profile of individual institutions. The Basel Committee report also concluded that banks should develop more effective measures of potential future exposure, which refers to the possibility that credit exposures can change over time as market conditions fluctuate. The ability to measure potential future exposure is critical when dealing with large trading counterparties such as highly leveraged institutions, especially in volatile market conditions. Unfortunately, methods for measuring potential future exposure have not kept pace with the growth and composition of trading activity.

2/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  ** Since we are in Berlin, allow me to conclude with a European perspective: Europe has not developed global social networks like some important countries. This raises the stakes for the European authorities, if they want a stronger, more autonomous and more innovative European financial sector, to succeed in developing a coherent strategy. We do not have much time to decide this consistent European payment strategy, including EPI and a possible CBDC: one to two years. This makes our today’s discussion still more welcome. 3/3  BIS central bankers' speeches
The current very high level of unemployment may then fall in the period ahead. All in all, our assessment is that growth in the United States will nevertheless be slow in the near future, but that it will be stronger than in the euro area (see Figure 8). In this context too, it is important to point out that this is a case of weak growth that will subsequently recover when confidence returns. Global growth holding up One consequence of the financial unease and the decline in confidence is that global growth will fall this year. Nevertheless, we expect it to be around 4 per cent over the next few years (see Figure 8). The reason for this is that global growth will be maintained by a number of economies other than the United States and those in the euro area, mainly the so-called BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). These countries have acted as growth engines for the global economy in recent years and we expect this to largely continue to be the case. Following this tour around the world it is time to return to Sweden and to look at how we are affected by all the things I have mentioned so far. How is Sweden affected? We can say that Sweden is mainly affected by events abroad through three channels: through exports, through the financial markets and through the international dependence of Swedish banks.

On the other hand, Swedish banks are doing very well in other areas. I already have mentioned the very strong position enjoyed by Swedish banks in the market for long-term saving, compared with many other European banks. Another well-known Swedish example is the high Internet use of both companies and households in their dealings with their banks. Swedish banks have also been relatively quick to expand abroad. In relative terms, the Swedish banking system is one of the most European banking markets, along with the Belgian and Dutch systems. However, that only applies to the Swedish banking system’s “outward” Europeanization – Swedish banks’ expansion outside Sweden. As regards the presence of European banks in the Swedish market, ”inward” Europeanization, the Swedish banking market is one of the least integrated, beaten even by a “closed” market like the Italian one. Assuming that Swedish authorities have not discriminated against foreign players, this pattern could perhaps also be taken as a sign of Swedish banks’ high competitiveness. So it is not all that easy to answer the question of how competitive Swedish banks are in an international or European perspective. Nevertheless, there is much to suggest that their competitiveness is fairly good. To all appearances the Swedish banking system is efficient in its use of resources and it does not seem that this is being achieved through a poorer range of financial services – with possibly the low number of ATMs as an unusual but striking exception.
It lowers the real interest rate and contributes towards further increasing demand. When confidence in the inflation target is weak and inflation expectations are not well anchored, the result thus becomes larger fluctuations in the economy. We went through such a development in Sweden in the 1970s and 1980s, when the fixed exchange rate did not act as a sufficiently strong nominal anchor, which in turn resulted in recurrent cost crises and devaluations. The reason that debaters do not address the problems of abandoning the inflation target could, of course, be that they consider that the process of inflation has changed so much that central banks simply no longer can reach their inflation targets. This seems after all to be quite a common view in the debate. This would imply that it is not meaningful to set up targets for inflation, as it is determined by factors outside monetary policy. However, this is an assumption that, were it correct, would actually turn much of what is considered accepted within economic science on its head. Economic paradigms do change every now and again, of course. But, at a minimum, one may argue that quite a heavy burden of proof lies on those claiming it is no longer possible to choose an inflation target. Among other things, they would have to disprove Milton Friedman’s thesis that inflation is basically a monetary phenomenon. 17 Having said this, in practice, it is probably more of a gradual scale than a binary zero-one solution.

As such, inflation was expected to fall back to around the 2% target by the end of 2015. But the Committee was also explicit that its willingness to tolerate this period of above-target inflation was driven by the weakness in our economy and by the concern that attempting to bring inflation back to target more quickly would risk derailing the recovery. Indeed, this desire to support growth as well as to control inflation has been characteristic of the MPC’s behaviour since the onset of the financial crisis. CPI inflation has been above its 2% target for much of the past 5 years, but during that period we have cut Bank Rate from over 5% to 0.5%, we have conducted an asset purchase programme – QE – on a scale equivalent to almost 25% of nominal GDP, and we have launched the Funding for Lending Scheme to boost credit growth to the real economy. I accept that for much of this period the Committee expected inflation to fall back to target more quickly that it actually did. Even so, it remains the case that monetary policy was loosened very aggressively at a time when inflation was persistently above target in the near certain knowledge that not doing so would lead to a deeper and potentially much more painful recession.
For example, to fill a void in current measures of economic output, my staff produces indexes of economic activity which approximate output for New York State and New York City on a monthly basis. We also have initiated a consumer credit panel so that we can monitor local credit conditions. And, we have begun a quarterly survey of small business finances to track the issues related to credit and financing for this key job-generating sector. If you are not already part of the survey, I invite you to give your business card to my staff and we will add you to our survey universe, so that it can reflect your views, too. To share the information that we gather and produce about our diverse district, we have created a rich website with very localized current data and maps on conditions in the region. I invite you to visit us on the web to explore the highly detailed information on small business, credit and housing conditions that we provide. Finally, and crucially, in the aftermath of the financial crisis, we are working with our colleagues in Washington and at other agencies in the United States and abroad to help put the nation’s financial system on a firmer footing. As regulators, we have made progress, for instance, in crafting tougher capital rules for the biggest banks, but much remains to be completed and we are determined to keep at it.

Privatesector job growth has been strong enough to more than offset government layoffs, particularly at the state and local levels. A particularly encouraging sign is the rapid growth of manufacturing jobs over the past year and the recent broadening strength in services employment. While the exact pace of a jobs market recovery is always hard to predict, we were expecting the rate of job growth to pick up over the first half, and I am hopeful that job growth will continue to strengthen in the coming months. We would welcome this. However, even if the economy added 300,000 jobs per month from now on, we would likely still have considerable labor market slack at the end of 2012. Despite these clearly encouraging signs, there are still some downside risks to the growth outlook that bear watching. Let me list them for you:   As I mentioned earlier, high oil and commodity prices have cut into household purchasing power, a difficult situation for many families that could constrain overall spending more than I anticipate.   The renewed decline in home prices could dampen consumer spending and housing activity more than I expect.   Finally, aggressive near-term government spending cuts or tax increases could slow economic growth at least in the short- to medium-term. I would emphasize, however, that a credible plan for medium-term fiscal consolidation is sorely required and would have many economic benefits. Although these issues bear watching, they remain risks rather than likely outcomes.
What I want to illustrate is that it is important to protect the entirety, so that we can continue using the services that are so important to the Swedish economy, all the way down to the individual level. This is where the Riksbank, together with other authorities and organisations, comes into the picture. We work on preparations to create resilience and contingency solutions, which is called business continuity planning by those who work with these issues. The planning with regard to what to do when problems arise is called crisis recovery planning. This entails using contingency routines to maintain the capacity to make payments, which does not necessarily mean that the function needs to be maintained in all parts of the payment system. It may be a good idea to have contingency solutions that are entirely independent of the regular system. Given the important function of the payment system in society, priority must be given to investment in building up resilience and managing crises. However, at the same time, these investments must be constantly balanced against the aim that the system should have the functions that are in demand and it should be cost-efficient to society. For instance, the aim for the Riksbank's business continuity and crisis recovery planning is that it should be at a level that provides a sufficiently stable system, but still be cost efficient. Several authorities and private companies own and have responsibility for the payment system infrastructure.

Safe and efficient clearing and settlement have been in demand as banks’ trust in each other has weakened. In Norway, our systems have had to handle major problems in two Icelandic banks operating in our country. These problems have been handled smoothly. Times of crisis can also be a turning point, providing the opportunity for change. During the Norwegian banking crisis in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Norges Bank and other public authorities put pressure on banks to increase their income from bank charges, including payment services. I believe that as banks have to focus even more on running a costefficient business, the incentives for developing the payment system further will be strong in times to come. For this conference we have received a large number of high-quality papers. I know that the selected conference speakers represent some of the best researchers in this field. We are especially pleased to have as keynote speakers two of the leading scholars in the economics of payments systems: David Humphrey from Florida State University and Jean-Charles Rochet from Toulouse School of Economics. Let me also extend my thanks to the three other members of the programme committee: Gabriela Guibourg from Sveriges Riksbank, Eirik Gaard Kristiansen from the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, and Bent Vale from Norges Bank. As I mentioned earlier, I visit Nice in the South of France quite often. And from my direct observations, I notice that France has developed very fancy methods of processing cheques.