samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
If the developed countries had rebuilt inventories as late as the 1990s, the effect on prices would have likely been more modest. Low inventories and the demand explosion coming out of China have been a potent combination in support of higher oil prices. Going forward, an easing of inventory pressure is likely. However, assuming global demand remains robust, inventory rebuilding is unlikely to have a significant impact on the fundamental supply and demand structure of the oil market in the short term. Inadequate investment spending in production, refinery and transportation infrastructure over the past decade is another factor frequently used in support of the hypothesis of a persistent level shift in average oil prices. Available industry figures suggest that both new as well as replacement investments have been insufficient to support a substantial increase in oil production. Significant investments are required to turn heavy, sour crudes with high sulphur content and high density into ever more demanded light, sweet quality grades (see Figure 5). If the market is allowed to function, higher oil prices and higher quality spreads will in time encourage drilling, refinery and shipping investments which will eventually contribute to higher output. Politics could, however, impede this process. Investment decisions in many oil producing countries have become intensely politicized. The absence of important oil producing countries from WTO underlines the need for a more productive climate for international investments. It might therefore be overly optimistic to expect the market to generate an immediate incentive to boost oil related investment spending.

As Fed Governor Gramlich has stated in a recent speech on oil shocks and monetary policy, the worst possible outcome for monetary policy makers would be “to let inflation come loose from its moorings”.4 Central banks will remain vigilant in their examination of longer-term inflation expectations. The Swiss National Bank, for one, would promptly react if there were any indications in its quarterly inflation forecast that second round effects were likely to undermine its long-term track record of maintaining price stability in support of maximum sustainable economic growth. Appendix Figure 1 Nominal and real oil prices on oil  Economic dependency in bbl/th GDP in PPP 1.2  [USD/bbl] 60  1.0  50 Brent crudenominal Brent crudereal 1971  40  0.8  0.6  30 0.4  20  0.2  10  0.0  0 1970  US Germany France Switzerland  1975  1980  1985  1990  1995  2000  1980  1985  1990  1995  2000  Source: BP, OECD, GS  4  Edward M Gramlich, “Oil Shocks and Monetary Policy”, Remarks at the Annual Economic Luncheon, FRB Kansas City, Missouri, 16 September 2004.
There is an active debate underway on the first of these – the likely future path of innovation. Some have recently argued that the pace of innovation may be declining. 43  The argument here is that many of the  low-hanging fruit from the ICT revolution have already been picked. Diminishing returns to R&D may have set in. And other secular forces – including adverse demographics and rising inequality – may have acted as additional headwinds to growth. 44  This view sometimes goes by the name secular stagnation. 45  An alternative school of thought believes we may instead be on the cusp of a new great wave of innovation, a Fourth Industrial Revolution. 46  This revolution in innovation will, it is said, be jet-propelled by a set of  potentially new GPTs, among them AI, Big Data and robotics. For technology optimists, the story is one of secular innovation, not stagnation. And on this view, the potential gains in productivity and growth could be as large as any of the earlier industrial revolutions. 47  42  Schumpeter (1942). Gordon (2012), Fernald (2014). 44 Summers (2013) and Rachel and Smith (2015). 45 Secular stagnation theory was originally proposed by Hansen (1938) in the aftermath of the Great Depression 46 Brynjolfsson and McAfee (2014) discuss ‘The Second Machine Age’. 47 Brynjolfsson, Rock and Syverson (2017).

And by offering targeted longer-term refinancing on favourable terms which reward additional lending, we have made it possible for banks to cut their interest rates, a move which has led to increased lending. All these measures in recent years have contributed to the economic recovery in the euro area. Thus, both the demand for, and supply of, credit is rising. In the real economy, too, positive surprises have predominated recently. The growth rate in the fourth quarter of last year rose to 0.5 %. In the euro area, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell to 9.6% in December. In November it was 0.1 percentage point higher and in December of the previous year it was still at 10.5%. Overall, the prospects for economic growth in the euro area are increasingly positive. However, while the data within the monetary union is pointing to growth risks being more and more in equilibrium, uncertainty and the risk of political shocks outside continental Europe have clearly gone up. To put it another way: while the economic outlook for the euro area is steadily brightening, dark clouds are building up on the political horizon beyond the continent. But of course we shall pay particular attention to how prices evolve. The annual rate of inflation rose, according to provisional estimates by Eurostat in January, by 0.7 percentage point to 1.8%. This sharp jump in the rate of inflation is largely attributable to volatile components, namely energy and, to a somewhat lesser extent, food.
The prolonged period of low interest rates presents particular challenges for the banking sector. •  First, lower interest rates, a flattening of the yield curve, and lower corporate investment mean net interest income and profits are being squeezed. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  •  Second, low interest rates and investment returns are driving a search for yield among households, asset managers and institutional investors, which could lead to excessive risk-taking and growing financial vulnerabilities. 6. Periodic bouts of heightened volatility in financial markets over the past few years, triggered by events such as the taper tantrum, normalisation of interest rates in the US, transition to a more market-based exchange rate system for the Chinese currency, and just days ago, the UK’s decision to leave the EU, underscore the fragility of global financial markets. At the same time, tightening financial conditions in the emerging market economies (EMEs) as a result of a stronger US dollar have exposed financial vulnerabilities due to excessive corporate and household borrowings in some EMEs. 7. This means that banks have to continue to update their risk management capabilities to cope with a more uncertain environment. MAS as the financial regulator has also been strengthening our risk surveillance and updating aspects of our regulatory framework. This evening I would like to touch on the following: •  stress test exercises to ensure resilience to emerging risks;  •  efforts to enhance cyber security; and  •  guidelines to strengthen risk management of outsourcing arrangements.

Prasarn Trairatvorakul: Regional trends for monetary policy and the possibility of regional collaboration Speech by Dr Prasarn Trairatvorakul, Governor of the Bank of Thailand, at the 14th International Convention of the East Asian Economic Association (EAEA), Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, 2 November 2014. *  *  *  Distinguished Guests, Honorable Speakers, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is my pleasure and privilege to speak at the 14th International Convention of the East Asian Economic Association. First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the hosts for inviting me as a part of this esteemed forum, which brings together economists, academics, and officials from all over the region. Our countries have been overwhelmed by clouds of uncertainties in both domestic and external fronts. So far, the question we have repeatedly asked ourselves is “What can ‘WE’ contribute to sustain the recovery and better safeguard our economies?” And as “WE” gather here today, I am confident that this is an opportunity for “US”, to exchange knowledge and experiences, that would greatly support the development of regional economies and strengthen our regional cooperation. Today, I would like to share my thoughts in pursuit of the answers to our question from a policymaker’s perspective. I will begin with what I see as the major contributors to the past global financial crisis. Then I will touch upon the conduct of monetary policy amongst Emerging Market Economies in response to the past crisis as well as its spillovers.
Cooperation has, in fact, always been the ECB’s preferred approach to the oversight of financial market infrastructures (FMIs). This cooperation should rely on two elements, as agreed at the international level: first, effective cooperative oversight arrangements and, second, crisis management groups to allow for mutual consultation in recovery and resolution planning. Unfortunately, for several global CCPs, these arrangements do not yet exist, or do not involve all relevant authorities, despite international commitments. These delays are a source of concern, not least as seven years have passed since the adoption of the PFMIs5, and almost five years since international standards were adopted for both the recovery6 and resolution7 of FMIs. I urge all parties involved to accelerate progress in this area. 2/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  The Eurosystem needs to be able to conduct effective oversight Cooperation is also indispensable for the second topic of today’s conference, namely CCP liquidity and the role of the central bank of issue. In Europe, cooperation ensures that the ECB and the Eurosystem can conduct effective oversight of euro-denominated clearing activities, wherever they may be established. In 2017 the ECB recommended an amendment to its Statute to clarify its competence over CCPs for the purpose of carrying out its monetary functions.8 The ensuing debate among legislators and policymakers in the EU and beyond was marred by some misunderstandings, however, which I would like to dispel today. As you all know, some central banks are CCP supervisors. The ECB is not, 9 and has no intention of becoming one.

I understand that the EU Code on remuneration would already be consistent with this. What I am describing is not a scary prospect. It should, in fact, be liberating to establish a financial system based more firmly on the principles of the market. But it is a prospective world in which our capital markets will be at least as important as they were over recent decades. That underlines the necessity of the work on, for example, standards for central counterparties, on shadow banking, and on transparent and resiliently liquid markets. This is a world in which securities regulators will play a vital role in underpinning stability. In the UK, the new Financial Conduct Authority under Martin Wheatley will be a member of the new macroprudential body, the Financial Policy Committee, for just that reason. Thank you again to AFME for providing a forum through its book for this public policy debate to continue. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches
Yet despite this narrowing of the gap between the contributions of national and external demand to growth that I have referred to before, the expansion of the Spanish economy in 2006 has essentially been underpinned by the buoyancy of domestic spending. In particular, gross capital formation has retained considerable strength, while only private consumption and government consumption have slowed slightly in the year to date. The somewhat less dynamic behaviour of private consumption in the first three quarters of 2006 is a result of the interplay of numerous factors whose effects, in some cases, have tended to counter each other. The losses of purchasing power caused by the high inflation rates in the first half of the year have affected household disposable income and, therefore, they will have tended to reduce consumer  2  BIS Review 117/2006  spending. Further, the increase in borrowing costs following the successive rises in official interest rates by the ECB must have curtailed the spending capacity of some sectors of households. Conversely, intense job creation - running at a rate of over 3% - and the notable rise in household wealth are factors that should have sustained the growth of private consumption. Regarding household wealth, it should be pointed out that, although house prices have begun to show signs of slowing, there have continued to be very significant stock market rises in 2006, outpacing those in recent years, which were already considerable. As I mentioned earlier, gross capital formation has been very robust throughout 2006.

The impact of these investments are becoming increasingly visible – banking without branches, investing without brokers, paying without paper. Technological advancements are also redefining the landscape of finance in ways that we are only beginning to understand. Distributed ledger technology offers the potential to transform longstanding practices in areas such as correspondent banking, trade finance and remittances. Big data analytics continues to uncover new ways to understand and access untapped markets. Innovations in mobile technology are also challenging the status quo, particularly in the area of payments. Alipay and Tenpay quickly come to mind as examples of companies that took a single 1/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  mobile app and went on to build an international ecosystem from scratch. These trends are now increasingly commonplace across the globe, driven by a multitude of factors – from the drive to improve efficiencies, deliver a superior customer experience, break into new markets, or combat fraud. In the face of these tectonic shifts, most of us are finding ourselves in unchartered waters. Within the central bank, we are doing work across a range of issues that we believe will be important to inform our thinking on digital developments, both in the financial sector and the broader economy. Within your own institutions, I trust this is also the case. In that sense, we share a common interest – to keep our sights fixed on the future so that we can step forward confidently.
The partnership between the European Investment Bank and the commercial banks in Romania ensure the effective transmission mechanism to allocate and distribute the European structural funds to the infrastructure projects, to the development of production capacities of the small and medium enterprises and to the creation of new jobs in the economy. The banks are well capitalized, have an excellent solvency and a superior liquidity, prerequisites for co-financing the companies and the economy. The loan-to-deposits ratio is below 100%, indicating available resources for financing. Nonperforming loans have decreased more than three times, from 22% to about 6%, showing a positive trend in a healthier internal ratings model and a sound balance sheet position, while the lending dynamics for companies is below the European average. We have the potential to accelerate the access to finance to support investments as a base for economic growth, instead of a consumption driven growth. This potential is demonstrated by the low financial intermediation in Romania, around 29%, although this percentage can be misleading, as large corporations usually access financing directly abroad, from the headquarters or from the financial institutions in the countries where they are headquartered. The more prudent lending policies and the risk aversion of commercial banks are factors that could be perceived as a break in financing investments at full capacity; however there is a positive side, too. It is a safe approach to credit as a driver of economic growth, as credit (lat.

The FSR aims to set out publicly the FPC’s view on risks, its assessment of the resilience of the system and to explain its policy. In its new form, the FSR will focus on no more than a handful of risks, the ones the Committee judges are the most important and the most prominent. 2 And it will then set out what, given the level of resilience in the system, the Committee thinks should be done about those risks. The intention is that such a shorter, more focused report will create a discipline for the FPC’s thinking, help to communicate what the FPC is truly concerned about and make it easier for others to hold us to account. Second, the Committee is developing the use of stress testing to assess macroprudential as well as microprudential risk. Last year, the FPC, together with the PRA ran the first ever stress test of the UK banking sector as a whole. The aim was to test not just the resilience of individual banks but what happened to the system if all of the major banks faced a severe but plausible stress scenario at the same time. We are conducting a similar test this year. The Committee intends to set out later this year how we want to develop macroprudential stress testing to help us respond to the ever changing level of risks in the financial system.
At the same time, in the statistical world, the number of initiatives for active use of the so-called “Big data” is rising, a new paradigm that changes profiles and statistics makers, statistical processes, as well as the overall economic and financial analysis. Ladies and gentlemen, Finally, we, like other statistics makers in RM, in recent years have made great step forward in improving the existing statistical surveys and introducing new one for the purpose of filling in the identified staistical gaps in global terms. However, statistics is not an aim by itself. By providing rich, high-quality, timely and internationally harmonized set of statistics, we contribute to higher 2/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  social goals, that is making decisions based on facts in order to increase social welfare. Bearing in mind the dynamic world we live in and the changes it brings, a key challenge for statisticians will be to keep pace with these changes and to develop credible statistics as a public good that enables a better understanding of reality and taking appropriate policies from all factors of social life. Thank you. 3/3  BIS central bankers' speeches

Cloud computing and the use of third party services also have the potential to undermine firewalls. Putting a balance to the needs of various parties would be a challenging task. As information technology grows, so do the capabilities of cyber criminals. These criminals have a wide range of tools to execute cyber attacks, many of which are easily obtainable and relatively inexpensive to procure. For example, cyber criminals can now control networks of compromised computers through “botnets” that enable anonymity. This access can be bought or rented online. In the hands of criminal or organisations that are determined to  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  disrupt national stability, botnets could be used to steal sensitive data or disrupt access to critical national infrastructure. Industry players, security firms and financial supervisors may easily find themselves in a cat and mouse game, where the ability to attack constantly outpaces the ability to defend. These challenges demand a stronger and forceful response by all parties. Recent global regulatory reforms, such as the Basel III capital adequacy and liquidity rules, have tended to focus on financial risks. There has been much less focus on technology and cyber security risks despite the real systemic threats that they pose. So far, no financial institutions in this region have encountered an attack, severe enough to disrupt its critical services or cause material losses, but we cannot leave this to chance.
Although this increase owes partly to the more volatile components of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and the depreciation of the peso, inflation of the items in the basket that are most sensitive to the activity gap—ie. services and nontradables—has risen gradually, but steadily, over the course of 2018. This is in line with the growth recovery that began more than a year ago, in a context of favorable external conditions and a clearly expansionary monetary impulse. This process took a pause in the third quarter due to specific factors affecting mining and manufacturing, but it is estimated to resume in the fourth quarter. The October Imacec released this morning is an indication, as it shows activity growing 4.2% annually, with the non-mining component growing 5.1%. With this, the economy will grow 4% this year and between 3.25% and 4.25% in 2019. Inflation will follow a similar path, slowing down for some months as a result of the fall in international fuel prices, to then begin rising and converging to 3% towards the end of 2019. Key factors in this outlook are the observed dynamism of investment and a vision of the labor market that, once all the available information has been analyzed, and factoring in the impact of the significant immigrant flow of recent years, shows that its dynamism is in line with the better performance of the economy.

Salaried employment is growingly concentrated in bigger companies (more than 50% of total). 6. Chile's real wages have increased significantly for all income brackets but high dispersion remains associated with employment duration. 7. Women's incomes are smaller and grow more slowly, even after controlling for features such as education, occupation and expertise. 8. Women have a lower probability of holding their jobs, and a greater propensity to go from unemployed to inactive. 16  Table 4 Mobility, income profiles and aggregate productivity  1. A labor mobility paradox is that, although more often than not a job change is associated with a wage gain (54%), many (46%) are not. 2. This paradox is more prevalent among workers that exhibit high turnover and low income. 3. Those lower-turnover workers have significantly larger wage gains over time, reflecting the value of developing employer-specific human capital as well as higher gains from direct transitions between jobs. 4. High turnover workers obtain smaller gains from staying in the job and from direct transitions, and exhibit slower growth in income throughout their working lives. Tabla 5 Cyclical adjustment of the labor market  1. The Chilean labor market has multiple adjustment margins to respond to cyclical shocks, reducing the impact on employment: the composition between salaried work and self-employment, changes in participation rates, high turnover rates and rapid transitions between salaried jobs, job creation in new firms and the wage flexibility of hired work. The wage flexibility of hired work is present mainly in transitions to new jobs.