samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Allow me to reiterate and point out that over the years, we delightfully have noticed that the quality in the research work of participants has been on rise, turning the performed analyses and researches increasingly more professional. As in previous years, Albanian students from domestic or foreign universities have applied and presented their best research work. We are happy to notice that participation and interest from students and universities has been significantly edging up, showing appreciation, reliability and reputation of this competition. This year, we received 25 studies, whose common characteristic is the addressing of the reality in the last couple of years. They mainly scrutinise the economic, financial and social effects of the pandemic and the resistance of market and financial institutions to this shock. Thesis on the forward guidance of financial market, focusing on the digital currency effects; exploitation of large detailed databases for evaluating the behaviour of financial market segments which, which have been out of the research attention, are important to the country development; in addition to the study of other important issues to Albania, like fiscal policy, etc. The addressed themes and their findings are based on the application of contemporary research methodologies and make use of granular statistical information, which is both thoughtful and structured one. Above all, this information is employed rigorously pursuant to the academic standards and requirements to research and argue through theoretical and empirical hypothesis on the economic and financial phenomena and events.

Allow me to thank you once again for the work and devotion you exhibited over the course of this year. I strongly believe that the truthfulness and objectivity in reporting economic and financial news will continue to accompany you in fulfilling your duty in the coming year. I reaffirm that the Bank of Albania will continue be a transparent institution, ready to provide opinions and assessments as necessary in all public debates related to the performance of our economy and financial markets. A certificate of this commitment and achievement of the Bank of Albania in the communication with the public is the ranking first of the Bank of Albania among all the banks of Central, Eastern and South-eastern countries, for very active pubic communication, 1/2  BIS central bankers' speeches  in the last report: “Focus on the European Economic Integration” for the second quarter of 2021, published by the National Bank of Austria. Dear guests, The Bank of Albania continues to focus scrupulously on financial education and research considering it a crucial pillar of its activity. They are seen as the foundations for increasing the social-economic development and welfare of the citizens of Albania. From this point of view, I kindly invite you to share together a special moment of this meeting: the traditional ceremony for the Governor’s Award for the Best Diploma. The Bank of Albania for this 15th year ceremony in a raw has selected and valued three scientific works amid all the presented researches by students graduated in Albanian and abroad.
In the past 10 years, customers have become accustomed to accessing financial services through websites or mobile apps of banks and other institutions. In future, instead of waiting for customers to come to their platforms, institutions must reach out to customers in cyberspace. The technologies are there, such as open APIs. But as I mentioned before, the technology has to be a means to an end that the consumer finds useful. And of course it must be secure and stable. 37. The second trend is that financial services will become increasingly real-time. Gone are the days when we were able to handle everything with batch mode operations. Customers are already expecting real-time execution in payment services, remittances, investment advice, and insurance applications – and this list will grow. This will require not only faster data connections or more computing power, but a whole range of new processes for assessment, risk controls and regulatory compliance. As banks upgrade their analytics and procedures to provide speedier customer services, regulators like the HKMA will need to 4/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  work with them to adopt new SupTech and RegTech solutions to better meet these new challenges. 38. The third trend is the rising importance of cross-border applications of Fintech solutions. Technology offers ways to overcome some of the long-standing inefficiencies in financial services, like cross-border payments or trade finance. The use of blockchain technologies comes to mind. We have conducted pilot schemes with our peers in the region to try out blockchain solutions.

As virtual banks are not allowed to operate physical branches, they will have to come up with innovative ways to offer attractive and competitive banking services. This is likely to force existing banks to consider how to further upgrade their services, and better make use of technology in their offerings. The result, I hope, will be a more innovative and globally competitive banking sector in Hong Kong, offering customers more diversified and efficient services. Technology use is a means to an end 20. Last but not least, we should bear in mind that the use of technology is a means to an 2/5  BIS central bankers' speeches  end, and not an end by itself. Most people appreciate new technology for what it can do to improve their lives. They don’t really care whether the algorithms or the chips are amazingly innovative. To achieve wide adoption, any innovation has to offer users a “unique value proposition”. In plain language, the consumer wants to know “what can it do for me?” 21. Take mobile payment as an example. This has rapidly taken off for retail payment in Mainland China and some other places. In Hong Kong and other markets, people already use credit cards and e-payment systems like Octopus, so mobile payments will grow more slowly. The point is that mobile payment technology is only the means to an end. The Hong Kong consumer will ask: “what can it do for me?”.
Turalay Kenç: The Turkish economic outlook and monetary policy – challenges and policy response Remarks by Mr Turalay Kenç, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, at the EU Ambassadors Meeting, Ankara, 28 January 2016. *  *  *  I would like to start by thanking His Excellency Ambassador Cornelis van Rij for the opportunity to share with such distinguished audience some views about the Turkish economy, the challenges stemming from a very volatile external environment, and the policy approach that has been implemented to cope with these challenges. The Turkish economy has shown a relatively robust performance in the face of major external and internal shocks. GDP growth is estimated at around 4 percent in 2015 with an expected gradual strengthening of economic activity in 2016 and in 2017. The rise in GDP growth rate observed in 2015 is mostly attributed to strong private consumption. Private investment recorded a moderate recovery. The challenging external conditions especially geopolitical events in the region have adversely affected exports. However, the economic recovery in most EU member states enabled Turkey to largely compensate its loss in other exports markets as Turkey increased exports to the EU countries by more than 10 percent in euro terms in 2015. This outcome also highlights Turkish exporters’ resiliency in adopting to adverse economic conditions. Of course, probably the most significant development of the last year or so has been the sharp decline in oil prices.

The aim of the CBRT’s road map is to improve the resiliency of the economy to external shocks through (i) maturity lengthening – encouraging banks to shift their non-core liabilities from short-term to long-term; (ii) providing incentives to banks for borrowing and lending directly from and to the Central Bank on times when foreign players are reluctant to engage with banks in Turkey due to heightened volatility in global markets; (iii) bolstering safety-nets – making sure that the banking sector has access to adequate foreign exchange liquidity in times of market stress; (iv) supporting financial stability – providing incentives to banks to improve loan to deposit ratios; and (v) simplifying the monetary policy framework to improve the communication of the monetary policy stance. All but the interest rate corridor simplification step on the roadmap have already been taken and the focus is now firmly on fine-tuning their parameters. Overall, these measures ease the policy tradeoffs posed by the excessive volatility in cross border flows, enabling the interest rate policy to concentrate on the primary objective of price stability. So far the financial market performance of Turkey suggests that the measures undertaken since August 2015 have helped Turkey outperform many peer EM countries. Of course, on the way, Turkey also enjoyed the benefits of lower oil prices relatively more than many EMEs and reduced political uncertainty after the general election result in November 2015.
All those distressed properties are acting like a weight  1  Reinhart and Rogoff (2009). 2  Jorda, Schularick, and Taylor (2011). 3  Federal Reserve Bank of New York (2010). 4  See, for example, Mian, Rao, and Sufi (2011) and Feroli et al. (2012) for analysis of the effects of the housing crash on the economy. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  keeping home prices from rising. The result is that new home construction and sales are still near the lowest levels recorded since the early 1960s. Tight credit is a third powerful force holding back the recovery. Lenders who were too quick with a loan in 2006 have turned very cautious. Consumers who lack gold-plated credit scores and cash for a hefty down payment find it tough to get a mortgage. That limits home sales and refinancing. Fortunately, there are signs that credit conditions are easing a bit. Already, corporations that can sell securities have great access to capital. These three forces – household finances, housing, and credit – are likely to hold down spending growth for some time. But let me emphasize, though – overall, things are getting better. You can sense greater optimism out there – albeit cautious optimism. Let’s look then at the positive side of the ledger. Little by little, households are repairing their finances. Businesses are gradually increasing production and hiring. The housing sector appears to have stabilized and is showing some signs of life.

This policy may provide a direct support to aggregate demand, through fiscal transfers, and an immediate and targeted improvement of liquidity to enterprises, through the postponing of the payment of taxes and through the sovereign guarantees programs. The two introduced fiscal packages, so far, provide for a maximum potential stimulus at around 3% of GDP. Even without considering the negative effect on public income, this stimulus transfers to the balance sheet of public sector a considerable part of the financial costs of the crisis. On its side, the Bank of Albania has increased the dosage of the monetary stimulus. This stimulus has been taken the form of the reduction of policy rate, already in its historical minimum of 0.5%, aiming to boost lending and reduce the servicing cost of existing loans. Also, it has been in the form of removing the quantitative limits of liquidity injection into the system, aiming to a better supply of the banking market and the Albanian economy. The volume of liquidity that we inject every week in the system fluctuates around the level 2%. In addition, the Bank of Albania has undertaken operational measures for guaranteeing the supply of economy with cash, in response to its increased demands. In parallel, the Bank of Albania – in an agreement and good understanding with banking industry – has carried out regulatory amendments which ease the postponing with one quarter of the credit payment for firms and households which face temporary financial difficulties.
The Advent of Cryptocurrencies In the depths of the global financial crisis, the coincidence of technological developments and collapsing confidence in some banking systems sparked the cryptocurrency revolution. Its advocates claim that a decentralised cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin, is more trustworthy than centralised fiat money because:  -  Its supply is fixed and therefore immune from the age-old temptations of debasement;  -  Its use is free from risky private banks; and  -  Those who hold it can remain anonymous and therefore free from the ravenous eyes of tax authorities or worse still law enforcement. Some also argue that cryptocurrencies could be more efficient than centralised fiat money because the underlying distributed ledger technology cuts out intermediaries like central banks and financial institutions and allows payments to be made directly between payer and payee. 14,15  13  The Bank operates the Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) service and infrastructure that holds accounts for banks, building societies and other institutions. The balances in these accounts can be used to move money in real time between these account holders. This delivers final and risk-free settlement. 14 Whereas banks hold records of most fiat money and are entrusted to ensure its validity, with digital currencies, the ledger containing all transactions by all users is publicly available.

As the Central Bank, we have continued to monitor and review developments in the foreign exchange market and provide prudent support when necessary in order to dampen excessive volatility in the exchange rate and safeguard the recently achieved macroeconomic stability. To this end, the Bank has been a net seller of foreign exchange to banks. However, the Bank’s interventions were limited, given the global extent and magnitude of the crisis. Some of the specific measures the Bank of Zambia implemented include the following: •  Improving information flows: The Bank of Zambia has enhanced its vigilance and interaction with the domestic financial system to ensure adherence to its supervisory guidelines and to enhance information flows. The BOZ is continuously interacting with banks to ensure that detailed information regarding foreign exchange transactions is provided and has also engaged major business entities to understand their expected foreign exchange requirements. This is necessary to ensure market constraints are addressed expeditiously. •  Sale of foreign exchange: Increased the supply of foreign exchange to the market with the primary purpose of smoothening short-term volatility in the exchange rate  4  BIS Review 161/2009  and the foreign exchange market generally.
I should mention that the ASC, with its composition of distinguished academics with different expertise, and in a sense more independent views, has been a catalyst in some of the work I  |3  just mentioned. Some of the topics on which the ESRB has produced and published valuable contributions include, for instance, the regulatory treatment of sovereign exposures; macroprudential assessments of various issues related to shadow banks, an area where there is still a lot of new ground to cover; the insurance sector; and commercial and residential real estate markets in the EU, to name just a few. I am also thinking of the work on structural issues regarding the banking sector, for instance in a report called “Is Europe overbanked?” by the ASC. This is a very relevant question in my view, and one that we will most likely get back to in the first panel today, where the ECB Vice President will lead the panel discussion addressing the effects of the low interest rate environment. The latter is another topic which benefits from being assessed from a macroprudential viewpoint, and which is naturally also on the ESRB’s agenda. The regular identification and monitoring of potential systemic risks also benefits from the ESRB’s broad composition I would like to mention another core task for the ESRB, namely identifying potential risks to the EU financial system at an early stage and, as mentioned, issuing warnings or recommendations about policy actions to mitigate such risks when deemed appropriate.

I point this out because some of those who developed a sudden interest in the Icelandic economy overlooked the background to the depreciation of the króna so far this year which is important to keep in mind. The Central Bank’s main objective is to contribute to a twelve-month rate of inflation as close as possible to 2½%. For various reasons this target has proved difficult to attain recently. Probably the most important factor has been the structural changes in the mortgage loan market in 2004, with the easing of the Housing Financing Fund’s lending rules and the subsequent entry of commercial banks and savings banks into the market. These changes caused real estate prices and private consumption to surge. In the recent term, house price inflation has accounted for the lion’s share of the increase in the CPI. The Central Bank had hoped that house price inflation would slow down or stop before the króna began to weaken. If housing prices had risen by little or nothing, they could have offset the effects of the eventual depreciation. Regrettably the outcome was as I described, i.e. the króna fell sooner and faster than had been expected, and before real estate price inflation began to come down to a sufficient degree. Inflation will therefore clearly remain some way above target over the months to come. BIS Review 46/2006  1  A necessary economic adjustment lies ahead. One of the chief characteristics of the Icelandic economy is its high degree of flexibility and adaptability.
These are questions that have been  BIS Review 20/2004  5  discussed more at the Riksbank than many other central banks, given the background of the crisis at the beginning of the 1990s. However, in today’s concrete decision-making situation we have not considered the build-up of credit and increased indebtedness in recent years to be sufficiently serious to motivate a departure from our usual means of conducting monetary policy, namely on the basis of expected inflation trends a couple of years ahead. At present, we see no actual problems for the banks and the stability of the financial system. Nor do we see any major problems for the household sector as a whole to meet its obligations, which does not prevent problems for individual households from arising when the interest rate sooner or later begins to rise. All in all, there is good reason to closely monitor loan developments and the build-up of debt in society. Thank you. 6  BIS Review 20/2004

During that period, she confronted many of society’s biggest challenges – for example introducing legislation to tackle domestic violence, to eradicate modern slavery and to counter terrorism. Never afraid of a challenge, she stepped into the breach to become Prime Minister following the referendum. The Prime Minister and her Government are committed to making the most of the opportunities that Brexit brings, and more fundamentally to working to build a stronger, fairer and more prosperous country for all. Please join me in welcoming the Prime Minister, Theresa May. 6  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  6
This means that the central bank must get people to believe that it will knowingly and deliberately strive to exceed the inflation target. How can a central bank that normally strives to create low inflation expectations and meet the inflation target promise, with any credibility, that it will exceed the inflation target in the future? 6 When we discuss and evaluate various policy alternatives for monetary policy in a liquidity trap, we should thus start from the most important criteria for assessing their effectiveness – how effective alternatives will be in affecting inflation expectations. The solution: affect inflation expectations A credible inflation target An established and credible inflation target above zero and a transparent monetary policy will help to ensure that inflation expectations do not fall too low and to reduce the risk of expectations of deflation arising. The Riksbank has a major advantage in this respect in that we already have a well-established inflation target. By publishing well-founded forecasts for  4  The appendix to this speech shows, in a simple so-called new-Keynesian model, how the output gap depends on expectations regarding the repo rate path, the spreads, the future price level and the path for the natural interest rate; see equations (6) and (7). 5  See Bernanke, Ben (2009), “The crisis and the policy response”, speech at the Stamp Lecture, London School of Economics, January 13, 2009, www.federalreserve.gov. 6  As Paul Krugman put it in his insightful Brookings essay – how will the central bank "credibly promise to be irresponsible”.

See Berg, Claes, och Jonung, Lars (1999), "Pioneering price level targeting: The Swedish experience 1931-1937," Journal of Monetary Economics 43(3), 525-551. 8  See Nessén, M. and Vestin, D. (2005). ”Average inflation targeting”. Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking. v. 37, iss. 5, pp. 837-63. 4  BIS Review 19/2009  way: "[T]he appropriate target for monetary policy is to achieve an inflation rate of 2-3 per cent on average over the cycle". 9 If the central bank by means of convincing analyses and forecasts can gain credibility for such a temporary price level target – a temporary average inflation target – the price level target's inherent stabilisation of the real economy could then be used. 10 Observe inflation and price level expectations – the exchange rate as an indicator As expectations of the future inflation rate and the price level are so important to the development of the real interest rate in the event of a binding zero lower bound for the interest rate, it becomes even more important to observe and measure these expectations. There are several ways for a central bank to observe expectations of the future price level. The Riksbank, for example, commissions Prospera to conduct quarterly surveys about expectations for inflation one, two and five years ahead. Inflation expectations can also be estimated by comparing market rates for nominal and indexed bonds. In this way, the central bank can observe whether measures taken to influence inflation expectations are having any effect.
On the other hand, due to its high share in the expenditures of especially low-income households and corresponding purchasing power effects, food prices are given a great importance by policy makers. Meanwhile, the metals, such as iron ore, copper and aluminum, are among the most important raw materials for the industry and construction sector. The reason why commodity prices have been frequently attracting attention is the current fluctuations in commodity prices of a magnitude that has not been seen since 2007. Price of brent crude oil, which was USD 50 per barrel in early 2007, climbed to USD 145 within one and a half year. Then, parallel to the deepening global crisis in late 2008, crude oil prices went back to USD 35; and now it is hovering around USD 125. And the uncertainties about oil prices, resulting from demand and supply-side developments, and their potential effects keep the policymakers interest in commodity prices alive in the current economic outlook. As they are among the risk factors that affect the inflation outlook, we directly referred to commodity prices, mostly to those of crude oil and food, in our latest inflation reports. As a matter of fact, nearly half of the revisions about official inflation forecasts published in our inflation reports in the last couple of years originated from the changes in our assumptions about food and commodity prices. This suggests that the rise in commodity prices may bring about challenges for central banks not only in terms of direct pressures on inflation.

BIS central bankers’ speeches  3