samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
In fact, during those early days, some of those countries were able to freely utilize the labour and resources of the countries that were colonized by them, and benefit immensely by the fruits of the foreign lands and natural resources. They had to adhere to very few laws and regulations relating to education, training, health or labour practices, or standards on working conditions. There were no environmental laws or treaties, and the environment was often the first casualty in their quest of accumulating wealth. Capital accumulated by illegal means or criminal activity was used freely without any restriction. 2  BIS Review 29/2008  But, today the situation is completely different. Today, emerging countries are acting in a much more responsible manner in driving their economies forward. In fact, the present day emerging economies are achieving their attractive levels of growth, while adhering to, and respecting international conventions on copyright, anti-money laundering and terrorist financing, environmental, labour, human rights, safety, health, etc., etc. This situation is sometimes forgotten by some of the economic and political analysts, particularly from advanced nations and therefore it may not be too inappropriate to remind the world of this state of affairs, on and off. All in all, from the point of view of individual developing countries, the most important economic need at present is to maintain the high economic growth momentum that they are currently achieving, in a sustainable manner.

The circular is aimed at ensuring that directors and senior managers have sound reputation and are persons of integrity and honesty. Furthermore, over the past two decades, SAMA has issued additional governance related regulations and guidance to banks operating in Saudi Arabia. These include circulars on Internal Controls; Know Your Customers rules, Anti-Money Laundering and Combating Terrorism Financing and Prevention of Fraud. Also, there are specific regulations on the Role of the External Auditors and on the Internal Audit function. SAMA also requires the Board of Directors to establish a specialized Compliance Function that monitors the compliance of the organization with regulations and standards, and has a reporting line to the Board or one of its committees. Moreover, SAMA requires all banks to apply the International Financial Reporting Standards, and that two firms of external auditors are to conduct an annual audit. Furthermore, SAMA has required banks in Saudi Arabia to meet the corporate governance guidance emanating from the Basle Committee on Banking Supervision and more recently from the Islamic Financial Services Board. In this regard, I should mention that SAMA is participating in the IFSB Technical Committee and in various working groups that are developing standards of corporate governance for Shari'ah compliant financial institutions. The leadership role played by SAMA, over the past decades, in promulgating corporate governance standards and in promoting a governance culture has been reflected in the emergence of strong financial institutions and a credible banking system.
I think this criticism is also undeserved, because the alternative of lending indiscriminately to unknown clients (into which many banks have indulged) has proved to be even worse. Turning to the behavior of foreign-owned banks during the recent crisis, the evidence is also mixed. On one hand, it is true that international banking groups are the ones which easily spread the contagion (Goldberg, 2009). Even in the absence of abrupt deleverage, foreign-owned banks had to cope with much diminished foreign financing and shifted from financing the private sectors to financing the public sectors of their host countries. Despite the reductions in monetary policy rates, credit in domestic currency remains sluggish at best. For the time being, however, it is fair to say that foreign parent banks have maintained their support for the branches and subsidiaries in Central and Eastern Europe. Most of them had not been engaged into trading sophisticated instruments such as derivatives, so that this type of losses has been relatively contained. It has also helped that the banks present in the region are not major global players, so that contagion is often limited. On the other hand, many of the banks had been involved into financing the real estate boom, and the ensuing losses are only gradually being recognized. As a conclusion to this paradigm, the dominance of foreign-owned banks proved to be both an asset and a liability and it is too early to draw a final balance before the international financial crisis is over.

After a few banking crises which hit the region in the late nineties, the lack of domestic private capital, combined with the fragile situation of the state budgets, made it compulsory to privatize the existing banks by selling them to foreign entities. I must confess that I also advocated the penetration of foreign capital into the Romanian banking sector. When my tenure as Prime Minister ended in late 2000, one piece of advice I gave to my successor was that the privatization of banks should continue as a means to promote restructuring of the loss-incurring SOEs and to stimulate convergence to the EU. I still believe that it was the right call, as foreign-owned banks had a favorable impact on economic growth and therefore played their part in the catching-up process, even if – ten years later – Nouriel Roubini sees the large share of foreign-owned banks in the Romanian banking system as a liability. The counterfactual argument “What would have been the performance of domestically-owned private banks?” does not withstand scrutiny: domestic private capital simply did not exist. However this intellectual exercise is worth doing, given some shortcomings of foreign-owned banks, which were revealed afterwards. One such shortcoming was the excessive euroization of some economies in the region (Romania, Hungary, Baltic states), given the reliance of foreign-owned banks on their parent banks for cheap financing.
Muhammad bin Ibrahim: Role of the Islamic financial system in supporting green technology Keynote address by Mr Muhammad bin Ibrahim, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Malaysia, at The Green Financing: Discover Green Technology Industry in Malaysia “Role of the Islamic financial system in supporting green technology”, Kuala Lumpur, 8 October 2013. *  *  *  The recent haze that caused unhealthy air quality is the direct result of acute deforestation and irresponsible practices, a grim reminder of the unfolding environmental catastrophes confronting us and our future generation. Globally, extreme climate change, resource depletion and environment degradation have increasingly become looming threats to livelihoods. Greenhouse gas emissions are on the rise and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are at its highest in three million years. It is reported that the global average temperature has risen by 0.74oC over the past century and is forecasted to rise by 1.8oC to 4oC by year 2100. Severe deforestation issues across the continents and over dependence on non-renewable energy resources pose further challenges to the finite carrying capacity of the earth. Sustainable development has become an imperative. It is a global imperative given the interconnected world we live in. It affects everyone. No one is isolated. A united action is therefore required to solve these major ecological problems before solutions become impossible. I am pleased to be here today to speak at The Green Financing: Discover Green Technology Industry in Malaysia (GF 2013).

There has been a series of issuances since the debut of the green sukuk in France in 2012, including the issuance of a sukuk in Malaysia earlier this year that is part of a larger $ billion Multi-Currency Sukuk Issuance Programme for sustainable development that was ten times over-subscribed. Globally, the increasing involvement of governments across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in various projects for renewable energy and clean, efficient technologies indicate strong growth prospect for sukuk to support these green technology projects. Backed by the international Green Sukuk Working Group that has been instrumental in the development and issuance of green sukuk since its establishment in 2012, this segment of the Islamic capital market that advocates for greater socially responsible investment is expected to flourish further. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  Reducing information asymmetry – a key pre-requisite for sustainable financing Islamic finance has strong potentials to contribute towards a sustainable financing ecosystem for the green technology sector. I have shared with you the different facets of Islamic finance that can meet the needs of green businesses. Key to this is the need to reduce the information asymmetry between Islamic financial institutions and businesses. The GTFS framework has been instrumental in assisting to bridge the information gaps between financiers and businesses. Islamic financial institutions now have to build its capacity and capabilities to assess the viability of the green projects despite its complexity.
Pre-2013, it similarly used the now-discontinued secondary-market CD rate data. However, post-2013 it uses the interest rate on 90-day AA-rated financial commercial paper. In contrast to the retail rate Darrell and Arvind use, this commercial paper rate rose along with the federal funds rate in late 2015. 28 In the unsecured market, we also sometimes see small upticks ahead of holiday weekends, such as on days  that are not Federal banking holidays but on which the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association has recommended closure or early closure. For example, we saw modest, transitory upticks in dispersion on March 24, 2016 (Good Friday) and December 23, 2016 (the business day before the Christmas holiday). A similar uptick was observed on November 23, 2016 (the day before Thanksgiving). 29 In the measure that combines both markets, we see dispersion fall on month- and quarter-end dates; this  occurs because rates tend to fall in the unsecured market on these dates, pushing them closer together. 30 I discussed these factors in my February 2016 speech. 31 Some government-sponsored entities can also participate in the dealer-to-dealer market. 32 This is due to covered interest rate parity: the proposition that the interest rate differential between two  currencies of a given tenor should equal the differential between the spot exchange rate and the future exchange rate of the same tenor. See Borio, McCauley, McGuire and Sushko, “ Covered interest parity lost: understanding the cross-currency basis,” September 2016. 33 Counterparty risk may have risen somewhat since the crisis.

For example, our ON RRP operations provide a floor on the repo rate offered by dealers to cash investors because of the competitive pressure the Fed’s offer rate places on borrowers of funds in the repo market.10 If this competitive pressure were less effective, perhaps because of greater constraints on lenders’ switching counterparties, changes in the ON RRP rate could become less effective in influencing repo market rates. Other shocks could affect the transmission of rates from our operations to the federal funds rate. In the absence of strong financial intermediation between the federal funds market, interest on reserves, and the repo market, changes in rates the Federal Reserve controls—like the IOR rate and the ON RRP offering rate—might not affect the federal funds rate as intended. Shocks to intermediation could result in permanently weaker integration between markets. The effects could also prove temporary, for example if intermediation weakens initially but then recovers over time as market participants adjust to the shock. Finally, changes to the federal funds rate might not affect other interest rates and asset prices that are relevant to the cost of credit in the real economy. And also, even if changes in the federal funds rate do affect those other rates, if the linkage between them were to become particularly noisy or hard to predict, it could become harder for policymakers, as well as the public, to forecast what level of the federal funds rate will best achieve maximum employment and price stability.
Business surveys are consistent with this, implying that the margin of spare capacity in firms is now relatively limited – in fact not much larger than after the bursting of the dotcom bubble. But against that, it is difficult to find any direct evidence of supply impairment. For instance, liquidations have been running at less than 1% (compared to 3% in the 1990s recession). One resolution of the puzzle may be that producers have mothballed capacity, which could, at a cost, be brought into use if demand conditions warranted. The MPC’s view is that the current elevated level of inflation is likely to persist in the near term – indeed our central expectation for inflation is somewhat higher than that of outside commentators. Ultimately, however, this period of elevated inflation should prove temporary. The standard rate of VAT is set to rise again at the beginning of next year, but once that drops out of the annual comparison a year later, so the inflation rate is likely to fall back sharply. The impact on prices of sterling’s past depreciation should be starting to wane. And the relatively moderate expansion that we expect over the next year or two should ensure that there is some, albeit uncertain, brake on inflation from spare capacity. We have seen muted underlying inflation pressures in both the euro area and the United States, reflecting the spare capacity in those economies, and there is no reason to believe that the United Kingdom will behave differently once the temporary influences subside.

Charles Bean: The economic outlook for 2011 and beyond Speech by Mr Charles Bean, Deputy Governor for Monetary Policy at the Bank of England, at the Market News International Annual Seminar, London, 13 December 2010. *  *  *  Good morning! Christmas is the traditional time for looking back over the events of the past year and contemplating what the new year might bring. Today I shall follow that tradition by taking stock of economic developments over the past year and looking at the challenges ahead. Many of the recent activity indicators have been somewhat comforting. Global growth has recovered strongly on the back of a strong rebound in the emerging economies, with the IMF projecting expansion of close to 5% this year and more than 4% next year. Here in the United Kingdom, we have also seen a nascent recovery; output in the third quarter was, according to the latest ONS estimates, some 2.8% higher than a year earlier. That is marginally stronger than our projection for the most-likely path of four-quarter growth made a year earlier in our August 2009 Inflation Report. Around half of the growth over the past year was, however, down to the contribution of stockbuilding, as businesses reduced the rate of inventory decumulation and, in some cases, started to rebuild stocks. That can only provide a temporary boost to aggregate demand growth. And the contribution of public spending to growth is also set to fall as the Government’s planned fiscal consolidation gets underway.
•  This is unfortunate because equity financing is the best way to share risks and opportunities, as well as to support innovation. “Catch-up” growth, as in many Emerging Markets, can be financed by debt. But an economy standing at the technological frontier, as in the U.S. or hopefully as in Europe, is better financed by equity: as innovation is more risky, its funding must have an upside. •  The Commission’s Innobarometer survey suggests that funding is the main barrier for promoting R&D and innovation in Europe. What can we actually do? Among others, taxation policies could be revised in favor of equity funding. Innovative schemes also need to be developed at European level, such as European venture capital funds, in order to support the creation and growth of new businesses. Furthermore, a Financing and Investment union is about strengthening the euro area. Short term banking flows have risen after the introduction of the Euro, but the financial crisis demonstrated that the capital markets’ channel of risk sharing was still underdeveloped in the  8  BIS central bankers’ speeches  euro area. From the reality of financial fragmentation and its negative economic consequences, we can draw one obvious conclusion: equity financing is clearly the instrument that best allows to smooth asymmetric shocks in a Monetary Union. Its benefits are many (ECB Financial Integration Report 2016): it is less volatile that debt financing and it enhances the companies’ resilience to adverse conditions.

Households have traditionally borrowed mostly for housing, and the current increase in this type of lending is perhaps not so surprising in view of the fact that housing prices in metropolitan areas have risen relatively significantly. What is more remarkable is that lending for other purposes is increasing at a higher rate. It is difficult to see from the statistics exactly how the borrowed money is used, but lending both from banks and finance companies is now growing at a faster rate than lending from mortgage institutions. This has given rise to apprehensions that households are borrowing for consumption or in order to invest in shares, which could lead to rapid increased risks. In order to gain a better understanding of whether or not this is the case, the Financial Supervisory Authority has recently commenced an examination of the banks’ lending to the household sector. 1  Excluding repos. BIS Review 50/2000  2  There are several reasons why property prices play a central role in any discussion of financial stability. In addition to the fact, as I mentioned earlier, that the credit demand among households is largely governed by the demand for and price level of property, property can also be used as collateral for loans. Another reason for monitoring the property sector is that a large part of the banks’ lending is to property companies. These companies also accounted for a large part of the loan losses during the banking crisis in the early 1990s.
So, clusters numbering about 8 to 10 groups were set up by making informal arrangements for them to work together. Separate cluster rules were prepared and the members were trained in keeping cluster accounts and records. This process went on continuously for about 12 to 18 months from the beginning of1999. When the newly formed clusters showed sufficient maturity of being able to operate independently, the next move for the project was planned by the project. In the second stage, it was necessary to give legal status to the clusters. Many options like registering them under the law relating to cooperatives or under the Companies Act were considered, but finally, decision was made to incorporate the clusters under the Societies Ordinance as limited liability societies under the name “Isuru Development Society Ltd”, for the simplicity it provided to the beneficiaries. The societies were registered with the Registrar of Companies in terms of the Ordinance. The societies so registered had the objective of realising a common goal of attaining economic well-being of the members with a mutual  8  BIS Review 22/2008  support. The incorporation of societies as limited liability societies was completed within two years by 2001. The next phase was to further consolidate the limited liability societies into still larger economic organisations. Such a consolidation was essential in order to permit this larger organisation to effectively function as a strong economic entity. This goal was attained by consolidating the common efforts of societies in a particular district into a district-wide limited liability company.

In addition, the system provided a market guaranteed price to both buyers and producers enabling them to plan their cash flows properly. It also helped both parties to raise loans from banks for both working capital and investment capital purposes. The future sustainability of the forward sale contract system will depend on the establishment of proper futures market for commodities in Sri Lanka. It is ironical that Sri Lanka, being a country famous for its rich spices throughout history and three major commodities, viz., tea, rubber and coconut, in the last 150 years, has to think of setting a futures market in the country at this late stage, when all the other countries in the region have moved much ahead in that context. However, the initial work relating to the establishment of a futures exchange is presently being done with the initiative taken by the Central Bank. Technical assistance for this purpose has been received from the Futures Commodities Exchange in India and the exchange is to be set up within the next 2 year period. Part IV Summary and conclusions This paper examined the strategies adopted by Sri Lanka, with the initiative of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, to introduce a sustainable socio-economic security system based on the principles of the market mechanism. Despite the popular belief that the poor need subsidised  27  In fact, the system was largely saved by the flexible approach of buyers when the market price was significantly higher than the contract price of a produce.
Insurance supervision at the PRA Speech given by Sam Woods, Deputy Governor, Prudential Regulation and Chief Executive Officer, Prudential Regulation Authority  London Business School 20 March 2017  I am grateful to Dan Curtis for his help in preparing this speech. 1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  Good morning. The UK has a world-leading insurance sector which provides a wide range of vital services to the real economy and society. It promotes growth and employment, has proved its mettle in turbulent times and the country can be proud of it. A necessary precondition to such success is world-class insurance supervision. That is what we aim to deliver at the PRA. Like insurers, our job is to be forward-looking and prudent about risk. Where we differ from private firms is that we do this motivated solely by the public interest. The recent debate about insurance regulation – while timely and important – must seem to some like a cacophony of acronyms, statistics, models and assumptions. But strip this back and you’ll see there is an essential, irreducible human core to it all. Some of the oldest and most vulnerable in our society have invested their life savings into long-term annuity contracts. By pooling and transferring many kinds of risks – from cyber to marine – insurers provide cover which is essential for economic activity. And by protecting for critical illness or personal accident, insurers commit to being there when you need them most.

But a sustained increase in pay over the forecast period without a commensurate pick up in productivity would mean that the supply side of the economy could not keep pace with growing demand. That would mean upward pressure on prices. And it would mean greater pressure on the MPC than in our forecast to act to bring supply and demand into balance so as to meet the inflation target. The outlook for pay and productivity So the gradual pick up first in pay and then in productivity is central to the MPC’s forecast for both growth and inflation particularly in the later years. Given the serial disappointments on both pay and productivity in recent years, why do we now think that will happen? On pay there do seem to be signs now of stronger, more sustained growth. In the latest data, whole economy regular pay is growing at 2.7%. This is the highest annual growth rate since early 2009 and over a percentage point higher than six months ago. The latest reading on private sector pay growth was 3.2% – the highest rate since December 2008. So the period of very cheap labour seems to be ending as expected. What about productivity growth? It was effectively zero in 2014. And we forecast it to remain pretty weak in 2015.