samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Since the beginning of 1998, the voting has been divided reasonably evenly among all possible combinations of votes (remember that there were nine voting members only from June 1998 following the passage of the Bank of England Act.) Of the 54 meetings since January 1998, four dissenting votes have been cast on six occasions, three on seven occasions, two on eleven occasions and one on 16 occasions. At only 14 meetings has the vote been unanimous, and no one - sensibly - has seen fit to abstain, so that during the past five years the frequency of unanimity among the Committee has been little more than one in four. Differences of view have become accepted as the norm, and this appears to have done little damage to the credibility of the Committee. Nor has there been much sign of “blocs” of votes, whether internal or external. There have been 15 occasions on which members of the executive of the Bank have been on opposite sides of the vote, and 37 occasions when externals have found themselves divided. It is true to say that dissenting votes have been more common among external than executive members. Of the 83 dissenting votes cast during the history of the MPC, 25 have been cast by executive members and 58 by external members. But of these 58, no fewer than 44 are accounted for by three of the eight external members, Willem Buiter, DeAnne Julius and Sushil Wadhwani.

In contrast, the debates among the MPC are published in the monthly minutes and are the subject of much commentary in the press. I want, this evening, to pose four questions about the role and record of the MPC. First, why give the power to decide interest rates to a committee rather than an individual? Second, does it matter that the MPC frequently disagrees about its decision? Third, has the Committee communicated clearly the reasons for its decisions? Fourth, does the MPC require reform? Let me try to answer those questions in turn. BIS Review 34/2002  1  1. Why give the power to decide interest rates to a committee? The academic argument for central bank independence is well established, but why delegate monetary policy to a committee rather than an individual? In many other situations where expertise is crucial, groups of experts are often regarded as superior to individuals. So one motive could be that committees make better decisions. The technical nature of the monthly interest rate decision gives a natural division of responsibilities between a democratically elected government that chooses the target and an appointed group of experts who set rates to meet that target. One dissenting voice comes from Sir Alec Issigonis - inventor of the Mini - who once said, ‘A camel is a horse designed by a committee’. Despite this view, there is a wide range of evidence to suggest that in many other real-world scenarios, a committee is often the preferred decision-making body.
As a result, credit risk perception by banks remains considerable; Second, in spite of a better reflection of the key interest rate cut in the last quarter of 2013, the credit price (including other related costs) is considered still relatively high. For that 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  reason, banks need to cut the credit price down, having better control of their operational costs, especially foreign currency funding costs. Third, credit restructuring should be conceived as a broader process of deep restructuring of the activity of borrowing businesses. Each non-performing loan should be seen as a new opportunity. Our approach should extend to the micro level, according to the motto: door to door and case by case. From the bank’s perspective, this would mean that credit restructuring is not merely a rescheduling of credit instalments in agreement with the businesses, but an in-depth analysis to assess the possibilities of its future existence in the market and acknowledge on time the loss of a part or full credit value. Fourth, infrastructure and legal practice concerning collateral execution remains subject to adaptation to the new situation. Fifth, it may be necessary to allow longer time to see the effect of the measures taken until now, and other measures that should further address the above-listed problems. Despite the existing problems listed above, the Bank of Albania believes that the circumstances are better for banks to be more active in this year in tackling non-performing loans.

One thing I should emphasise is that this is a reform of the whole of financial regulation. I say that because it is easy to conclude from observation of the issues we face as regulators, and the public debate, that we are just dealing with reforming the regulation of banks. That is not the case, and what we are doing is not about dragging the rest of the financial services industry into reform to solve a problem that is in essence only about the banks. We have to design a system that works effectively for all sectors of the industry. The 1997 reforms created the FSA as an integrated regulator – by which I mean regulation which combined Prudential and Conduct of Business in one regulatory body covering the broad sweep of the financial services industry. The record now shows that this approach did not work as effectively as it needed to do. I think there are a number of closely related reasons for this. First, on a rather practical point, I think it is hard for a single organisation to balance, particularly during a period of crisis, a wide range of very demanding issues which are individually rightly of great concern to the public and can come from anywhere in a landscape of around 25,000 authorised firms. Second, I think the evidence suggests that over the last 15 years there have been periods when either conduct or prudential supervision has been more in the ascendancy to the detriment of the other.
And the second is the observation that economic agents in emerging market face limitations in the ability to smooth consumption in response of shocks. BIS Review 89/2007  1  Table 1 summarizes the empirical evidence from the two recent studies. As documented in Aguiar and Gopinath (2007), consumption in emerging markets is around 40 percent more volatile than income at business cycle frequencies. The same is true when comparing relative volatility in growth rates of consumption and income. A study by Prasad and his colleagues in 2005 also shows greater income and consumption volatility in emerging market relative to developed economies. Such heightened volatility in macroeconomic outcomes undoubtedly has adverse implications for welfare. Our central proposition is that a large part of the explanation for higher macroeconomic volatility rests with key differences in the nature of shocks hitting emerging economies as well as the way in which their economic systems propagate those shocks. Figure 1 depicts how observed macroeconomic outcomes are the result of the interaction between the nature of shocks hitting emerging market and the structural features of the economic system. On the nature of shocks, a particularly pertinent example in this context is capital flow shocks. As shown in Table 2, capital flow shocks, especially debt and equity, are more volatile in emerging markets relative to advanced economies, as well as relative to other developing economies.

Market-driven financial market developments need the support of critical infrastructure, namely: (1)  Information that allows efficient decision making and pricing on various asset markets, financial as well as related market such as real estate market, which are still very lacking in many emerging markets, and may be an area of public support. (2)  Legal reform to ensure enabling environment for innovation in products and business models of financial system. And  (3)  Human resource with proper competency in modern financial and risk management are scarce and is becoming a bottle neck for development. The authority may need to step in to facilitate training and accredition of professional standards, if it has external benefits. Notwithstanding these challenges, notable progress has been made by emerging markets in the past decade, much of which catalysed by comprehensive economic reform in which market-oriented economic and financial liberalization been main features. For East Asia, despite the progress made, significant gap still exists in diversification, efficiency and robustness when compared to the role played by financial markets in the developed economies. Looking ahead, in addition to the pressure from globalization, the shift in demographic structure will also be an additional pressure. This is to say some smaller emerging markets will face aging population and increase demand of wealth management, while supply of local products are limited for diversification. This will pose challenges for  BIS Review 89/2007  5  inter-temporal allocation of resource and risk.
Is the sector in better shape than it was five years ago? Yes. European banks have become considerably more resilient as they have increased their capital stock and strengthened their governance and risk controls. While preparing for the comprehensive assessment, they have also consolidated their balance sheets by up to € billion in recent months, selling off assets or issuing new capital. It is therefore fair to say that enormous progress has been made. But nevertheless, there is no reason to be lenient. Like an athlete who has to train daily to keep in shape, banks – which operate in a very competitive environment – must permanently work on their business models and strategies to take into account macroeconomic conditions, such as very low interest rates. They need to comply with many new regulatory restrictions, some of them still to come, some of them in transitional periods and not yet fully applicable. Until now supervision was conducted by the national authorities, such as the ACPR (the authority for prudential supervision and resolution) in France. Did that not suffice? Banks are highly interconnected. An independent supervisor at the European level gives rise to a number of advantages. First, it reduces the risk of regulatory and supervisory arbitrage as a European supervisor can create a level playing field. Second, it provides a better overview of the activities of large banks, while allowing for a cross-country comparison of their practices and control frameworks with those of other banks.

  New information supports the Riksbank’s view that the global economy and the Swedish economy are recovering. However, there are some signs of weakness in the United States and Asia, while Europe looks slightly stronger than expected. The unease on the financial markets has waned, but the situation is still not normal. However, I shall begin by discussing international developments. International developments In the Riksbank’s Monetary Policy Report earlier in the summer we painted a picture of international developments over the coming years that can be briefly summarised as follows: GDP growth will be strong in the world as a whole, but in Europe GDP growth will be modest and the upturn will start from a very low level. Inflation abroad will be relatively low. But these are of course just rough outlines. Behind them lie more detailed analyses and reasoning, which I will now go on to develop. Recovery in world economy – strong growth in Asia The recovery in the world economy is continuing. The rate of the recovery varies, of course, from country to country and region to region, but for the world as a whole we were expecting in June an annual GDP growth of just over 4 per cent over the coming three years. (Figure: Global GDP growth) The IMF’s most recent update to the forecasts for the world economy, in July this year, even implies a slightly higher growth rate this year and next year.
And so, if the reduction of risk starts to impede a more fundamental reason for being, risk management has gone too far. Lawyers have to point out legal risks and other risks to their clients. That is our job. But if all we ever tell our clients is “no,” they will at some point stop asking for our advice. So it is important that lawyers consider why a client is facing a decision, what they want to achieve in the near term and in the long term, and how their decision may affect others. Lawyers serve their clients well by pointing out assumptions, gaps in reasoning, and unforeseen, collateral consequences. We should help our clients see the range of issues confronting them and options available to them. Moreover, how a lawyer gives this advice is often as important as the content of that advice. A lawyer must not only be right, he must also be persuasive. My advice is worthless if no one listens to it. We are judged by our results not how hard we try. Let me share with you, as law students, some advice on how to be heard. Advice to law students First, speak up! This is part of a lawyer’s training in the United States. We are called on in class to explain cases in front of our peers. We participate in appellate and trial advocacy competitions. And we are required to study not only the court opinions that decide a case, but the dissenting opinions that did not.

The work that CEMFI’s experts and our own researchers will carry out as they conduct these evaluations is also an example of the Banco de España’s commitment to this culture of evidence-based policies. In this way, we hope to establish a genuine technical hub specialised in the evaluation of public policies and programmes that can serve other areas of public policy. And, beyond this specific initiative, at the Banco de España we believe that we can also contribute to these aims by evaluating the actions taken in the exercise of our responsibilities and allowing the 1/2  BIS central bankers' speeches  research community to use our information. The data laboratory recently launched by the Banco de España (BELab) is a good example of this service to society, since it makes the microdata from many of our main databases available to researchers. So is the recent agreement between the National Statistics Institute, the Tax Agency, the Social Security System and the Banco de España, as holders of a significant amount of administrative information and granular data collected for statistical purposes, for the joint design of a collaborative data system to which researchers will have access, provided that the information is to be used for scientific purposes in the public interest. The challenge is for initiatives such as those we are seeing here today to become widespread, so that a genuine culture of evaluating public policies can take root, allowing their design and implementation to be improved on the basis of evidence. Thank you.
More than once, they brought on political tension, between those in the government who believed in it and those in the opposition, or even the military, who thought otherwise. In one incident, it even caused a change in the central bank governor. Finally, we had to float our currency in 1997. Since then, we have adopted Inflation Targeting as our monetary policy framework. A core inflation target was announced at between 0 and 3.5 % per annum. The central bank will regularly monitor economic changes and make forecasts. If we see that the rate of inflation has a tendency to exceed the range, we will adopt a tighter monetary policy stance by increasing the policy interest rate, and vice versa if we see it going under the range. The policy rate that we use is the 14 day repurchase rate. BIS Review 48/2002  1  This is completely different, of course, compared to the days of fixed currency regime when interest rates in Thailand would move mostly in tandem with the US rates. The change in the monetary policy framework therefore affects the financial environment and your businesses a great deal. Development of the bond market What other change also happened? One very important change that has occurred in Thailand is the rapid development of the bond market, which took off after the 1997 crisis. The bond market is an important tool for safety and soundness of the financial institution system.

through the adjustment of domestic prices and costs relative to external ones, and by curbing government spending and revenue shortfalls, in real terms. This is what the Spanish economy has, with great effort, been achieving since 2012. In the truly difficult circumstances of 2012, Spain avoided a bail-out that would have been very painful in many ways, and certainly from an economic and social standpoint. Spain never lost its access to the capital markets. Admittedly at very high interest rates, and with very large risk premiums, our Treasury was always able to fund itself on the markets, because the markets, while mindful of the risks involved, very quickly appreciated (I am referring to the summer of 2012) the seriousness and decisiveness of the corrective action being taken. Spain reacted as a responsible and loyal European Union and Monetary Union member. It did not attempt to shift the blame onto anyone else, even though the euro crisis, which affected us very directly, obviously did not arise exclusively, or originally, in the Spanish economy. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  To call the correction of unsustainable imbalances (like the balance of payments deficits of 2007 and 2008, of around 10% of GDP, and the budget deficits, which ranged from 9% to 11% between 2009 and 2012) austerity, is not really a very good description of reality. Changing direction when on a path towards impossible and unsustainable situations is not “austerity” but common sense and, in a very real sense, patriotism.
According to one of them, described as the conventional monetary policy, the central bank focuses on stabilising the inflation, treats changes in asset prices as an exogenous process and does not attempt to influence asset prices whatsoever. The other option, described by Kohn as the “extra action policy”, allows for a deviation of current inflation from a level determined as stable in return for improvement of the perspectives of achieving price stability in the future. However, the extra action policy does not mean piercing the speculative bubbles by central banks, and means rather “taking out” of additional insurance against possible negative shocks, which may happen in the future. In Kohn’s opinion, the extra action policy may be run very rarely and only where the three conditions are met: •  the central bank must be able to identify asset bubbles in a timely manner and high certainty as to the correctness of analysis conclusions;  •  there must be a high probability that a slight tightening of the monetary policy will be able to stand against the speculative activity on a given assets market;  •  the expected improvement of the future economic situation resulting from a smaller speculative bubble must be significant and higher than the costs incurred by the economy in the aftermath of running the extra action policy.

Stefan Ingves: Introduction on monetary policy Speech by Mr Stefan Ingves, Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, to the Riksdag Commitee on Finance, Stockholm, 15 November 2007. *  *  *  What is the objective of the Riksbank’s monetary policy? To maintain price stability – an inflation rate around two per cent a year? Yes, this is of course correct. But behind this wording there lies a deeper meaning – the actual core of the task delegated by the Riksdag (the Swedish parliament) and ultimately the Swedish people to the Riksbank. Because what it is essentially all about is to create the best possible conditions for good and sustainable economic development. And monetary policy contributes to this by keeping inflation low and stable. The inflation target is not merely a target, but also a means. The fact that I as Governor of the Riksbank have the opportunity to discuss monetary policy with you who represent the Riksdag is also important for the prospects of reaching this goal in the best possible way. The Riksbank must have support and legitimacy from the people to be able to succeed in its policy. It must therefore be easy to examine how monetary policy is conducted and how well we live up to our principles. The fact that the Riksbank Governor regularly takes part in these hearings is an important part of this process. Our task also means that we must constantly strive to become better at what we do and develop our working methods.
It will also publish the results of its tender operations. It could equally wish to release daily aggregate data on the reserve holdings, if averaged reserve requirements are in place, and on the use of the two standing facilities, as measured in both cases at the end of the previous day. 2.2. Intraday operations: the spillover from intraday credit into overnight credit as a borderline case To ensure the smooth functioning of the TARGET system, the national central banks will provide intraday liquidity to participants in the real-time gross settlement systems. This will be done in the form of fully collateralised intraday credit operations, in the sense that a credit extended during the day falls due before the end of the day. From a monetary policy point of view, such operations create the risk of a spillover of intraday credit into overnight credit that would undermine the control of the ESCB over the euro monetary base. In other words, the spillover of intraday credit into overnight credit in the books of the central bank can be viewed as a borderline case between payment systems and monetary policy issues. Within the euro area, this risk will be limited as end-of-day debit positions will be automatically considered to be a request for recourse to the marginal lending facility, i.e. an ESCB monetary policy instrument that bears a penalty interest rate.

The issue is, thus, how to attain this single interest rate level. Two requirements will have to be met for that purpose. The first requirement is that, in the context of a single monetary policy that will be implemented in a decentralised manner, there should be a very high degree of harmonisation of instruments and procedures. The EMI and central banks are working relentlessly to this aim. The second requirement lies in the integration of interbank markets and payment systems. As far as interbank markets are concerned, two factors should play a key role: •  the first factor relates to the various rules market operators have to abide by. These rules apply to counterparts, market makers, brokers, rating agencies and market enterprises such as clearing houses. They take the form of codes of conduct, regulations, master agreements and market standards. An appropriate degree of harmonisation of these market rules should be reached under the aegis of central banks and prudential authorities;  •  the second factor, the use of a single range of reference interest rates would guarantee the transparency of the euro money market. In this respect, short-term maturities are of special interest to central banks. This justifies that they intervene to some extent in the process of elaborating these indicators. As a matter of fact, the EMI has recently agreed that the ESCB should sponsor the computation of an overnight reference rate for the euro area.