samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
Over the past decade, the government has continuously worked to improve the country’s education and health care systems. There have been extensions in terms of years of compulsory education and more financial supports to increase access to higher education. Subsidized health care for the poor has been provided with extending coverage over the years. Although the public spending (as percentage of GDP) on education and health care in Thailand is comparable to its neighboring countries, the quality remains relatively low. This is evident in the cross-country comparisons of the ratio of those attending secondary schools as well as the relatively low life span, especially compared with Japan which has the longest life span4. Hence, in moving towards a higher labor-skilled economy, Thailand needs to further improve access as well as quality of education and health care to enhance the quality of our human capital. Distinguished Audience, Apart from strengthening infrastructure investment and human capital investment, the exchange rate also plays an important role in influencing Thailand’s productivity in the long-run insofar as it affects efficient resource allocation in the economy. Given the recent development of the global economy, many of you will agree that Thai baht is unlikely to go back to the level seen in the pre-2006 era. This structural change has two implications; first, uncompetitive export sectors will be the most challenged. Second, the strong baht is an opportunity for Thailand to increase productivity through higher imported-capital investments.

As regards the euro area, the Governing Council has judged that, in the current uncertain environment, it was appropriate to gather additional information before drawing conclusions for monetary policy, although the overall stance is “still on the accommodative side” and… “the medium-term outlook for price stability remains subject to upside risks”. Looking further ahead, difficulties in the subprime mortgage markets combined with the generalized securitization of loans will lead to losses whose localization in the financial system remains undetermined. This information problem is currently creating uncertainty and  1  Optimal Choice of Monetary Policy Instruments in a Simple Stochastic Macro Model ; The Quarterly Journal of Economics Vol. 84, No.2 (May, 1970)  BIS Review 105/2007  1  turmoil. However, things should be put in perspective. Available data indicate that, unless the economy unexpectedly deteriorates, those losses will remain small in comparison to total available capital in the financial system and should be easily absorbed. Of course, conditions remain fragile in many segments of the capital markets. Perverse dynamics may always develop. By acting to restore balance and stability in the interbank market, Central banks are just doing their job. 2  BIS Review 105/2007
That's the way it goes: Times of crisis permit dramatic and rapid changes that would not be implementable, or even thinkable, under normal circumstances. But when the dust settles, it is very difficult to reverse them. All thinking people in the financial sector should want to ensure that the rash solutions adopted in the present bad times, many of which will do little or no good anyway, do not in the long run generate much worse times for the industry, and hence its clients. Putting out a fire is one thing. But improving the fire regulations is quite another. Certainly a large fire can provide inspiration for future fire prevention. But it is by no means wise to fight the fire while simultaneously changing in haste all the fire regulations. The risks of such an approach are considerable, especially if the public – as well as part of the industry itself – increasingly accepts the dogma that the financial sector provides quasipublic or even purely public goods and services. I'm sure that a thoughtful discussion about the causes of the crisis and ways how to prevent them in the future would require much more time, cool-headedness and, above all, more input from academics and trained professionals and less from politicians and European bureaucrats. Maybe I'm a bit skeptical. But I have a very vivid imagination influenced also by the tragic excommunist and state interventionist experience of the Czech Republic. And my imagination allows me to foresee some extreme scenarios.

This study being presented today is, therefore, a welcome opportunity to reflect on the progress since 2009. Financial institutions have a role to play in ensuring financial services and products are available at reasonable terms, including fair and practical know your customer (KYC) assessments, the use of alternative collateral and flexible lines of credit to mention, but a few. To enhance income-generating activities from survival level to strong and viable businesses, in particular for women led enterprises, access to credit, banking and financial services and facilities is essential to fully develop small scale to businesses. The firm, robust and sustainable growth can only be founded on strong and viable Small and Medium Enterprises hence the need to financially empower enterprises is cardinal through financial inclusion. This lack of access to finance by our entrepreneurs is a major concern for both, the Bank of Zambia and Government. Ladies and Gentlemen, Allow me to outline some of the measures the Bank has been putting in place to accelerate access to finance for all citizens generally, and in particular for women The Bank of Zambia is the lead implementer of the Financial Sector Development Plan on behalf of the Government of the Republic of Zambia. As you may be aware, the Zambian government formulated the FSDP as a comprehensive strategy for addressing challenges in the Zambian financial sector. Under the second phase of the FSDP, access to finance by the various strata of society, including access based on gender is identified as a key challenge to be addressed.
This pattern is embodied in the MPC’s forecasts, with wages projected to outpace productivity in the next few years (Chart 31). Put differently, growth in unit wage costs is expected to pick up and the labour share to rise fairly sharply (Chart 32). That path is certainly plausible if cyclical factors are the key drivers of the low labour share. But there may be alternative forces at play. If substitutability between labour and capital is higher than in the past, labour’s bargaining power and share of income might be commensurably lower, as we have seen across a number of countries before and after the crisis. So how different might the MPC’s projections look if the labour share was, say, flat rather than rising over the next few years? Charts 32 and 33 show the path of wage growth and inflation that would imply. Wage growth is weaker, averaging around 3¼% rather than 4½% at the year three point. So too is consumption given weaker take-home pay, though this is largely offset by stronger company profits and higher investment, leaving aggregate output little altered. The upshot is a materially lower path for inflation than contained in November’s Inflation Report: inflation reaches around 1.6% at the two-year horizon and remains around these  12  BIS central bankers’ speeches  levels. That would put the balance of risks squarely towards a more protracted undershoot of the inflation target, even without any downdraught from external prices and demand.

This Regulation imposes an obligation on issuers of asset-referenced tokens to constitute and maintain a reserve of assets backing those tokens at all times, including rules for the composition of the reserve assets, the management and allocation and investment of assets, - E-money tokens10. They may be issued only by authorised credit institutions or electronic money institutions, again after publishing a ‘white paper’ and in keeping with some business-specific requirements. - ‘standard tokens’ do not fall under any of the above categories. The only requirement for these to be offered to the public is that the issuer must be established as a legal entity in the European Union and must have published a crypto-asset white paper. This Regulation defines a new group of financial institutions, different from issuers of tokens, which are called ‘crypto-asset service providers’. This new group of financial entities will be subject to authorisation, and, depending on the scope of their authorisation, these providers will be able to provide the following ancillary services: - the custody and administration of crypto-assets on behalf of third parties; - the operation of a trading platform for crypto-assets; - the exchange of crypto-assets for fiat currency that is legal tender; - the exchange of crypto-assets for other crypto-assets; - the execution of orders for crypto-assets on behalf of third parties and placing of crypto-assets; - the reception and transmission of orders for crypto-assets on behalf of third parties; - providing advice on crypto-assets.
Christian Noyer: France’s banking industry in 2007 – key trends Speech by Mr Christian Noyer, Governor of the Bank of France and Chairman of the French Banking Commission, at the presentation of the 2007 Annual Report of the French Banking Commission, Paris, 26 June 2008. *  *  *  Welcome to the working breakfast organised for the press on the occasion of the publication of the Commission Bancaire’s 2007 Annual Report today. I would like to take this opportunity to speak to you about the major trends seen in the banking industry in 2007. Naturally, the main development last year was the subprime crisis. I will also speak about the lessons learned from the crisis for the future. Even though the French banking system’s overall exposure to the risks revealed by the subprime crisis turned out to be less severe than in other G10 countries, our banking system was still affected, as can be seen in the decline in profitability. On a more encouraging note, however, French banks managed to maintain satisfactory solvency ratios, testifying to the system’s resilience and its ability to cope with a very large-scale and complex crisis. However, in addition to the impact on business conditions, the financial crisis calls for an examination of the robustness of some of the banking activities that developed so rapidly over the last ten years. These activities have complicated the task of risk management in major banking groups.

The materialisation of certain risks, the return of volatility on financial markets and uncertainty about the economic outlook have meant that major banks need to make a special effort in three key areas: i) maintaining adequate capital ratios to cushion them from further shocks, which may still occur, ii) strengthening their risk management systems and processes, and iii) pricing credit and liquidity risks appropriately. To explain these developments, I would like to speak to you briefly about the following points. 1. First of all, the French banking system provided proof of its resilience in the face of financial turmoil in 2007. 2. The current economic situation calls for vigilance nonetheless, since banks must be ready to cope with new risks that may occur at any time. 3. Finally, as crisis conditions persist, I should like to talk about the main thrusts of the supervisory authorities’ actions. 1. The French banking system provided proof of its resilience in the face of financial turmoil in 2007  After posting good performances since 2003, the French banking system was hit by the fall-out from the subprime crisis starting in mid 2007, as were the banking systems in the other leading developed countries. This led to an extended period of strong turbulence. The impact of the crisis on banks’ earnings first shows up in the third quarter financial statements and then more clearly in the fourth-quarter statements.
But the final brushstrokes remain undone: we have yet to develop tools that can be used to reactivate the interest rate channel if and when it becomes clogged up because of capital inflows related to carry trade. In this context, one might ask whether we are too late. To be sure, the capital inflows are taking place sooner than generally expected. We still have not released those who entered last, but we have already received capital inflows of nearly 50 b.kr. for investment in nominal Treasury bonds – most of it after Iceland’s sovereign ratings were upgraded because the next steps towards capital account liberalisation were announced in early June! And this has certainly disrupted the monetary policy transmission mechanism, as can be seen in Chart 4. Thus far, the impact has been more or less limited to the Treasury bond market, and the banks’ nominal interest rates have broadly followed Central Bank rates. The first signs of contagion to other parts of the financial market had begun to show before the Central Bank’s rate hike yesterday. It will be interesting to see what impact the rate hike has. Independent monetary policy entails the possibility of maintaining a different monetary stance than other countries do if and when the need arises. Recent research and international discourse indicate that it can be difficult for small, open, and financially integrated economies to pursue monetary policy that differs significantly from that in large economies.

Már Guðmundsson: Monetary policy at a crossroads Speech by Mr Már Guðmundsson, Governor of the Central Bank of Iceland, at the Icelandic Chamber of Commerce Monetary Policy meeting, Reykjavík, 5 November 2015. *  *  *  Honoured chairman, ladies and gentlemen: The Iceland Chamber of Commerce has a decades-long tradition of holding a meeting like this one on economic developments and prospects and monetary policy. The meeting is held following the publication of the Central Bank’s autumn forecast and, in latter years, the Monetary Policy Committee’s interest rate decision. The title of my talk today is Monetary policy at a crossroads. These crossroads are, first, the disappearance of the slack in the economy and the development of a positive output gap, with the result that the task of monetary policy is no longer to stimulate GDP growth to the extent that the inflation target allows but to ensure that the tension in the economy does not cause overheating, which would jeopardise economic stability. The second crossroads is that, in recent months, the labour market situation has become much more serious than would have been anticipated given the state of the economy. The third lies in the unusual level of uncertainty about the inflation outlook, stemming from the interplay between domestic inflationary pressures and the global tendency towards deflation. And fourth is the recent rapid progress in solving the of the balance of payments problem Iceland has faced since the financial crisis struck and the approaching liberalisation of capital controls.
And while the deficits are running, the policy is continuously evaluated with regard to how it relates to the target path and how effective it appears to be.22 Although a time contingent strategy may be somewhat less attractive to economists than a state contingent one, it could have some advantages: it would probably be easier to implement and manage politically, as it has a predefined clear sunset clause. As long-term sustainable public finances are, of course, still a basic precondition, once the period is over, or once the set goal has been achieved, a switch is made to keeping the debt stable in relation to GDP again. Of course, even if a time contingent rather than state contingent strategy is chosen, the risk exists that politicians will start to consider, over time, that the floodgates have been opened or that it will be too difficult to end the expansionary policy. However, if the rules are set out in advance in a formal and clear framework, these risks should be manageable. After all, in Sweden, we have shown for many years now that we are quite good at continuously evaluating and debating our economic policy and sticking to frameworks that we have set up to fulfil long-term economic objectives.23  21 Such a policy would have some similarities with automatic stabilisers. These are also state contingent in the  sense that they start to work when something special occurs, for example when unemployment starts to rise.

SPEECH DATE:  08/12/2021  SPEAKER:  Deputy Governor Per Jansson  VENUE:  Sveriges Riksbank  SVERIGES RIKSBANK SE-103 37 Stockholm (Brunkebergstorg 11) Tel +46 8 787 00 00 Fax +46 8 21 05 31 registratorn@riksbank.se www.riksbank.se  Is it time to review the division of roles in macroeconomic policy? * Sometimes, developments can make you start pondering somewhat larger and more fundamental issues than you might usually do. This is how it has been for me recently. The question I would like to address today is whether it might be time for us to modify our view of the appropriate division of roles in macroeconomic policy, by which I mean our overall fiscal and monetary policy. I am not entirely sure of the answer myself, although I am inclined to believe that it is something we should probably do. In this talk, I will try to explain my preliminary and probably rather unfinished thoughts. What I am quite sure of, however, is that we have reached a point where it is time for us to start discussing what an appropriate division of macroeconomic roles would be. I am glad to say that the number of articles touching upon the subject has increased recently, and I hope that this speech will contribute further to this discussion. But let me take a step back and start from scratch. The devaluation policy reached the end of the road in the early 1990s Thirty years ago, the Swedish economy was in a dire situation.
Jean-Claude Trichet: How can we increase growth potential in Europe? Speech by Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank, at the Suomi Areena 2007, Pori, Finland, 20 July 2007. *  *  *  Dear Governor Liikanen, I would first like to thank you very warmly for inviting me on the occasion of the “Suomi Areena 2007” event. It is a pleasure and a honour to be here today and to share with you my views on “How can we increase growth potential in Europe”. In light of the partly disappointing euro area economic performance in the past, it is a major policy issue. By contrast, the impressive performance of the Finnish economy, with output and productivity growth over the second half of the 1990s among the highest in the European countries, [Real GDP and hourly labour productivity grew on average by 3.8% and 2.7% respectively between 1996 and 2006], offers a good illustration of what could be done to increase growth potential in Europe. The transformation of the Finnish economy over the last decades represents one of the examples of the “knowledge based-economy” taking hold in Europe. Against this background, I will first review the past economic growth performance of the euro area in comparison to the US and focus on some of the underlying factors of potential output growth. Then I will elaborate on the reforms which I consider essential to increase the potential growth rate of Europe.

It goes without saying that it is not only a quantitative issue and that at the same time the efficiency of research and development in terms of industrialisation  12  See P. Hartmann, F. Heider, E. Papaioannou and M. Lo Duca (2007), “The role of financial markets and innovation for productivity and growth in Europe”, ECB Occasional Paper forthcoming. 13  Some authors have calculated that if the average size of capital markets in the EU was bigger - in the US for instance this size is around 450% of GDP instead of 220% in the EU (based on an overall indicator measuring total financing in the economy by aggregating bank credit to the private sector, stock market capitalisation and the outstanding amount of domestic debt securities issued by the private sector) - then annual GDP per capita growth in the EU could be positively influenced (see G. Favara (2006), “An empirical reassessment of the relationship between finance and growth”, mimeo). 14  See the European Commission’s Green Paper entitled “Entrepreneurship in Europe”, 21.01.2003. 6  BIS Review 82/2007  is crucial. In the longer term, GDP could be up by 4.2% in 2015 and 7.0% in 2020, equivalent to an additional growth rate of nearly 0.5% per year 15 . Finally, to make these measures most effective, they need to be accompanied by efforts to improve the labour force’s level of education and expertise.
Confidence in a currency comes not only from its security but also its availability, especially during times of uncertainty. Central banks and financial institutions must have robust business continuity measures to ensure adequate supply of cash to meet surges in demand and the resilience of national payment systems. The second “C” is convenience. Although cash is widely used and accepted in our society today, e-payment alternatives such as mobile payments and electronic wallets are gaining popularity. The “tap-and-go” feature of contactless cards is much in sync with the hurried lifestyles of today, hence the growing popularity of these cards. Convenience is an important consideration in developments within the cashless space of payments. In 2008, for the first time, GIRO overtook cheques by volume of transactions in Singapore. In fact, GIRO itself – which is based on batch processing – will be eventually overtaken by straight-through, real-time payments systems. The third “C” is cost-effectiveness. Handling cash is costly. According to a 2010 study by Retail Banking Research, the cost of distributing, managing, handling, processing and recycling cash in Europe is estimated at € billion. This is equal to 0.6 per cent of Europe’s GDP. How to reduce the cost of cash without compromising confidence and convenience? A number of countries are exploring alternative note substrates and coinage materials to increase their durability, quality, security, and cost effectiveness. Besides managing manufacturing costs, countries are looking at the end-to-end costs of currency distribution and collection.

In fact, the World Bank has always emphasized the importance of knowledge, the necessity of continuous training – a key part of the educated workforce for creating jobs and economic growth. An additional argument are the targeted investments aimed at improving the quality of the educational process in the Republic of Macedonia and taking actions to facilitate the access of Macedonian citizens to the best global expertise. The importance of investment in human  BIS Review 175/2010  1  capital, as economists say, or in the so-called social capital, according to sociologists, is unquestionable. Within that platform, within the slogan – learn continuously to progress continuously, the cooperation between the National Bank and the World Bank has produced a nice event, a good product: logistical support for the process of increasing the knowledge. This logistical support is called: Joint Public Information Center of the NBRM and the World Bank. Today, we are practically announcing its official opening. Its primary function is to promote awareness of the Macedonian public about the work of the World Bank, through the dissemination of information and documentation of the Bank, and to provide access for the Macedonian citizens to extensive collection of contemporary professional literature. In fact, this center is another public information service of the World Bank in Macedonia, along the Depository Library, which operates within the Faculty of Economics, “Ss. Cyril and Methodius” University in Skopje.