samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
The Scheme has covered over 9m jobs and is estimated to cost £ 1 2  See Portes (2020): The lasting scars of the Covid-19 crisis: Channels and impacts See May 2020 interim Financial Stability Report 2  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  2  VAT and other tax deferrals amounting to £ have eased immediate corporate cash flow pressures. And other business support measures costing up to £ have been put in place.3  Nevertheless, the scale of disruption means that, even after these powerful measures, we estimated in May that the 85,000 biggest businesses could have faced a cash-flow deficit of up to around £ this year if they were to preserve employment and productive capacity. And in addition, businesses will face the challenge of rolling over some £ of outstanding debts that are due to mature over the next year. These businesses have buffers of cash amounting to around £ that can be drawn on to help meet their needs during the disruption. In the face of uncertainty they will be unwilling to draw them down completely. So the preservation of economic muscle is reliant on raising external finance. [See slide 2 of accompanying deck]  The monetary and fiscal policy responses have therefore been complemented with a financial response. That aims to support the financing of cash-flow deficits. It has centred on getting funding markets functioning and bank lending flowing. And as a result, progress has been made to protect economic muscle.

Dimitar Bogov: Addressing structural rigidities in view of monetary policy transmission effectiveness Address by Mr Dimitar Bogov, Governor of the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia, at the 4th Research Conference “Addressing structural rigidities in view of monetary policy transmission effectiveness”, Skopje, 23 April 2015. *  *  *  Dear Governors, Your Excellences, Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear guests, It is my pleasure to welcome you all, on our fourth Research Conference, entitled Addressing Structural Rigidities in View of Monetary Policy Transmission Effectiveness. Just like the previous years, we hope that the topic of this conference is both interesting and challenging to provide an interactive framework for discussion and research-based policy advices for the central bankers. Structural rigidities, indeed, are related to a wide range of economic segments. Therefore, today we will try to tackle different economic issues, enlightening their importance for the monetary policy transmission effectiveness. Transition economies have undergone many structural changes in the ongoing reshaping of the economies, which to some extent have influenced the monetary policy decision making or monetary policy transmission channels. Globalization is yet another factor that tends to produce changes in the economic structure and at the same time, affects the markets functioning or economic agents’ behavior.
But, as a French and European citizen, I cannot help and feel proud of having one the two main currencies in the world. In sum, benefits of the euro include a high degree of credibility of monetary policy reflected in the level of long-term interest rates; diminished exchange rate volatility; completion of the single market and encouragement to cross-border trade. None of this, of course, can be taken for granted. Benign conditions currently prevailing on financial markets can be reversed. Shocks may be coming, which would impact negatively European economies. Despite some signs of cooling, imbalances are still building up, especially in the housing sector, fuelled by a dynamic expansion of credit, although in no way comparable to those in some other developed economies. But I have the strong conviction that we are fully equipped to deal with any contingency, and, provided the necessary structural reforms are undertaken, keep the economy on a path of growth and stability. BIS Review 51/2007  1  2)  How have those successes been achieved? A lot comes, in my view, from the institutional and operational framework in which monetary policy is developed and implemented. The independence of the ECB and of the 13 participating NCBs is enshrined in the Treaty. They are institutionally, operationally and financially independent from European Community institutions and national governments. We have a clear and transparent definition of price stability: inflation below but close to 2% over the medium-term. The monetary policy framework of the Eurosystem is “medium-term” oriented.

Christian Noyer: Is the euro a success story? Speech by Mr Christian Noyer, Governor of the Bank of France, at the First French-Indian Financial Forum, Paris EUROPLACE, Mumbai, 16 May 2007. *  *  *  It is a great pleasure for me to be here today and to have the opportunity to address such a distinguished audience. I want to talk to you about a success story: the euro. As you well know, there have been difficult times for the European integration. The Treaty creating a Constitution for Europe was not ratified in 2005 and the future of political integration is still fraught with uncertainties. Also, much remains to be done, in terms of structural reform, if the European countries want to achieve the same level of long term growth as other developed economies. Nevertheless, I feel very optimistic. And the reason for this optimism is the euro. The single currency has demonstrated its potential to bring enormous benefits to European nations, which they can use to achieve a high degree of stability and prosperity. 1)  What are those benefits? The first, and most obvious, is price stability. Over the last years, inflation has stayed broadly in line with the price stability objective set by the European Central Bank, i.e. inflation below but close to 2% over the medium-term. Gone are the days when European citizens had to worry about the purchasing power of their savings. This stability goes beyond the behaviour of prices.
But in the current crisis, which has no precedents in many decades, to look at simple correlations based on normal periods can be very misleading. From my standpoint, it is more important to conceptualize what is happening today, in order to analyze the prospects of the economy and draw policy conclusions. To address this subject I will use some basic economics that will allow us to understand the synchrony and severity of the current crisis. These arguments have been present for many years in the profession and have gained enormous importance today. The first refers to the existence of multiple equilibria and the effect of failed coordination. The second deals with the effect of uncertainty on economic decision making. These two elements help us understand how the confidence crisis that swept the world aggravated the output contraction, hitting hardest the demand for industrial goods. In the next section I will describe the main  BIS Review 76/2009  1  ideas that clarify the impact of the confidence crisis, and then analyze the international scenario in the following section. Some basic ideas The objective here is to account for the basic ideas behind the coordination failures, multiple equilibria and how uncertainty affects aggregate demand. Coordination failures Let us assume a very simple economy 1 with a large number of consumers. Each consumer demands D units of a manufactured good, which we can think of as a durable good (e.g., car, house, appliance, electronic device).

The natural question here is: what was the ingredient that led the financial events of midSeptember of last year to end up the way they did? The developed world entered a severe recession, and output dropped simultaneously in most countries. The crisis spread around the world like a virus, with unprecedented and, of course, unforeseen strength and speed, making no distinctions among economies’ strengths or weaknesses (Figure 1). What happened? Why was there no differentiation? How could such massive contagion occur? Why the synchrony? All of these are very important questions in understanding how the crisis was transmitted and how we will make it through. If there is one thing that is difficult to explain it is the intensity of its impact. In Chile, neither the path that the domestic economic cycle was experiencing nor the analysis of traditional transmission channels for an external crisis – that is, financial and commercial channels – are capable of fully explaining what happened (De Gregorio, 2009). The hypothesis that seems to have most ground at the moment is that a deterioration in global confidence, understood as a worsening of expectations and increased uncertainty around the world, has amplified the response to the initial impact, pushing us into a more acute and synchronized crisis than we could envision at first. It helps to study the historical relationships among the data if cycles and patterns tend to repeat themselves on a regular basis.
Contrastingly, beginning from early 2021, we have been recording a rise in prices for an increasingly larger number of goods. This is evidence that the impact of aggregate demand factors on observed inflation is intensifying. This in turn proves that accommodative monetary policy has already made the necessary contribution to creating the conditions for economic recovery. We expect that Russia’s GDP will return to its pre-pandemic levels already in 2021 H2, possibly by the middle of the year. What might happen if we delay the end of accommodative monetary policy? First of all, inflation would remain elevated. Its rate is elevated at the moment. This would undermine the purchasing power of households’ incomes. Second, deposit rates would remain low. This would adversely affect both the purchasing power of savings and households’ demand for deposits as a store of value. Eventually, the banking system would have fewer resources to further support economic development and promote the growth of economic potential. Third, if an increase in the key rate was delayed, this would prolong the period of elevated inflation and, thus, higher inflation expectations. A delay might force us to raise the key rate more significantly and not only return to a neutral rate (which ranges from 5% to 6% in nominal terms), but, possibly, even switch to tight monetary policy. I would like to emphasise once again that we were able to shift towards accommodative monetary policy last year solely because we had been keeping inflation at a low level for several previous years.

Elvira Nabiullina: Bank of Russia’s 2020 Annual Report Speech by Ms Elvira Nabiullina, Governor of the Bank of Russia, at the joint meeting of State Duma dedicated committees on Bank of Russia’s 2020 Annual Report, 27 May 2021. * * * Good afternoon, Mr Aksakov. Good afternoon, dear colleagues. First of all, I would like to thank the members of the dedicated committees for the meaningful analysis and assessment of our work in 2020. Both within working groups and at the meeting with parliamentary fractions that my colleagues and I attended, we received not only comments, but also suggestions regarding measures that might be implemented in the future to develop the financial market. We will surely study them in detail. I would like to affirm that I and my colleagues, who are also present here today, would be glad to answer your questions. We are ready to provide various types of information about our work, results, and objectives. The heads of the committees of the National Financial Board, where all issues are discussed, also carry out extensive work. Hence, we are closely communicating with the State Duma not only when we present our report, but also throughout the year.
12  See Eggertsson, G. and M. Woodford (2003): The Zero Bound on Interest Rates and Optimal Monetary Policy. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 2003:1, pp. 139–211, and Krugman, P. (1998): It’s Baaack: Japan’s Slump and the Return of the Liquidity Trap. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 1998:2, pp 137–205. 8  BIS central bankers’ speeches  I want to reiterate here that monetary policy in Norway will continue to be oriented towards low and stable inflation. This objective provides the economy with a nominal anchor. With firmly anchored inflation expectations, monetary policy can contribute to stable developments in the real economy. Since the inflation target was introduced in 2001, inflation has varied to some extent, but has, on average, remained close to 2.5 percent. And monetary policy has been able to respond rapidly to changes in the economic situation. The monetary policy mandate provides room for flexibility and discretion.In the light of the international debate on the role of monetary policy, Norges Bank, as the country’s central bank, should also conduct a thorough assessment of the framework for flexible inflation targeting within our current mandate. Thank you for your attention. BIS central bankers’ speeches  9  10  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  11  12  BIS central bankers’ speeches  BIS central bankers’ speeches  13  14  BIS central bankers’ speeches

Thomas Jordan: Real estate prices falling in the US, rising in Switzerland – implications for the SNB’s monetary policy Summary of a speech by Mr Thomas Jordan, Member of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank, at the Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft, Chur, 18 December 2007. The complete speech can be found in German on the Swiss National Bank’s website (www.snb.ch). *  *  *  Developments in the real estate market are important for monetary policy. Real estate markets can influence inflation and economic cycles, but also the stability of the financial system. Property bubbles can result in a massive misdirection of capital and thus give rise to lengthy and difficult adjustment processes. Therefore, the SNB closely monitors developments on the real estate markets both in Switzerland and abroad. The economic outlook is still clouded by undesirable developments on the US real estate market, notably in the period 2004-2006. Given the size of the United States and the broad international spread of investments in the US mortgage market, these distortions have had a serious impact on the world’s financial markets and on global economic development. For some years now, Switzerland too has been experiencing a construction boom and a relatively sharp rise in property prices in certain regions and in given market segments. Comparison of the Swiss and US real estate markets shows, however, that these markets differ in a number of key respects.
The FOMC should not simply set its policy instruments by mechanically aligning them with historical norms if those norms are not currently relevant for the conditions needed to attain both of our dual mandate goals. Rather, our policy instruments should be set to achieve our ultimate goals as efficaciously as  2  4  See, for example, Kocherlakota (2013). BIS central bankers’ speeches  possible given current and prospective economic conditions, all the while with an eye on managing against important risks to the outlook. I believe that the biggest risk we face today is prematurely engineering restrictive monetary conditions. In this scenario, the FOMC could misjudge the presence and magnitude of economic impediments and misread the recent progress we have made as evidence of sounder economic trends. If we were to presume prematurely that the U.S. economy has returned to a more business-as-usual position and reduce monetary accommodation too soon, we could find ourselves in the very uncomfortable position of falling back into the ZLB environment. Such an outcome could be a serious setback to the timely attainment of our dual mandate policy objectives. This risk consideration means that the decision to lift the funds rate from zero should be made only when we have a great deal of confidence that growth has enough momentum to reach full employment and that inflation will return to a sustainable 2 percent rate. We should also proceed cautiously and keep the path of rate increases relatively shallow for some time after we begin to raise rates.

Other indicators – such as long-term unemployment, the rate of involuntary part time work, and the job finding rate – also point to more slack in labor markets than that indicated by the unemployment rate alone. In addition, it is hard to imagine a robust labor market without solid growth in wages. With productivity growth of around 1 to 2 percent and an inflation target of around 2 percent, we should be seeing wages and benefits rising at around a 3 to 4 percent rate. But that is clearly not the case. Although some in-demand occupations may be experiencing stronger wage growth, overall compensation growth has been around 2 percent over the past six years. Taken altogether, these and other measures lead me to conclude that there remains significant underutilization of labor resources – and likely somewhat more slack than what is indicated by the unemployment rate alone. So, while good progress has been made, we have yet to achieve our full-employment goal. Too-low inflation The other element of our dual mandate is stable prices. The Fed defines its target as 2 percent inflation over the medium term, with inflation being measured as the rate of change in the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Price Index. Earlier in the year, the inflation rate had been well below that target, at 1-1/4 percent. It has moved up a little since then, but inflation is still only 1-1/2 percent, still leaving a significant gap from our 2 percent target.
While we are now at the point where we anticipate – subject to incoming data confirming our medium-term inflation outlook – that we will end net asset purchases at the end of the year, significant monetary stimulus will still be needed to ensure the continued sustained convergence of inflation to levels that are below, but close to, 2% over the medium term. Even after we end our net asset purchases, monetary stimulus will continue to be provided by the guidance we have given namely that we expect to keep interest rates at their present levels at least through the summer of 2019 and to maintain the stock of assets on our balance sheet by reinvesting maturing bonds purchased under the asset purchase programme for an extended period of time 1/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  after the end of our net asset purchases. But the overall favourable outlook and our still accommodative stance should not invite complacency. Although on the whole the risks surrounding the euro area growth outlook can still be assessed as broadly balanced, risks relating to protectionism, vulnerabilities in emerging markets and financial market volatility remain/are prominent. We are seeing a growing willingness to question multilateralism, which has underpinned global growth since the end of the Second World War. The protectionist trade measures implemented may have had very limited effects thus far, but the escalation of trade tensions is undermining confidence. Financial stability Allow me also to say a few words about euro area financial stability.

This means that a credit expansion process is likely to lead to some credit quality problems in roughly that time horizon. The average duration of the economic cycle (from boom to bust) is similar. This implies that if banks only look at contemporary bad loans to determine their credit risk policies, they will restrain credit and increase risk premia in the downturn. The higher cost of funding for bank-dependent borrowers will feed back to activity, reinforcing recessionary forces. I turn now to provisions. In Spain, until year 2000, loan loss provisions were strongly pro-cyclical (as in many other countries), because they were largely linked to the volume of contemporaneous problem assets. This static provisions are backward-looking, they are based on past events. Only are accounted for loan by loan when borrowers fail to repay or in some cases when the situation of the borrower deteriorates significantly. As a consequence, the ratio of provisions to total loans fell therefore during periods of economic growth and tended to rise considerably during downturns (see lower part of Graph 3). As a result of this, the latent risk of loan portfolios was not properly recognised in the profit and loss account under the old system. In periods of economic expansion the fall in doubtful loans went hand in hand with the decrease in provisions, which in turn allowed bank managers to improve bottom-line profits.
Enhancing the framework As I’ve said earlier, supervisors recognize it is important to ensure that the oversight framework continues to function efficiently. In that regard, the Federal Reserve recently participated in a review, as mandated by the Economic Growth and Regulatory Paperwork Reduction Act of 1996 (EGRPRA), to identify rules that are outdated, unnecessary, or unduly burdensome. The full report covers 430 pages, so I’d like to highlight three of the recommendations that may be of interest to Second District community bankers. They relate to simplifying capital requirements; reducing regulatory reporting; and reducing the frequency of examinations for certain qualifying, smaller firms. Capital is in many ways the foundation of the health of the banking system. It’s important to note that more than 500 banks failed during and after the financial crisis because they lacked sufficient capital, and many of them were community banks. Nonetheless, we have consistently heard since then that some of the capital rules are too complex for community banks and not commensurate with their size and risk profile. This link with the risk profile is critical and an important part of our efforts to “tailor” our supervisory approaches. As part of the EGRPRA process, we are continuing to think about ways to simplify the capital rules. The agencies are developing a proposal and are planning to seek industry comments on certain proposed amendments to the capital rules.

It is crucial to take immediate measures to tackle the inflation that we see on the horizon. This is the Central Bank’s mandatory role and the Bank is determined to perform it. The more that other economic agents contribute towards containing expansionary trends, namely the central government, local government and credit institutions, the easier it will be to ensure long-term stability. The successful economic policies of past years must not be swept aside in favour of short-term solutions that would ultimately only backfire. BIS Review 22/2005  5