samchain/econo-pairs-v1 huggingface dataset:
In this context, the banking industry now has a more adequate legal and regulatory framework on protecting the interests of the creditor, repossessing collateral and executing it, and a more transparent environment for assessing the risk of individual borrowers. On this basis, the Bank of Albania deems that the banking sector, should: Pay additional attention to crediting as a commitment that generates mutual benefits both for it and the Albanian economy; Empower internal structures and its analytical and managerial capacities in terms of crediting; Ensure prioritized implementation of outstanding commitments under the plan of measures for reducing non-performing loans; and, Be more vocal and more transparent in identifying obstacles or deficiencies it finds in the crediting environment, both in legal and in regulatory aspects. These recommendations should not be addressed separately from the second challenge. 2. Efficient allocation of bank loans as a precondition for sustainable and long-term development Increased attention to crediting does not imply merely increased attention to the volume of credit, but also additional attention to its quality. These two aspects are complementary and do not contradict each other in the long run. The history of credit in transition economies, including Albania, features some problematic elements which we need to avoid in the future. First, credit has been notably concentrated in non-tradable goods and services, such as residential buildings and services, which are oriented solely – or primarily – toward the domestic market.

2.1  Prevention  At the international level, the implementation of preventative measures is already well advanced, in that the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision – in coordination with decisions by the G20 and the FSB – has decided on important measures in the fields of capital and liquidity regulation. The consultation package on this matter will be published in early 2010. The measures designed to strengthen capital include stricter calibration of risk weights to determine the regulatory capital, improvement in the quality of this capital buffer and a direct limitation on the level of debt (leverage ratio). The combined effect of all these measures will  BIS Review 167/2009  1  be analysed by the Basel Committee during the course of 2010 in order to calibrate the overall capital requirements. Liquidity regulation measures are aimed at securing financial institutions’ flow of liquidity, particularly during times of crisis. The Basel Committee is proposing a global minimum standard for liquidity regulation. This is to ensure that financial institutions build up a liquidity buffer which allows them to remain liquid in short-term and medium-term stress scenarios. In line with the decisions of the Basel Committee, we have already implemented stricter riskweighted capital requirements in Switzerland, supplemented by a leverage ratio. The capital requirements are designed to be anticyclical, i.e. in good times, banks are required to build up a capital buffer in excess of a given minimum level. By contrast, in bad times, the capital buffer is permitted to fall below that level.
The gap between savings and investment is therefore huge: the current account surplus reached EUR 350 billion on a yearly basis in August 2016, which is more than 3% of GDP. This “investment crunch” – rather than the “saving glut” – is holding back our growth. It is true that part of the decline in total investment since the crisis has come from a drop in real estate investment: it was booming before the crisis, especially in countries experiencing real estate bubbles such as Spain. But what matters the most for our long term growth is business investment – and more precisely “productive investment” (slide 6): this includes investment in research and development and industrial machinery, as opposed to investment in construction which in itself does not spur innovation. One issue for concern is that the productive investment rate has long remained below its pre-crisis level in the euro area. What is more, it has been weaker in France and Spain than in the euro area as a whole, although it has been recovering in recent years especially in Spain. These developments have translated into a striking change in businesses’ behaviour (slide 7): since mid-2009, euro area non-financial corporations have turned from net borrowers into net lenders, thereby fuelling the euro area current account surplus. Page 6 sur 8 2. To address the “investment crunch”, we need a comprehensive therapy, both economic and financial. On the economic side, business investment depends indeed on two levers (slide 8). The first one is expected demand.

To banks, we urge you to embrace fintech, and join the CDI platform. To data providers, we invite you to contribute meaningful data, such as logistics data and procurement data between buyers and suppliers, to enrich the types of data available. To SME owners, we encourage you to contact your bank and understand more about CDI. Together, we can take Hong Kong’s data ecosystem to new heights, and ultimately contribute to bridging the global trade financing gap. 15. The benefits of a more digitally integrated trade finance system are plentiful, that much is certain; and the HKMA strives to help bring about an enhanced system in collaboration with different stakeholders. We look forward to working with the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and the Fung Group in this regard so that the needs of the underserved segments can be better catered for. 16. Before I close, I’d like to take this opportunity to offer you a glimpse of the HKMA’s vision of digitalising cross-border trade. For those of you who have been following our CBDC developments closely, you will know that we are working on a project called mBridge. We have already developed a trial CBDC platform, and it has proven ability to speed up crossborder payments from multiple days to near real-time. 17. We are now exploring the feasibility of connecting eTradeConnect, CDI, and mBridge to strengthen the synergy between the three and further digitalise the cross-border trade process.
Weak demand from Europe and a strong krone exchange rate are holding back some segments of the Norwegian export industry. Even though capacity utilisation is above a normal level, the key policy rate in Norway is low because inflation is low and interest rates abroad are very low. These factors are limiting how quickly the key policy rate in Norway can be raised. Despite some disturbances to the economy over the past decade, inflation in Norway has been low and stable, showing that monetary policy has functioned effectively. With firmly anchored inflation expectations, Norges Bank has also been able to consider economic stability when setting the key policy rate. We are constantly learning more about the interaction between monetary policy and financial stability, and as mentioned inflation targeting in Norway has become more flexible. At the same time, we cannot overburden monetary policy. In balancing the various considerations, we will adhere to the primary objective of monetary policy – low and stable inflation. It is too early to say whether Norway has really managed to contain the Dutch disease. Our framework has still not been tested against a large and persistent negative oil price shock. From a high starting point, wages have grown faster in Norway than among our trading partners for the past ten years. Our currency has appreciated considerably in real terms. I believe the real test of our framework will come when the present boom in the petroleum industry – at some point – is reversed. Thank you for your attention.

We experienced a collapse in house prices, as well as a severe banking crisis, a foreign exchange crisis, fiscal deficits and high inflation. Hermod Skånland, the Norwegian central bank governor at that time, summarised the causes of the crisis as “bad banking, bad policy and bad luck.” Efforts were now focused on bringing public spending under control, while large parts of the banking system were nationalised. Unemployment soared. Monetary policy aimed at a stable krone exchange rate, resulting in high real interest rates. But with a binding commitment to a fixed exchange rate, inflation was brought under control. The banking crisis and the downturn in the early 1990s made clear how vulnerable our small open economy was to terms-of-trade shocks and that our banks needed to be properly regulated. Furthermore, it became evident to policymakers how hard it is to conduct countercyclical economic policy, or even to avoid being procyclical. In the following years, structural reforms were implemented in order to increase growth capacity, including a major general tax reform. The tax code had already been tailored to capture the economic rent in the petroleum sector – the petroleum company tax rate is about 80 percent. Confidence in monetary policy gradually gained a firmer footing, after a succession of devaluations had come to a halt. Inflation and the real interest rate declined, and cost competitiveness improved considerably. Norway has not experienced a really pronounced economic downturn since the crisis around 1990.
259-264. Goodhart, C and Pradhan, M (2020), ‘The Great Demographic Reversal: ageing societies, waning inequalities and an inflation revival’, published by Palgrave Macmillan; 1st ed. 2020. Haldane, A (2018) ‘Pay power’, Speech given at ACAS Future of Work Conference, available here. Johnson, R (2018) ‘Measuring global value chains’ American Review of Economics, 10:207-36. Malmendier, U, and Nagel, S (2011), “Depression Babies: Do Macroeconomic Experiences Affect RiskTaking?” Quarterly Journal of Economics, February 2011, vol. 126(1), pp. 373-416. O’Connor, M and Portes, J (2021) ‘Estimating the UK population during the pandemic’, available here. Orphanides, A and Williams, J (2007) ‘Robust monetary policy with imperfect knowledge’, Journal of Monetary Economics, Vol. 54, Issue 5. Tenreyro, S (2020) ‘Monetary policy during pandemics: inflation before, during and after Covid-19’, Speech available here. Von Hayek, FA (1972) ‘A tiger by the tail: the Keynesian legacy of inflation’ published jointly by the Institute of Economic Affairs and the von Mises Institute. 24  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  24

Dimitar Radev: Positive trends in the banking sector are expected to continue in 2019, however with possible increased challenges Publication by Mr Dimitar Radev, Governor of the Bulgarian National Bank, in the Quarterly Bulletin of the Association of Banks in Bulgaria, issue 56, January 2019. * * * In 2018 the banking sector continued to maintain high level of capital adequacy and liquidity, also generating historically high annual profit. Deposits in the banking system increased, lending grew, and the share of nonperforming loans dropped. We expect these positive dynamics in the sector to continue altogether through 2019. Loan portfolios are a primary source of operating income for the banks in Bulgaria, but credit growth is by definition associated with assumption of new risk. At this stage of credit expansion, banks should continue making adequate efforts to manage the credit risk accumulating on their balance sheets. Large part of the central bank’s recent activities, in our capacity as a regulator and supervisor of the banking system, is focused on the risk associated with bank lending. The BNB Governing Council decided to activate the countercyclical capital buffer from this year. In December 2018, the National Assembly passed new legislative amendments, proposed by the BNB, which provide us with an additional macro-prudential toolbox of measures regarding bank lending. It includes for example BNB’s new powers to require enforcement of limiting the loan-to-value ratio or the debt-to-borrower’s income ratio.
After that we considered it would be probably possible to pause before making a further increase. In our Monetary Policy Report we highlight two other possible interest rate paths to show the considerations that need to be made. One of these involves the interest rate being raised at a slower pace and the other a more rapid pace than in the main scenario. With our current knowledge of the state of the economy and inflationary pressures, our assessment is that faster interest rate increases would lead to excessively low inflation. Correspondingly, slower interest rate increases would lead to excessively high inflation. Let me point out in conclusion that the inflation assessment we make now is not particularly different from the one we made in October, when we published our previous report. From the comments in the mass media, one might get the impression that the Riksbank had made a drastic change in its views of inflationary pressures in the economy. But this is not the case. On the other hand, we now believe that growth will be a little higher and employment growth will be stronger than we forecast in October. At the same time, it appears that the labour supply will increase a little more than we assumed then. Our inflation forecast therefore remains largely the same. Our assessment of the interest rate has therefore also changed very little. In October we based our inflation forecast on the market’s expectations of the development of the repo rate.

We can, and have, and I hope will, take account of the exchange rate in our tactical approach to monetary policy. But with the best will in the world, what we cannot sensibly do, is to ignore the strength of domestic demand in order to shelter the exposed sectors. That would put the whole of the economy at risk to accelerating inflation - including those sectors we were seeking to protect. And it would not be of much help to them in anything other than the short term. The monetary policy option is - as I say - not whether or not, it is sooner or later, and ultimately less or more. The elements of hope that I can hold out to you - and central bankers can never give guarantees on this kind of thing - are first, that as we move into the euro process the markets will become increasingly persuaded that the ECB will, in fact, be committed to the stability of the new currency, as I am sure it will: and, secondly, that relative monetary conditions will change as activity picks up on the Continent and domestic demand moderates in this country. Our present exchange rate dilemma, Mr. Chairman, illustrates rather well the conflicting arguments about the euro project itself. The strengthening of sterling and its effect on the exposed sectors of the economy point up very vividly the very real advantages of the exchange rate certainty across the European Union area which only the euro can provide.
Globalisation can affect inflation dynamics through various channels: (1) by influencing the responsiveness of wages and prices to measures of domestic slack in the labour and product markets (that is, by affecting the slope of the shortterm Phillips curve and the sensitivity of profit margins to cyclical factors); (2) by affecting trend productivity growth; and (3) by causing shifts in the “natural rate of unemployment” or NAIRU; (4) by making a measure of “global economic slack” an important determinant of domestic inflationary pressure; and (5), more directly, by affecting the trend rates of change of the relative prices of imported final goods, intermediate products and commodities. It is important to keep in mind the various channels and potential effects because their impact can be offsetting, and also because theoretical arguments and empirical analyse often focus only on some of the potential channels, thus providing a partial picture. I will elaborate on some of these effects and the empirical evidence for the euro area. Economic theory does not provide unambiguous conclusions about the impact of globalisation on the slope of the short-term Phillips curve, that is, on the responsiveness of domestic inflation to measures of domestic economic slack, e.g. the output gap and/or the deviation of unemployment from its natural rate. Arguments can be advanced – and have been advanced – that imply that globalisation would tend to make the Phillips curve flatter 7 or steeper.

The exchange rate channel plays a more prominent role than the interest rate channel in the monetary transmission mechanism, to an extent which depends on the relative size of a country and the degree of financial market integration. This result is fully consistent with basic economic theory. Thus, the ability of central banks to control price developments over the medium term by influencing aggregate demand is not undermined, although the role and relative importance of different transmission channels might be affected by increasing global financial integration. What is the empirical evidence about the potential impact of globalisation on this channel of the monetary transmission mechanism? It is theoretically plausible that globalisation can influence to a certain extent key determinants of long-term interest rates, such as the global riskless real interest rate and the real risk premium. 2 Moreover, inflation expectations and the inflation risk premium may also have been influenced to some degree by the forces of globalisation, though monetary policy across the globe has certainly been the main factor. There is some empirical evidence that in the euro area, as well as in a broader sample of OECD countries, long-term rates are reacting less to changes in short-term rates than they used to. 3 Global factors seem to be increasingly important in determining national real bond yields. 4 Furthermore, the co-movement of US, German and Japanese bond yields has been exceptionally high over the past few years.
Past experience suggests peoples’ perceptions are sensitive to these macro-economic factors which is why economists sometimes combine the two in a so-called “misery index”.3 (Economics is not called the dismal science for nothing.) If you plot this index over time, and project it into the future using the Bank’s most recent forecasts, two features stand out (Chart 4). First, by the end of this year the misery index will have risen to around 8%, over two percentage points higher than at the start of the year. Economically, this is a significant rise. But, second, in the historical scheme of things this move is nonetheless fairly modest and the level of misery, comparatively-speaking, 3  See Nessen (2008) 6  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  6  remains fairly low. The misery index also suggests some wedge has opened up between public perceptions and policymaker expectations for the economy.

This filtering of good news, and accentuation of the bad, is a familiar pattern of human behaviour at times of stress and uncertainty. Psychologists call it “catastrophizing” – discounting the best and fixating on the worst, whatever the balance of risks. It is a well-known problem among people suffering anxiety or depression. Economy-wide, the result has been collective dread risk, fanned by contagious pessimism. There is some evidence of a detachment from fundamentals in the behaviour of financial markets too. Chart 6 plot the responsiveness of various financial prices (interest rates, equities and the exchange rate) to macro-economic news in the two years period to the Covid crisis and during this year. Pre-Covid, all three market prices were sensitive to macro news. Since Covid, this relationship has disappeared. Financial markets, recently, have detached from economic fundamentals. 9  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/speeches and @BoE_PressOffice  9  Charts 6 Financial market sensitivity to economic news 3 year sterling interest rates  Sterling ERI  FTSE All-Share  Source: Bloomberg Finance L.P., Reuters Tick data from Refinitiv and Bank calculations. The Role of Policy There is another reason why people may, at present, have an exaggerated sense of anxiety. The risks they face (to health, jobs and Brexit) are perceived to be beyond their control. It is well-known that events perceived to be uncontrollable add to anxiety.
Stefan Ingves: Financial turbulence, monetary policy and inflation Speech by Mr Stefan Ingves, Governor of the Sveriges Riksbank, to SACO, the Swedish Confederation of Professional Associations, Stockholm, 24 September 2008. *  *  *  When storms are raging in the world around you and the course is affected, it is important to keep focus on where you are heading. Take in as much information as possible and steer back towards the target in the way that provides the best journey home. In a way, this is how the Riksbank tries to conduct its monetary policy. The inflation target is to provide economic stability, in particular when there is turbulence in the world around us. The original idea was that I would come here today to talk about monetary policy. And I will do so. But the international turmoil, particularly in the financial markets, has escalated in recent weeks. I would therefore like to begin first by saying a few words about this, and about the measures taken by the Riksbank and others to counteract the effects of the financial crisis in the United States. The financial turbulence One can say that the Riksbank is active in two main areas. One is monetary policy. The other is what is usually known as financial stability – promoting a safe and efficient payment system, as it is written in the Sveriges Riksbank Act. To simplify, this means ensuring that payments in the Swedish economy can be made securely and efficiently.

We have  BIS Review 115/2008  3  experienced many years of extremely good economic growth and low inflation. Now we must be prepared for high inflation, higher interest rates and lower employment possibly leading to a deterioration of the finances of many Swedish households over a couple of years. Monetary policy often comes into focus in this type of situation. The recent debate – is the Riksbank chasing inflation spectres? The Riksbank’s interest rate increases have been much discussed recently. It has been said that the Bank is chasing a non-existent inflation spectre, that the inflation target should be scrapped or reformulated, and that the Riksbank should take more notice of economic activity than inflation. To begin with, inflation is a real problem for many households. Inflation means that everyone gets less for their money. Oil, electricity and food prices have risen substantially. These goods are an important part of household consumption. Together food and energy comprise approximately one quarter of the CPI. The fact that, for instance, oil and food prices have risen so much here in Sweden is largely because these goods have become more expensive in the world market. Should the inflation target be reformulated? Some of the recent criticism has concerned whether the inflation target should apply to some other measure than the CPI. The idea is that monetary policy should stabilise around a measure of inflation that excludes import prices. The Riksbank is in any case unable to affect prices in the world market.