Data
Lower public spending holding back Middle East and Central Asia
Efficient and targeted investments require comprehensive data, says IMF paper
Reserve Benchmarks 2020 report – charting new data frontiers
Perspectives on staffing and salaries, reserve coverage, portfolio construction, benchmarking, use of external parties and risk management
BIS paper delves into new fintech database
Authors investigate rise of “big tech credit” in many economies
Bank of Canada sets out pandemic-adjusted CPI methodology
Pandemic triggered rapid shift in consumers’ spending habits
Lower-income countries generate highest reserves growth
Most reserves portfolios appear to have weathered the Covid-19 crisis well
Half of reserve managers use bespoke index benchmarks
Those using external managers can choose bespoke, but public indexes remain predominant
Modellers should not exclude pandemic-era data – ECB paper
Excluding pandemic data from time series would “vastly underestimate uncertainty”, authors argue
Central Banking’s strategic changes for a new era
New institute, benchmarks, virtual training and online event weeks launched
Asia tops rankings for reserves coverage ratios
Asia leads across three main metrics, but the region may be moderating its holdings
Europe leads on reserve manager salaries
Central banks pay a wide range of salaries to their reserve managers
Lower-income nations invest more with external managers
Third-party institutions offer staff training and new asset class investments
Deep learning can beat other forecast methods – Bank of Korea research
Deep learning models have smaller margin of error than conventional methods, research finds, but data quality is key
BoE officials fear long-term ‘scarring’ as uncertainty hits record high
MPC members broadly gloomy on the outlook, but there is “huge” uncertainty, says Andrew Bailey
BoE open to heterodox tools in new research agenda
Traditional tools of economic analysis “cannot always answer every question”, says Andrew Bailey
RBA hones in on data management as part of 2021 strategic plan
Central bank will look to bolster technology infrastructure
Demand driving fall in US inflation – San Francisco paper
Economic sectors sensitive to Covid-19 saw big drop in demand, researcher finds
James Bullard on the Fed’s policy review, FSOC and forecasting jobs data
St Louis Fed president discusses his support for average inflation targeting, his concerns about US Treasuries market function, non-bank regulatory weakness and negative rates, as well as the unexpected success in using Homebase data to predict highly…
Covid-19 policy-making and the need for high-speed data
High-frequency data holds the promise of speed and adaptability, but the rush to find alternative economic indicators has the potential to create problems
ECB paper sets out new dataset on trade invoicing currencies
Dataset sheds new light on the importance of “dominant currency paradigm”, authors say
Foreign financing can help exporters survive – BIS paper
Result could be important for the development of emerging economies, authors say
Computing platforms for big data and AI
Implementing big-data and high-performance computing platforms is critical to support machine learning applications. Rafael Schmidt and Bruno Tissot offer insights on developing a comprehensive information strategy
IMF urges broad shake-up of US financial stability framework
Rapidly changing financial landscape poses challenges for the complex oversight framework, IMF says
Taiwan central bank open to more onshore insurer FX hedging
Central bank suggests lifers can use onshore swaps to hedge dividends, but some warn it could hit NDF market
Australian central bank cuts growth and jobs forecasts
RBA forecasts 10% unemployment by year’s end as official says recovery will be ‘uneven’