Data
Demand for US services likely to rebound- Cleveland Fed survey
Study says US consumers have become more optimistic, except older people
Most central banks spend less than 20% of their IT budget on security
Average spend was 16% of IT budget
Regulating big tech and non-bank financial services in the digital era
Big tech incursions into financial services in China and elsewhere demonstrate the potential benefits of adopting a digital-bank or holding-company approach to financial regulation
‘Bottom-up’ approach can improve inflation forecasts – BoE paper
Item-level inflation data contains useful information for forecasting, authors find
Central banks take less than 50 minutes to fix critical outages
Time tolerances for critical system downtime range from one to 32 hours
IMF climate dashboard reveals pattern of vulnerabilities
Data ranges from frequency of natural disasters to carbon intensity of lending
BIS launches database on Covid-19 monetary policy actions
Data designed to help researchers study “massive” policy response to pandemic
Payment innovation is top fintech research priority for central banks
CBDC ranked second as central banks explore wider implications of fintech for payments
High income economy central banks’ technology costs vary widely
Some central banks in advanced economies have kept costs as low as those in poorer nations
Large economy central banks more likely to employ CTO
Slight majority of central banks employ CTO, but differences are clearer when sorted by GDP
Unemployment set to rise to 8% in 2022 – Irish central bank
Bottlenecks in the jobs market may delay employment’s return to pre-pandemic levels
Newspaper text can improve growth forecasts – DNB research
Sentiment index can cut errors in short-term forecasts, study finds
Most central banks hold annual cyber security training sessions
One-third of central banks hold training every 0–6 months
Cyber security and retaining top talent are biggest tech challenges
Keeping abreast of fintech developments also tests institutions
Central Banking Awards 2021: final winners unveiled
Awards announced for central bank of the year, economics, risk management and more
Initiative of the year: Saudi Central Bank’s business continuity programme
Advanced planning has allowed Sama employees and systems to continue operating critical functions despite the Covid-19 lockdowns
Economics in central banking: ‘Patterns in invoicing currency in global trade’, Emine Boz, Camila Casas, Georgios Georgiadis, Gita Gopinath, Helena Le Mezo, Arnaud Mehl and Tra Nguyen
An extensive data-gathering exercise allowed the authors to shed new light on critical aspects of policy-making in a globalised world, while clearing a path for other researchers to follow
Bundesbank paper looks at German inflation expectations
Social media forms less realistic picture of current price levels than traditional news – researchers
High income countries report greater numbers of licensed fintech firms
Some jurisdictions host many licensed fintech firms but others have none
Financial market infrastructure services: Bloomberg
Bloomberg’s responsive deployment of new liquidity capabilities helped emerging-market central banks cope with pandemic market disruption
Currency initiative: The ECB and US Federal Reserve’s CDI2 standards
The issuers of the world’s two most international currencies have created an important new technical standard to support more efficient cash management
Collateral management services: Calypso Technology
The US-headquartered tech company has helped to develop the “new backbone” of the Swiss financial market, offering flexibility, standardisation and automation to the Swiss collateral management process
Big data in central banks 2020–21 report: shifting to centre stage
The Covid-19 shock made big data a key input into policy at a time when data governance appears to be improving and central banks are embracing cloud technology
Link between poor culture and higher bank risk ‘substantial’ – BoE paper
Regulators should ‘interrogate’ firm data to improve bank risk models, economists argue