Data
Marshall Islands readies to make waves in digital currency
Island nation ready to issue blockchain-based national currency if its new government gives the go-ahead, chairman of foundation says
FSB weighs impact of growing big tech dominance
Big tech offers benefits but is also using its clout to gain significant market power, FSB says
BoE looks to gain better understanding of AI
Public-private forum will share knowledge on how artificial intelligence is used in finance
Beyond climate: addressing the ‘E’ in ESG
Environmental degradation raises fundamental questions about how central banks think about risk; efforts to expand focus beyond climate risks now under way
Global banknote developments before and after Covid-19
Antti Heinonen looks at how the pandemic triggered sharp changes in demand for cash
FCA increases guidance to big tech around consumer protection
UK regulator mulling whether it needs new powers to ensure firms like Google do not exploit customers
‘Combination’ forecasts can beat standard methods – RBI paper
Traditional inflation-output relationship seems “broken”, authors say
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…