haircut

A risk control measure applied to underlying assets whereby the value of those underlying assets is calculated as the market value of the assets reduced by a certain percentage (the “haircut”). Haircuts are applied by a collateral taker in order to protect itself from losses resulting from declines in the market value of a security in the event that it needs to liquidate that collateral.
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Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP)

The index of consumer prices calculated and published by Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Union, on the basis of a statistical methodology that has been harmonised across all EU Member States. The HICP is the measure of prices used by the Governing Council to define and assess price stability in the euro area as a whole in quantitative terms.
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HICP

See   Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP)
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home banking

Banking services which retail customers of credit institutions can access using various kinds of telecommunication device (e.g. telephones, mobile phones, television sets, terminals or personal computers).
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hourly labour cost

Labour costs, including gross wages and salaries (as well as bonuses of all kinds), employers’ social security contributions and other labour costs (e.g. vocational training costs, recruitment costs and employment-related taxes), net of subsidies, per hour actually worked. Hourly costs may be obtained by dividing the sum total of these costs for all employees by the sum total of all hours worked by them (including overtime).
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households

One of the institutional sectors in the European System of Accounts 1995 (ESA 95). The household sector covers individuals or groups of individuals as consumers, but also as entrepreneurs (i.e. sole proprietorships and partnerships). Non-profit institutions serving households are a separate institutional sector according to the ESA 95, although they are often reported together with households.
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hybrid system

A system that combines the characteristics of RTGS systems (e.g. the continuous processing and clearing of transfer orders) and net settlement systems (the operation of several settlement cycles per day, some form of netting procedure for transfer orders, etc.). See also   net settlement system
  real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system
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