 Okay, good afternoon, everyone. It is a pleasure to welcome you to this year's edition of the annual ECB Conference on Monetary Policy. As captured in the title of this year's event, this conference series serves a vital role in bridging the science and practice of monetary policy. From our point of view here at ECB, it is essential to incorporate in our framework the theoretical and empirical insights generated by the global academic community. And this conference format is a great way, even in webinar mode again this year, it's a great way to discuss these latest developments. The breadth of academic research in terms of both the topics covered and the research techniques that is relevant for monetary policy is extremely wide. And this is reflected in the composition of the conference program. The agenda includes research that exploits financial market data to examine the transmission of monetary policy. Research that studies the impact of the pandemic on firms and banks using entity level datasets. Research that analyzes the interactions between monetary policy and financial stability in a full scale macro model. And research that explores the impact of monitoring fiscal policies on the formation of household expectations. In addition, of course, the conference features two keynote speeches that address some of the most important issues facing central banks today. So in a few minutes, Ken Rogoff will follow me in talking about monetary-fiscal interactions. And of course, tomorrow we have the keynote on the macroeconomics of climate change. Under normal conditions, the informal discussions on the sidelines of these conferences provide a useful way to increase external awareness of the monetary policy research conducted here at the ECB and across the year system. Now, it's not really possible in webinar format to have such informal interactions. So I want to take the opportunity of this welcoming address to highlight the extraordinary research efforts of the ECB and the year system teams of economists in supporting our recent monetary policy strategy review. In particular, a couple of weeks ago on the 21st of September, DCB released 18 occasional papers. Each of which, of course, builds on many individual background notes. But in my view, these papers provide not only a superb series of surveys of the state of research on a given topic, but they also report many substantive new research findings. So I believe that these occasional papers lay important foundations for years of research in academia and in central banks. So again, that's my endorsement and advertisement for those 18 occasional papers. So I hope all the people involved in this conference will take the time to look those up. And I really think it's really quite something to do with extent of that achievement. I would say also, of course, that not only is that of interest for future research, but they directly very much shaped our new monetary policy strategy. In particular, essential seamen of the strategy review review was to work at the implications of the trend decline in the equilibrium real interest rates and the associated implications of the effect of lower bound for the conduct of monetary policy. A very basic conclusion to review is that it is essential to build a sufficient medium term inflation buffer as captured by our symmetric 2% inflation targets to create the monetary policy space required to be effective in tackling negative shocks in the future. A second basic conclusion is that if the economy is close to lower bound, either because the equilibrium real rate is low or because inflation is low. It is vitally important to adopt especially forceful or persistent monetary policy actions to avoid negative deviations from the inflation target becoming entrenched. In turn, this may also imply a transitory period in which inflation is moderately above target. In particular, the review identified for guidance as purchases and longer term refinancing operations as instruments in the monetary policy to book toolbox that can help to address the constraint of the effect of lower bound and policy rates to these forceful or persistent actions. At our 21st of July in monetary policy meeting, we revised our four guidance in line with this new strategic orientation. In particular, the new four guidance on interest rates specified three conditions that need to be met before we would start raising our policy rates. The first condition is that the governing council sees inflation reaching 2% well ahead of the end of its projection horizon. The second condition is that the 2% target is reached at durability for the rest of the projection horizon. And the third condition is that the governing council judges that realize progress and underlying inflation is sufficiently advanced to be consistent with inflation and stable stabilizing at 2% over the medium term. Today, let me highlight two key features of this rate for guidance. First, requiring that we see inflation reaching 2% not only well ahead of the end of our projection horizon, but also durability for the rest of the projection horizon ensures that interest rate policy will not react to inflation shocks that are expected to fade away before the end of our projection horizon. Second, the condition that realize progress and underlying inflation is sufficiently advanced to be consistent with inflation stabilizing stabilizing at 2% over the medium term serves our an important purpose in our analysis of the incoming data. It sharply differentiates between the volatile components of headline inflation and the dynamics of underlying inflation, which of course is defined as the persistent component of inflation that is the best guide to meet internal inflation dynamics. The inclusion of a condition that is based on realization of realizations of underlying inflation takes into account the intrinsic uncertainty of economic forecasts, especially during periods of structural change that generate to use the phrase of fast and leaper disparate confounding that dynamics. The services sector constitutes a large share of the overall price level, and since wages adjusting for productivity are the principal component in the price of services. The persistent component in wage dynamics plays a central role in the determination of underlying inflation accordingly tracking wage outcomes and differentiating between transitory and persistent shifts in the growth rate of wages. This plays an important role in assessing progress in their realized past part of underlying inflation. In particular, a one off shift in the level of wages as part of the adjustment for a transitory unexpected increase in the price level does not imply a trend shift in the path of underlying inflation. Moreover, in examining the implications of the current increase in energy prices, it is necessary to take into account the full macroeconomic implications of adverse external shocks and adverse supply shocks in the energy sector, including the associated headwinds for the economic outlook and the negative wealth effect associated with a decline in the terms of trade. Through these mechanisms, an energy price check shock can simultaneously raise headline inflation, but exert downward pressure on the part of underlying inflation. In addition to rate forward guidance, calibrating the volume of asset purchases also plays an important role in ensuring that the monetary stance is sufficiently accommodative to deliver the a time yet attainment of our medium term 2% target. In particular, the compression of term premium through the duration extraction channel plays a quantitatively significant role in determining longer term yields and ensuring that finance conditions are sufficiently supportive to be consistent with the delivery of our medium term inflation objective. In conclusion, in addition to learning from the research presented and discussed at this year's event. I look forward to seeing how this year's strategy review and our ongoing implementation of the strategy shapes the research that will be presented in future editions of this annual conference series. With that, let me offer my best wishes to all conference participants for an exciting two days. So I'll hand it back over to the organizers to open at the keynotes. So, thank you very much.