 In this confusing times of fake media, it's essential to provide rigorous and transparent research. ECB has always maintained this principle and considers that it's policy making benefits from such research, being done either internally or externally. Keeping up the dialogue between academia and central banking is therefore of key interest to us. Already in its third edition, the conference will cover research topics on macro and finance, bringing together leading international academics in these fields. An established feature of the conference is the Jean Monat lecture. And this year's keynote speech, named in honor of the French politician and political economist will be delivered by Danny Rodrick of Harvard University. He was already here with us. He will talk about the real world economics of globalization, offering a deep introspective of the rise of populism. This building, where you're sitting, is not just the bastion of monetary policy in a towering image of the dreams of Europe, but it also has a dark history. In the 1940s, it was a collection point for the deportation of Jewish men, women, and children from Frankfurt and its region. The building, therefore, is also a constant reminder of the pursuit of peace, which ultimately is what Europe is all about. The clouds over Europe are darkening with not just populism on the rise, but a general sense of loss of direction and purpose. It is my belief that only by understanding the root causes of these developments will we be able to make progress. This requires deep humility and reflection, especially among the privileged, to which I count myself. We need new ideas, better narratives, and research has a key role to play in the search for new ideas. Much of the work of our own researchers involves importing the latest research ideas into the central bank to enhance our models and improve our policymaking. Often, such research has to be adapted to local circumstances, as economic research tends to be US-focused and not equipped to deal with multi-dimensional policy demands. We're very good in thinking in terms of first best, but not so much in terms of third best. Moreover, when academia moves slowly, internal research is needed to design and calibrate policy in real time. The comparative advantage of a central bank researcher, one could say, tends to be innate knowledge of the operational and institutional frameworks of policymaking and the markets that supports such policies. The ECB's current research program centers around five priority areas that I just wanted to quickly highlight to you. The first is macroeconomic models and monetary transmission after the crisis. This area covers research on enhancing macro models for policymaking by incorporating non-linearities, heterogeneous agents, and a more realistic financial intermediary sector to better capture the propagation of shocks originating in financial markets. This area also covers research on the transmission channels of monetary policy. Still, I would say, still a lot of questions there. It's a standard research area for any central bank. Here we focus especially on the role of the financial sector and consequences for financial stability. The second area that really is more the domain of central bank research and not so much in academia is monetary policy implementation and operational frameworks. One could belittle it as the plumbing of monetary policy. This area covers research that will form the basis for developing the post-crisis monetary policy framework, the operational framework. And it includes research on the design and communication of monetary policy, the provision of central bank liquidity, the land of last resort, collateral frameworks, and market impacts, including adverse consequences of non-standard measures. The third area is inflation determination and low growth. This area covers research on price and wage setting behavior, the drivers of inflation in the euro area that we are aware is quite different than in the US. And it includes research on the relevance of sticky prices and wages, real vagilities in products and labor markets, and the pass-through and border effects of such. Especially we are working here to make advantage of new micro-price data that we have collected. We also in this area have research on going on the drivers of low growth in the euro area, especially productivity growth, which is very stubbornly low. And we pay special attention to the role of product market and labor market reforms moving away from the typical mantra that they are good to the more specifics. The fourth area is strengthening the monetary union. We believe that it's through our monetary policies by ensuring price stability and also supporting financial stability that we contribute to strengthening the monetary union, and this is our best contribution to Europe. But this area is a little bit broader. It covers research on the benefits of a diversified financial system and financial integration in the euro area. So the banking union that was established, the capital markets, the union that's being developed, and more generally getting the right trade-off between promoting risk sharing and growth. We also look here at interactions between fiscal and monetary policy in a heterogeneous currency area. And many of the fiscal and also macro-principal policies of course set at the national level in this monetary union. The last area is developing the new prudential framework with a more emphasis on macro-prudential policies. So first we want to understand whether these macro-prudential policies are effective or not, and then how they will interact with the single monetary policy. So once the policy is set at the center, macro-prudential policy is set at national levels. What is the optimal design of prudential regulation? So there will be interactions between macro-micro-prudential regulation. There are lots of new regulations, liquidity regulation. How does this interact with capital regulation? And more generally, how do we enhance banking supervision? We have a better structure, we believe, with information being pulled, but how do we actually enforce strict supervision around the area? Now, that's a broad brush of what people are working on in the house. The conference papers today provide also a broad perspective on all of these areas and a broad reading of the macro-finance literature, bringing together recent advances in the literature and relevant experiences from around the world, with, of course, many presentations and discussions by intellectual leaders in their respective fields. Before we start, I want to thank the organizing committee, Bartosz, Moskoviak, sitting here up front, Marie Horova, Alexander Popov, and especially Sabine Wiedemann for putting together a stellar program in collaboration with Jen Eberle from Brookings. And that's it. I wish you all an enjoyable and inspiring time in pursuit of these new ideas.