For example, as part of a strategy to stimulate business growth, smaller firms with high productivity potential should be helped to access a wider range of external sources of funding on more advantageous conditions, while the policies supporting business innovation should be strengthened. This is the topic of the second session. Third, the fight against climate change and the transition towards a more sustainable economy are also important challenges facing the world economy in general and Spain in particular. There is for example consensus among the scientific community that the Iberian Peninsula could be significantly affected by the physical risks associated with climate change and that this impact would be highly uneven across regions. Resolutely addressing this challenge will entail a profound structural change in our growth model that will have far-reaching implications for all areas of activity. This transformational process will also, foreseeably, have a very unequal impact across the different regions, industries, firms and households. 4  In this green transition, governments have a leading role to play through, for instance, green taxation, compensatory measures to mitigate the transition costs for the most vulnerable groups, public investment and the regulation of economic activity. The fourth session of the conference addresses this topic. Last but not least, the sustainability of public finances is one of the most important challenges facing the Spanish economy. The Spanish debt-to-GDP ratio increased by 82.7 percentage points between 2007 and 2021, to reach 118.4%, as compared with 95.6% in the euro area.

), 2003: “Monetary policy transmission in the euro area”, Cambridge University Press. 3  Kashyap, A. and J. Stein (2000): “What do a million observations on banks say about the transmission of monetary policy?”, American Economic Review 90(3) , pp. 407-28. 4  European Securitisation Forum (2008): “ESF securitisation data report – Q2:2008”. 5  European Central Bank (2008b): “The role of banks in the monetary transmission mechanism”, ECB Monthly Bulletin, August 2008, pp. 85-98. 6  See, for instance, Altunbas, Y., L. Gambacorta and D. Marquéz (2007): “Securitisation and the bank lending channel”, ECB Working Paper No. 838, and ECB (2008a). 7  See, for instance, Gropp, R., C. Kok Sørensen and J. Lichtenberger (2007): “The dynamics of bank spreads and financial structure”, ECB Working Paper No. 714. 8  European Central Bank (2008c): “The euro area bank lending survey”, January 2008. BIS Review 116/2008  3  4. The role of uncertainty  One of the most relevant features of the current turmoil has been the high degree of asymmetric information and the enormous increase in general uncertainty in the financial sector. I would like to distinguish between the two in the following way: 9 Uncertainty owes mainly to imperfect information in relation to credit valuations. Uncertainty generally increased during the summer of 2007, because market participants realised that the current practices used for valuations – often based almost solely on ratings – were no longer valid. With this type of uncertainty, market participants have difficulty in modelling the expected occurrence of defaults.