washington, d. c. see l. d. papademos and j. stark ( 2010 ), enhancing monetary analysis, ecb, in particular chapter 7, ‘ cross - checking and the flow of funds ’. actually, before the crisis we wrote a paper on the use of financial accounts and other statistics for the analysis of financial stability. see r. de bonis, g. grande, s. magri, l. f. signorini and m. stacchini ( 2005 ), ‘ financial stability : an overview of bank of italy statistics ’, irving fisher committee bulletin, 23, october. for an example see duca, j. and j. muellbauer ( 2014 ), ‘ tobin lives : integrating evolving credit market architecture into flow of funds based macro - models ’, in a flow - of - funds perspective on the financial crisis, vol. ii, palgrave macmillan, basingstoke. we also draw from muellbauer j. ( 2016 ), macroeconomics and consumption : why central bank models failed and how to repair them, vox. eu, 21 december. here at the bank of italy financial accounts have been used rather intensively in research over the years. an incomplete list of articles and books based on italian financial accounts includes around 100 works by bank of italy authors alone. research has covered, among other things, the structure of the italian financial system, household wealth, firms ’ financial structure ; convergence of financial systems, and macro financial imbalances. a 2012 collection of essays on the evolution of financial systems is one example. we regularly comment on financial accounts statistics in the annual report, the economic bulletin and the financial stability report. let me now turn briefly to purely statistical issues. as i mentioned, the bank of italy has regularly published the country ’ s financial accounts ( stocks and flows ) since the 1960s ; yearly stocks have been reconstructed for the main institutional sectors as far back as 1950. below is the first statistical manual we published in 1969. we implemented the sec79 standards ( and showed quarterly figures for the first time ) in the early 1990s, the esa95 standards in 2002 ( during my time in statistics ), and the esa2010 standards in 2016. over the years countless methodological improvements have been made to coverage and estimation methods. many people here will be familiar with the multiple challenges of using diverse sources, often designed for non - statistical purposes and lacking common methodological standards, to obtain

and quarterly data on applications and originations of regular mortgages. these data are available for home purchase and refinance mortgages as well as for originators'purchase and sale of regular mortgages. incidentally, the proportion of refinance to home purchase mortgages appears consistently higher in the data reported to us than in the data published elsewhere. independently, we have constructed a set of quarterly gross mortgage flows consistent with our series on mortgage debt outstanding. these calculations suggest significantly higher estimates of mortgage originations, but otherwise closely parallel the hmda published originations. we are working on a system to adjust the hmda internal detail to the wider coverage of originations consistent with our published outstanding mortgage debt on one - to four - family homes. * * * home equity extraction directly finances household purchases of goods and services by liquefying previously illiquid assets. it also indirectly finances such purchases by facilitating outlays financed by estimates of construction loans are excluded. credit card and other nonmortgage consumer debt. equity extraction has been a major source of repayment of such debt. borrowing against home equity has been a staple of household finance for decades, but as i noted earlier, it has been only in the past decade or so that such practices have been encouraged by lenders. we need to far better understand the economics of this major addition to household finance and its impact on the economy. one hopes, new data will form the basis of better insights. there can be little doubt that the availability of a ready source of home equity has reduced the costs and uncertainties associated with income volatility, retirement, unexpected medical bills and a host of other life events that can unexpectedly draw down savings. home equity extraction may be the household sector's realization of the benefit of a rapidly evolving financial intermediation system.