questions were included on the impact of the pandemic, the use of different policy measures and the strategies that businesses intend to adopt in the near term. this new survey is a valuable source of information on how business activity evolves by sector and on other corporate characteristics that will help outline short - term economic developments, but also identify more long - term patterns. as an example, initial results show that the impact of the covid - 19 shock was larger for small, young and less productive firms located in urban areas. moreover, these firms resorted relatively more to public - guaranteed loans, tax deferrals and ertes ( furlough schemes ). by the same token, let me stress the relevance of the investment survey conducted annually by the european investment bank since 2016, whose most recent results for spain have been presented at this conference. this survey contributes to improving our knowledge of the dynamics of firms ’ investment and investment finance. in particular, this source of information has proved very useful in identifying the main obstacles to investment. the high coverage of european firms in different countries allows for comparison of investment and investment finance developments across countries. in the context of the pandemic, the results of this survey are even more relevant since they allow us to better understand the implications of the covid - 19 shock for firms ’ investment across europe. to conclude, let me thank the european investment bank for partnering us in the organisation of this conference and, more in general, for their very good collaboration with us. i would also like to thank speakers and participants at the conference for such fruitful discussions. i ’ m convinced these debates are very useful for enriching our understanding of economic problems and for guiding policy makers as to the best possible design of economic policies to tackle them. thank you. 2 / 2 bis central bankers'speeches

, but also put into question our confidence on the “ science of monetary policy ”. it is probably still premature to identify the new model that will emerge from the crisis. it is clear that some of the old beliefs will remain more or less intact : for instance, the idea that fiscal policy is limited as a stabilization tool. there are, however, two areas where i see more changes. bis central bankers ’ speeches first, the conduct of monetary policy, through the implementation of non - conventional monetary policies ; and, second, the monitoring of the efficiency of financial markets and the banking sector, and their interaction with macroeconomic stability. let me comment on these two issues. non - conventional monetary policies at the outset of the crisis, all central banks reacted using conventional monetary policies. first, they reduced interest rates in a rather aggressive way to prevent the disinflationary process from translating into deflation. the outcome of these decisions is that official rates in the main developed economies ( euro area, united states, japan and united kingdom ) stand now at values very close to zero. at the same time, faced with the freeze of interbank markets, the main central banks, including the fed and the ecb, had to take on, directly, the task of redistributing liquidity. in the early stages, the fed and the ecb provided a generous monetary base to meet the gross needs of banks. the ecb used its flexible array of financial instruments, while the fed was forced to adapt its operational framework to introduce new forms of intervention. however, when the crisis worsened after the lehman brothers crisis, it became necessary to take stronger action. this required the use of new, non - conventional, monetary policy measures. according to the academic literature, when interest rates are close to zero, non - conventional monetary policy may come in three different forms : first, management of agents expectations through a commitment by central banks to keep interest rates low for a long period of time ; second, increasing the balance sheet of the central bank ; and, third, changing the composition of assets in the balance sheet of the central bank. the fed, the bank of japan and the bank of canada, have made use of the first kind of instruments aimed at managing expectations. therefore, they have made announcements about the future path of interest rates to affect the agents ’ expectations about long - term rates. however, the non - conventional monetary policies more widely used since 2008 have been of the second and third kind