which it should be designed to avoid any excessive accumulation of risk during good times and prevent binding capital constraints from adding to deflationary pressures during bad times. it is important to better outline the relative role of monetary policy and financial regulation for price and financial stability, both in terms of strategies and institutional design. in today's integrated financial world, international coordination at appropriate level seems desirable for policies to be effective in this respect. in europe, the organisation of banking supervision at quasi purely national level contrasts with financial market integration and the existence of cross - border financial institutions. the current crisis raises all these challenges much more strongly than before. i am convinced that academic research in these domains will be boosted in the near future and that new and clarifying insights will result from this work. i sincerely hope our conference can help stimulate research in these directions.

guy quaden : new views on firms ’ investment and finance decisions opening address by mr guy quaden, governor of the national bank of belgium, for the national bank of belgium conference, brussels, 27 - 28 may 2002. * * * ladies and gentlemen, i am really pleased to welcome you here at the national bank of belgium 2002 conference. my wish, one of my wishes, since i have become governor, and it is shared by the members of our board, is to stimulate the scientific co - operation between the bank and the academic community and more in particular the belgian academic community in a modus operandi of mutual respect and independence. two years ago, the national bank of belgium organised a conference on “ how to promote economic growth in the euro area ” to celebrate its 150th anniversary. on that occasion, i announced that the bank would call an international conference every two years to encourage the debate between academics and professional economists working in central banks and in other policy making institutions. at that time, the bank also decided that a joint research project between its own economists and belgian academic researchers would precede the conference. the project started in march 2001 and ends with the current conference where the results of the research are presented. the bank requested the belgian academic community to express its interest in participating in the joint research project by submitting a proposal concerning the content of an analysis on one or several sub - items of the general project, preferably with an empirical content making use of available panel data from firms ’ balance sheets and other sources. all in all we received nineteen proposals from the academic community. since at this conference also foreign speakers are invited, we were forced to select a limited number among the proposals we received. this selection was based on a number of criteria but, especially, on their compliance and coherence with the overall research project. allow me to explain the reasons that have led to the particular choice of the topic of the conference. everybody will acknowledge that investment is a key variable in economics. capital accumulation not only plays a pivotal role in determining the process of long - run economic growth, as was clearly evidenced by our previous international conference two years ago, but it is also an important driving force of business cycles. although investment represents a relatively minor fraction of gdp, a major part of output fluctuations is driven by firms ’ investment behaviour. for the conduct of monetary policy, it is, therefore, crucial to understand the mechanisms that drive an essential component of the interest sensitive expenditures, and more in