, specific studies have been carried out on various topics, like unit non - response, measurement errors, underreporting and micro - macro reconciliation. this long experience has taught us that in sample surveys the adoption of best practices in the collection of survey data can significantly increase the reliability of estimates. moreover, if the move towards the standards is widespread, comparisons are also positively affected by the change, adding value to each statistical source. for a number of years the bank of italy has been promoting projects aimed at harmonizing shiw data with those obtained from other surveys, such as the luxembourg income study and the luxembourg wealth study. in recent years our survey has become part of the eurosystem's household finance and consumption survey ( hfcs ), coordinated by the european central bank. the hfcs includes harmonized surveys on household income and wealth from 18 euro - area countries, as well as poland and hungary. the network of participants has proved to be a very valuable forum for exchanging experiences in conducting surveys and fostering the adoption of uniform best practices. we hope the expertise acquired on these technical grounds can be useful for the present project. in fact, at the present time, survey data do not always share common standards regarding sampling, coverage, definition of variables or valuations and estimation methods as more standard statistics like national accounts do. this is particularly true in the developing countries, which often face peculiar difficulties in conducting sample surveys, due to a lack of population lists, logistic problems in territories, and so on. improving the availability of reliable data production is a valuable ingredient for promoting evidence - based policy making ; this is why, although it is a costly exercise, it is crucial for low and middle - income countries to invest in this field. the cooperation starting today will initially focus on training with the objectives of improving the quality and coherence of international training for statistical capacity building on microdata, and of supporting training activities in these fields based in low and middle - income countries. in particular, the project will implement a training program for statistical capacity building in household surveys, through some week - long training courses and workshops, to be held in the bank of italy ’ s premises, and with training sessions in various statistical training centres in africa. by adopting a training of trainers ( tot ) approach, the project will exploit a multiplier effect, spreading the ability to deal with sample surveys beyond the participants and reaching a large number of low and middle income countries. a further

to maintain price stability in the medium term, and liquidity decisions taken in the course of implementing this stance. this distinction serves to isolate signals of the monetary policy stance from the impact on very short - term interest rates of the noise introduced by liquidity movements. at times of market stress, underlining this distinction is even more important than in “ normal times ”. in circumstances of market stress, liquidity management may need to be more active in order to contribute to the smooth functioning of the money market and to ensure that very short - term money market rates remain close to the minimum bid rate of the eurosystem ’ s main refinancing operations. throughout the period of financial market turmoil, and since the very first hours of the start of the money market turbulences, the ecb has promptly communicated to the market its liquidity policy intentions and explained its actions. it was evident from the start that credit institutions requirement to fulfil their reserve requirement on average throughout the maintenance period, the so - called averaging provision, was now used with a preference to do so early within the period. liquidity on different days of a reserve maintenance period was no longer substitutable, and short - term interest rates tended rather to behave as if each individual bank perceived its distribution of liquidity shocks as strongly biased to the tight side, even if this was of course not the case at an aggregate level. the first response of the eurosystem during the turmoil was to try to keep very short - term money market rates near policy rates through more active liquidity management. with this objective in mind, the ecb adjusted the distribution of liquidity supply over the course of a maintenance period, by increasing the supply at the beginning of the period and reducing it later in the period ( the so - called frontloading ). the average supply of liquidity remained unchanged over the whole reserve maintenance period, in line with the eurosystem ’ s aim to provide to the banking system over each maintenance period the exact amount of total liquidity it needs to fulfil its liquidity deficit. the average size of the eurosystem ’ s refinancing operations for the maintenance periods since august 2007 remained at around €450 billion, as in the first semester of 2007. second, since the 9th of august 2007, the eurosystem has made more frequent use of finetuning operations than in “ normal times ”, both in order to inject further liquidity early in the maintenance period