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

bank of italy conference on ‘ how financial systems work : evidence from financial accounts ’ opening remarks : luigi federico signorini, bank of italy, deputy governor thursday, 30 november 2017 it is a pleasure to welcome you to the banca d ’ italia for this workshop. as a former head of the statistical directorate i am particularly happy to see such a distinguished list of speakers and guests on this occasion. i would like to thank all those who contributed, from other institutions, from academia, and from inside the bank. financial accounts have a long history and we take some pride in having worked on them almost from the beginning. as many in this room will know, the first model accounts were developed by morris a. copeland for the us. 1 the picture above, which has a nice vintage feel to it, summarises his idea of the economy as a money circuit, showing the connections between the institutional sectors. in 1955 the federal reserve published its first version of the annual flow of funds. italy ’ s first financial accounts appeared about ten years later, in the annual report of the banca d ’ italia for the year 1964. we were among the first countries for which financial accounts became available. of course, the pioneering work at the fed was an inspiration, but there had been some significant preparatory work here as well. since the 1940s paolo baffi, who was to become governor many years later ( 1975 - 79 ), had been working on reconstructing copeland m. ( 1952 ), a study of moneyflows in the united states, nber, new york. here we draw from de bonis r. and a. gigliobianco ( 2012 ), ‘ the origins of financial accounts in the united states and italy : copeland, baffi and the institutions ’, in de bonis r. and a. pozzolo ( eds. ), the financial systems of industrial countries. evidence from financial accounts, springer. the financial statements of the institutional sectors. he was influenced by giorgio mortara, an eminent statistician and his teacher, and by wesley mitchell, whose work on business cycles he had translated. 2 they used to tell a story here at the bank of italy about how baffi visited the federal reserve board in the mid - 1950s, as head of research, to discuss the construction of financial accounts. proof that this was no myth was recently discovered in our historical archives in the form of several letters ( one is pictured below ) exchanged between william mcchesney