- term liquidity. much digging and research remains to answer the question of how norges bank dealt with the challenges during the 19th century. so far, scholars have not found that the bank took emergency action when a financial crisis affected norway in 1847. but when the crisis hit again ten years later, the bank sent silver abroad to hamburg, which was the financial centre of the norwegian merchants. this support was important to enable norwegian industry to carry out international payments and have their bills of exchange discounted. in 1892 a new act was passed whereby norges bank became the bankers ’ bank. as the governor mentioned in his speech yesterday, this made norges bank a modern central bank in a legal sense. in 1899, kristiania ( as oslo was called at the time ) experienced dramatic fall in house prices. the financial bubble contained all the classical elements, such as a surging credit growth and house price inflation. norges bank had to carry out several rescue operations to save banks that were in trouble. 1899 was probably the first year the bank functioned as “ lender of last resort ”. if you take a walk around the neighbourhood, you will see the physical aftermath of this bubble. you will find buildings from the 1890s and from the 1920s onward, but virtually nothing built in the intervening period. the past years we have again been in troubled waters. in september 2008 the turbulence in financial markets developed into a full - blown global crisis. money markets seized up. confidence between banks vanished. liquidity dried up, interest rates rose sharply and equity prices fell. the long - term lending market dried up. international developments were also felt in norway. up until then we could almost take a well - functioning money market for granted in this country. but in the autumn of 2008 the money market stopped functioning and medium - term funding for banks was problematic. just as in 1816, norges bank acted as “ market maker of last resort ”. and so, the history of my own central bank, expanding the window from 25 years to 200 years, does not provide an unambiguous answer to the question of what defines a central bank. but even if we look at central banks in other countries, there are no clear answers. the way the financial crisis was handled varied across countries. in many places, for instance, substantial portions of the crisis measures remain on the central bank ’ s balance sheet. here in norway, the crisis measures relating to banks ’ medium - term funding are on the balance sheet of

factor that may hold back r & d in the european digital sector. for instance, intangible investment is difficult to collateralise and therefore harder to finance in a conventional bank - centred financial system like the one prevailing in continental europe. a deeper venture capital market ( together with progress in developing a single pan - european market for digital products ) could support the development of the tech ecosystem in the euro area, underlining the importance of capital markets union and the single market for goods and services. in relation to labour market dynamics, the structural changes associated with digitalisation imply the contraction, or elimination, of some occupations but also the emergence of new types of jobs. since the first industrial revolution, technology has always created more jobs than it has destroyed. similarly, most advanced economies are currently enjoying the highest employment rates of the past three decades. 6 in addition, digital automation can spur productivity, as i will discuss shortly, and itself tends to create new employment opportunities. furthermore, digitalisation offers the possibility of reducing search costs in the labour market and making the search and matching process more efficient. indeed, in tracking labour market conditions, central banks can also benefit from the high - frequency data generated by online job searches7. above all, the ongoing digital transformation holds the promise of large productivity gains. for 1 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches instance, a recent ecb survey of large euro area companies highlighted that firms see the potential for digital technologies to increase productivity growth, in particular by promoting knowledge sharing and enabling more efficient production processes. 8 productivity growth plays an important role in the conduct of monetary policy. in principle, higher productivity growth spurs investment, and expectations of higher future income encourage consumers to spend more today. moreover, higher productivity growth increases the equilibrium real rate of interest, which is a central factor in calibrating monetary policy. in practice, however, despite the promise of increased efficiencies thanks to digital technologies, the productivity growth that we have seen in europe, and indeed most advanced economies, has been lacklustre for more than two decades. this weakness of productivity growth despite the substantial digital innovations remains a puzzle. how this puzzle will be resolved remains to be seen. what appears fairly clear, however, is that in the light of the overall disappointing productivity growth we have seen in recent years, the contribution that digitalisation is making to productivity appears, for the time being, relatively limited. there may also be interactions between technology and trade. digital technologies, together with trade liberalisation