christine lagarde : climate change and central banks - analysing, advising and acting speech by ms christine lagarde, president of the european central bank, at the international climate change conference, venice, 11 july 2021. * * * both climate change and the transition to a carbon neutral economy pose substantial challenges for the economy and the financial system, with the potential to affect growth and inflation in the short term, but also over much longer horizons. physical risks, stranded assets and greater firm default risk expose the financial system to losses, which may impair the transmission of monetary policy. and the eurosystem ’ s balance sheet itself is exposed to climate risk from the assets we hold, notably through our asset purchase programmes. in short, climate change has consequences for us as a central bank pursuing our primary mandate of price stability, and our other areas of competence, including financial stability and banking supervision. it is governments, not central banks, who are primarily responsible for facilitating an orderly transition, and who control the main required tools. nonetheless there are several areas where central banks can and will contribute. as a result, climate considerations were an important part of our review of monetary policy strategy, and we have published an action plan setting out our intended progress on this front. broadly speaking, the ecb ’ s contribution comprises three parts : analysing, advising and acting. analysing the ecb has been advancing its analysis quantifying the potential impact of climate on the economy and the financial system. for example, we are conducting an economy - wide climate related stress test of the financial system. the exercise assesses the resilience of banks to various climate scenarios and covers approximately four million companies worldwide and 1, 600 consolidated banks, in other words, almost all euro area banks. the findings demonstrate a clear benefit to acting early and ensuring an orderly transition. while transition costs may be higher in the short term, they are much lower in the long run than the costs of unrestrained climate change. indeed, physical risks are the most significant source of climate - related vulnerability. without further climate policies, the most vulnerable 10 % of banks may see a 30 % increase in the average probability of default of their credit portfolios between now and 2050. we will also accelerate the development of new models and tools to incorporate the impacts of climate change and related policies into our regular monitoring of the economy. we will include carbon prices in our common technical assumptions, regularly evaluate the impact of climate policies and

gent sejko : the productivity slowdown and the secular stagnation hypothesis opening address by mr gent sejko, governor of the bank of albania, at the presentation by mr patrizio pagano, executive director for albania at the world bank group, tirana, 18 september 2019. * * * dear friends, colleagues and media representatives, thank you for your participation! i have the honour to launch today a presentation on “ the productivity slowdown and the secular stagnation hypothesis ”. the productivity and its role on economic growth is an argument, which, in the aftermath of the last global crisis, is at the centre stage in the agenda of researchers and decision - makers of the economy. the recent decades had never seen before such a duration, intensity and complexity of this crisis. the global economy experienced the longest and deepest economic slowdown and recession, since the great depression in 1930s. certainly, it was a real drama for the national economies, as well as enterprises and households. nevertheless, the crisis served as a catalyser to re - assess the economic ideas and a great laboratory to test them. the book titled “ international macroeconomics in the wake of the global financial crisis ” has been added to the existing vast body of economic literature that studies the challenges to various economies in detail. this book is a collection of research work by experts of the banque de france, banca d ’ italia and banco de espana on the major topics in the post - crisis period. through the systematic investigation of : structural problems in the economy, in more concrete terms, the correlation between advancements in technology, productivity, globalisation and potential growth ; problems incurred by the global trade and promotion of consumption and investments ; problems that the monetary policy has faced and continues to face, due to the heightened uncertainties, fall in the natural interest rate and the chronic low inflation ; and the increasing interdependence of global economies, due to the financial integration and the role of financial flows and interest rates in small and developing economies, the authors provide a precious contribution to the professional debate present in this field. we are honoured to have among us today one of the authors of this publication, mr patrizio pagano. he is present today as both the world bank group executive director for italy, albania, greece, malta, portugal, san marino and timor - leste and as an academic with a long - standing history of scientific publications while serving as the head of advanced economies and