in a manner that is easy to understand, using a multimedia bis central bankers ’ speeches approach. charts and illustrations visualise the content, while short films provide a more in - depth insight into the snb. the associated app presents detailed information and the brochure summarises the key points in a succinct form. 1 these new products are currently available in german and french ; from autumn 2016, they will also be available in english and italian. all this information may also be accessed via our main website, www. snb. ch. “ our national bank ” helps us to fulfil one of our statutory tasks – informing the public about our activities. the new platform replaces “ the world of the national bank ”, which has provided the general public with information until now. we hope that this new resource will prove useful to you, too, in one way or another. ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attention. it is now my pleasure to give the floor to fritz zurbrugg, who will present this year ’ s financial stability report. the our national bank brochure can be accessed in the form of a pdf file at our. snb. ch or ordered through library @ snb. ch. bis central bankers ’ speeches

is not that everyone must be in paid employment. many people are outside the labour force for good reasons, for example because they are in full - time education, caring for children or other relatives, or doing volunteer work by choice. productivity and innovation that leaves us with productivity, arguably the most important of three ps, but unfortunately also the hardest to measure. it is also an area where distributions and firm - specific decisions really matter. some recent international evidence shows that the firms at the global productivity frontier can be several times more productive than the average firm in their industry ( andrews, criscuolo and gal 2015 ). [ 6 ] this research also finds that firms tend to adopt a new technology only after the leading firms in their own country have adopted it. that is, the national productivity frontier first has to catch up to the global frontier, by adapting the new technology to local conditions. so the average productivity of firms in an economy depends on three things. 1. how quickly the leading firms in that country adopt the technology and match the productivity levels of the globally leading firms in that industry. 2. how large the leading firms are in the national economy. 3. how quickly the laggard firms can catch up, once the national leading firms have adopted a particular technology. the findings of this research suggest that this last factor – the rate of technology adoption – has slowed down since the turn of the century. the policy implications of these findings are subtle, and depend on whether you want to affect firms near the frontier, or the firms that are lagging far behind. for example, a more flexible labour market might make it easier for the leading firms to grow faster. average productivity would rise because those leading firms account for a greater share of output. but then you would have an economy dominated by ‘ superstar firms ’ ( autor et al 2017 ). the implications of that are not necessarily benign. for a start, inequality could be greater. median living standards might not rise. the drivers of innovation, like the drivers of creativity more generally, are hard to pin down. but the literature does provide some pointers to them. first and perhaps most important is simply to grow : growth is more conducive to innovation than recession is. recessions do not engender ‘ creative http : / / www. rba. gov. au / speeches / 2017 / sp - ag - 2017 - 11 - 15. html 12 / 16 16 / 11 / 2017 where is the growth going