year, having peaked at over 110 dollars just one year ago. against this backdrop, market participants have been increasingly concerned about investment and business implications. so what brought about heightened volatility in the global markets? i will attempt to answer by highlighting two key sources of volatility. in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, unconventional monetary policies – most notably successive rounds of quantitative easing – were implemented by major advanced economies. this abundant global liquidity contributed largely to strong asset price gains and higher risk appetites. as major central banks pursued their policy of flooding the market with liquidity, risks had been compressed, intentionally or otherwise. bis central bankers ’ speeches recently though, despite ample global liquidity, investors have grown worried about the diverging paths of monetary policy among major central banks. that is, the federal reserve or the fed is poised to begin its tightening phase while the european central bank, the bank of japan, and the people ’ s bank of china are likely to continue their ongoing monetary easing for a considerable period of time. the implications of diverging monetary policy stance for asset markets have weighed on the minds of investors around the world. as i shall elaborate, it is probably not the excess liquidity per se that generates turbulence and volatility, but prospects of the exit – or reversal – that does so. in the near future, global markets are bracing for the impacts from the fed “ lift - off ”, leading to growing nervousness in the markets. although the prospect of an interest rate increase by the fed has been widely anticipated ever since the taper tantrum in 2013, the uncertainty over its timing and possible impacts has in part contributed to episodes of market turbulence this year. after the eventual lift - off – whenever that may be – the markets will turn their attention to the pace of monetary tightening – or rate increases. the shift in market expectation over the pace will prompt volatility going forward. hopefully i have not spoilt your morning by delving too deeply into volatility. but, let me stress this, monetary policy divergence will continue to be an underlying source of volatility in the global and regional financial markets. however, issues in financial markets are, by no means, disconnected from the real economy. indeed, volatility arises from slow recovery, and timid growth outlook for the global economy, the so - called “ new normal ”. looking ahead, the global economy is expected to grow only at a subdued pace as some major advanced

an enhanced and updated dataset ”, imf working papers, no 19 / 299, international monetary fund. notes : net foreign currency exposures shown on the horizontal axis range between - 1 and 1. the vertical axis presents the cumulative distribution ( the proportion of countries ) below each value on the horizontal axis for 1997, 2007, 2012 and 2017. the sample includes 50 advanced ( adv ) and emerging ( eme ) countries. international initiatives to address measurement challenges the measurement challenges that i have discussed are well recognised in the international statistical community. a number of data initiatives – both at european and global level – point to progress in addressing these problems, as for instance recognised in the g20 data gaps initiative. i am sure that, over these two days, you will have the opportunity to become familiar with many of these initiatives. i would like to turn to what i consider to be required in order to enhance the relevance of cross - border and national accounts statistics. in general, the statistical system needs to become more agile to keep pace with the rapidly evolving activities of multinational firms and financial intermediaries. to this end, the international statistical infrastructure needs to be enhanced. a key pillar in this infrastructure is the legal entity identifier ( lei ), which will bring transparency and facilitate the distinct identification of legal entities and link them to the ultimate parent entity. the ecb is actively engaged in this project, since it not only supports the statistical process, but also brings transparency to financial markets and to the exercise of prudential supervision. moreover, a concentric system of administrative and business registers can be a promising avenue for reconciling statistical and non - statistical needs. as the core of this system of registers, one could develop a single ( near ) real time eu business register, containing non - confidential information. this register could be made available as a public good for all administrative purposes. establishing such a core register would require intensive cooperation among the operators of administrative, statistical and commercial business registers and should draw on the initiatives to enforce the universal use of the lei. ideally, it should support all non - statistical needs, including those of the eu commission and those arising from the ecb ’ s functions ( including banking supervision ). in concentric circles around the core business register, one could first add the necessary statistical variables, which would be the reference for european system of central banks ( escb ) and european statistical system ( ess ) statistical production. further separate concentric circles could add