husband free for work " for many years. i don ’ t want to risk that. i would therefore like to hand you both the flowers not for keeping your husbands free for work but in acknowledgement of the downsides that the level of professional commitment your husbands have shown involve for their partners. and you, dear colleagues, i will hand the certificates of appreciation signed by the german president, the chancellor and the finance minister. ladies and gentlemen as we say farewell to two worthy members of our executive board, we are in the fortunate position of already being able to welcome one successor. the second board member has yet to be nominated, mr scholz. you, mr balz, will join our executive board in september once you 5 / 6 bis central bankers'speeches have finished off some tasks for the european parliament. at the beginning of my speech, i pointed out that mr dombret and mr thiele joined the bundesbank just as the government debt crisis started. it would be a typical mistake, mixing up correlation and causality, to declare the crisis to be over now that mr dombret and mr thiele are leaving the board. so rest assured, mr balz : while i would not go as far as to say that " the next crisis is inevitable ", it is safe to say that enough remains to be done. i am sure you will experience exciting and varied activities on the bundesbank ’ s board. in any case, we are looking forward to working together and wish you the best of luck in all you do at the bundesbank. and with that, i would like to hand over to the federal finance minister, but not before expressing my heartfelt thanks to you, mr scholz, for being here today. i understand your presence not least as a mark of respect for the bundesbank as an institution, its staff and all it does for germany and europe. 6 / 6 bis central bankers'speeches

claudia buch : opening speech - 15th meeting of the ottawa group opening speech by prof claudia buch, deputy president of the deutsche bundesbank, at the 15th meeting of the ottawa group, eltville, 10 may 2017. * * * 1. introduction the bundesbank is very pleased to be organising one of the largest meetings in the history of the ottawa group. the 2017 meeting is the first to be hosted not by a statistical office but by a central bank. we are happy to welcome more than 100 participants from 30 statistical institutes, 10 central banks, 25 international organisations as well as leading scholars in the field of price statistics. price statistics are of key importance for central banks. the harmonised index of consumer prices ( hicp ) is the yardstick for the eurosystem ’ s monetary policy. it was launched 20 years ago, in march 1997. given the prominent role central banks nowadays play in financial stability, asset prices – and real estate prices in particular – have been given more and more attention as well. today ’ s discussions will reflect this change in focus. before you get into the discussions, i would like to address three questions. what has been the contribution of the group to the development of consumer price indices? what does digitalisation entail for price statistics? where do we stand with regard to the measurement of real estate prices? 2. contribution of the ottawa group central banks have a key interest in price developments. given that we have commonly agreed standards on which price index to use, we tend to forget that defining “ price stability ” is not a trivial task : which price index to focus on? how to construct the index and to measure price changes? what are the potential limitations when it comes to interpreting these indices? there are no easy answers to these questions, and it required a lot of interaction between central banks, academics, and statisticians to arrive at commonly agreed standards. the report by the boskin commission on consumer prices 20 years ago was certainly a landmark in this debate. one key finding of the commission was that commonly used cpi data overstated inflation by more than 1 percentage point – with important implications for many areas of public policy, including the calculation of social security contributions. one main reason for the discrepancy was a substitution bias : individuals shift their expenditures across goods if relative prices change. the basket of goods considered thus needs to take into account substitution away from more expensive goods when relative prices change. by disentangling the adjustment of