the results of the survey, and the subsequent research, gave valuable information. it pertains to information on the nominal and real wage rigidities, and the way the corporate sector adjusts bis central bankers ’ speeches its balance sheet in response to different shocks. all of this supports the understanding of the monetary policy transmission and calibrating economic models that incorporate heterogeneous agents. one of the lessons from the crisis was that not many central banks had enough granular data on the corporate sector. as mentioned, granular data serve as an important analytical tool for assessing the potential vulnerabilities in the economy, and thus as an important input in the monetary and financial analysis of the central bank. we recognized the importance of the corporate sector data quite early, in the context of detected financial stability risks in particular. aggregate balance sheets of the macedonian corporate sector have been transmitted from macedonia ’ s central registry to the central bank since. yet again, it was recognized that the aggregation loses information, and a more disaggregated approach should be employed. since 2014, as a central bank, we have an access to the individual balance sheets of all the corporate entities in the economy. the granularity of the data allows for a closer look at the behavior of the firms in different sectors, their performances, their leverage, structure of their sources of financing, the potential vulnerabilities which might cumulate in different sectors, with different implications for the economy in general. all of this is valuable information, not affordable by using the aggregates only. i would still like to emphasize that for small economies, as the macedonian, the usage of micro data on a regular basis for monetary policy purposes is not an unknown practice. given that, we are small and open economy, with a strategy of de facto fixed exchange rate, where in depth scrutinization of the external sector data has been a practice with a long tradition. the incoming data on external sector is analyzed on aggregate and sectoral level, but also some of the micro data on individual companies is being monitored on a monthly basis. this pertains mainly to some of the traditional sectors with relatively large weight in the total export, like the metal industry. given its importance, and at the same time its large exposure to external shocks, regular monitoring of the individual data provides first signals for potential vulnerabilities. even more, as the economy is undergoing major structural changes, particularly in the export sector, the regular monitoring of the

of a firm ’ s capital adequacy that is complementary to regulatory capital ratios, which reflect the firm ’ s performance to date. although we view this new approach to capital assessment as a significant improvement over previous practices, we are aware that the true test of this new regime will come only if another period of significant financial or economic stress were to materialize - which is to say that we will not have a strong test of the effectiveness of stress testing until the stress tests undergo a real world stress test. the same comment, mutatis mutandis, applies to the overall changes in methods of bank regulation and supervision made since september 15, 2008. the dodd - frank act requires the fed to conduct a supervisory stress test for bank holding companies with $ 50 billion or more in total consolidated assets, and for nonbank financial companies designated by the financial stability oversight council ( fsoc ) for fed supervision. bis central bankers ’ speeches third, supervisory stress testing has been on the leading edge of a movement toward greater supervisory transparency. since the scap, the fed has steadily increased the transparency around its stress testing processes, methodologies, and results. before the crisis, releasing unfavorable supervisory information about particular firms was unthinkable - for fear of setting off runs on banks. however, the release of the scap results helped to calm markets during the crisis by reducing uncertainty about firm solvency. indeed, only one of the 10 firms deemed to have a capital shortfall was unable to close the identified gap on the private markets. our experience to date has been that transparency around the stress testing exercise improves the credibility of the exercise and creates accountability both for firms and supervisors. that said, too much transparency can also have potentially negative consequences, an idea to which i will turn shortly. with the benefit of five years of experience, the fed is continuing to assess its stress testing program, and to make appropriate changes. examples of such changes to date include the assumption of default by each firm ’ s largest counterparty and the assumption that firms would not curtail lending to consumers and businesses, even under severely adverse conditions. as part of that assessment process, we are also currently seeking feedback from the industry, market analysts, and academics about the program. supervisory stress testing is not a static exercise and must adapt to a changing economic and financial environment and must incorporate innovations in modeling technology. work is currently underway on adapting the stress testing framework to accommodate firms that have not traditionally been subject to these