I thus hope you enjoy the upcoming two days here, with fruitful and active interactions. To give you some inspiration for this macroprudential conference, let me share with you some background on the importance of this topic. There is a great article from 2010 by Piet Clement who then worked at the BIS about the history of the term macroprudential .
Output per hour worked in the euro area, which was around 88% of the level of the U.S. in 1980, was equal to the U.S. level in the latter part of the 1990s. Over recent years, however, the pattern has gradually changed, such that labour productivity is again below U.S. levels by almost ten percent. I will come back to this shortly.