With the final tranche on July 14, the disbursement of the proceeds from the gold sales will have been completed, representing the largest financial transaction in the history of the Swiss National Bank. In my view, the most important lesson to be drawn from the SNB’s gold sales is that the decision to sell official gold holdings should be made separately from any consideration on how to use the proceeds. The history of the SNB sales shows that notwithstanding the constitutional and legal complexities I referred to earlier, the time between the expert opinion about the SNB’s excess reserve capital and the first sales was two and a half years. Switzerland’s politicians, on the other hand, failed to reach a consensus on what to do with the proceeds. After eight years of relentless debates and a squarely rejected referendum on the Swiss Foundation for Solidarity in 2002, the funds will be disbursed according to the constitutional distribution key for the SNB’s regular profits. I don’t want to burden you with the intricacies of the Swiss political debate around the gold proceeds. Let me simply say that it was not for lack of creative ideas that a consensus failed to emerge. This lesson strikes me as relevant with regard to potential renewed discussions about IMF gold sales. Such discussions should exclusively be conducted on the basis of a thorough examination of the solidity of the IMF’s financial position and not become entangled with proposals on how to allocate any expected proceeds.
11.07.2022  Welcoming remarks to the conference on econometric methods and empirical analysis of microdata in honour of Manuel Arellano Pablo Hernández de Cos Governor  Good morning, and welcome to this conference on econometric methods and empirical analysis of microdata in honour of Manuel Arellano, one of our country’s leading economists and a key figure in the field of econometrics at international level. Let me take this opportunity to, once again, congratulate professor Arellano on all his important achievements. We are indeed very honoured at the Banco the España to have Manuel with us at the CEMFI. In his recent acceptance speech at the award ceremony of the King of Spain’s Prize for Economics, Manuel Arellano argued that a nation without good administrative data is like a hospital system without access to advanced magnetic resonance equipment. I couldn’t agree more with this comparison. To have an accurate diagnosis of the problems of an economy it is crucial to be able to observe economic reality in sufficient detail. And, the analysis of an economy in high resolution is possible thanks to the empirical analysis of data, of microdata in particular, using, of course, the appropriate econometric methods. Indeed, in recent decades, the analysis of microdata has revolutionised research in the social sciences1 and policy evaluation. The availability of granular data, together with the development of innovative econometric methods, has radically changed the way researchers approach and understand social issues.