Frank Smets is one of the internationally most recognized monetary policy experts. Currently he is Director General for Economics at the European Central Bank and professor of international economics at KU Leuven. He heads the Secretariat of the ECB’s Strategy Review.

Governments around the world have made vigorous use of fiscal policy to support domestic economies ailing from the Covid-19 pandemic, thus pushing up public debt levels. Also, monetary policy has provided substantial stimulus to stem the crisis by rolling out new large-scale asset purchase programs mainly targeting government bonds. At the same time, several central banks have gone or are going through a monetary policy strategy review. The ECB resumed its strategy review last September after a pause imposed by the pandemic and now aims to finish it around September 2021. The very high levels of government debt and other economic fallout from the pandemic will pose a first test for the future strategy.

The webinar is jointly organized by Aurel Schubert, former Director General Statistics, ECB and by the Institute for Analytical Economics at WU Vienna.

After registering by email (Cornelia.Berger@wu.ac.at), you will receive the MS Teams link for the Webinar which can be opened directly from your web browser without having to install MS Teams.