Introduction
It is a pleasure to speak at this first edition of the conference on external statistics, which is jointly organised by Banco de Portugal, the Irving Fisher Committee and the European Central Bank. Not only as a central banker but also during my time in academia, I have spent much of my time analysing data on external transactions and international investment position. So it should come as no surprise that I take a very active interest in the programme of this event and look forward to the discussions today.
It is fair to say that the richness and availability of external statistics has increased considerably over the last 20 years. At the same time, the measurement challenges have increased, meaning that there are still many analytical hurdles to overcome when interpreting external statistics.