ANNUAL REPORT 2008 - Polymer Bank Notes of the World

were organised to disseminate research withinthe ECB. As in previous years, most of theconferences and workshops were related tospecific research priority areas; the programmesfor these events and the papers presented areavailable on the ECB’s website.The conferences and workshops covered awide range of subjects. Financial topics werethe focus of seven of them: two tackled theimpact of the financial turmoil, one of themco-sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bankof Chicago, and another dealt with financialintegration. The remainder addressed differentaspects of the workings of the money and retailtransfer markets. The fifth conference of theInternational Research Forum on MonetaryPolicy (co-sponsored with the Federal ReserveBoard, Georgetown University and theUniversity of Frankfurt) in June 2008 analysedmonetary policy topics. Other conferencesexamined data issues (co-sponsored with theCEPR through the Euro Area Business CycleNetwork), labour markets and the first ten yearsof the euro.An additional mechanism for the disseminationof research was the organisation of seminarseries, of which two were of particularrelevance: the Joint Lunchtime Seminars,co-organised with the Deutsche Bundesbankand the Center for Financial Studies, and theInvited Speaker Seminars. The two seriescomprise weekly seminars at which externalresearchers are invited to present their recentwork at the ECB. The ECB also organisesresearch seminars outside the scope of thesetwo series on a more ad hoc basis.ECBAnnual Report2008129