The present global financial crisis is the deepest since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It has impacted severely on the European economy. It has forced policy-makers in the EU and elsewhere to respond with exceptional measures to counter the depressive effects of the crisis.

The crisis has also impacted on the research agenda of the economics profession, in particular of those economists who work on policyrelated issues concerning stabilisation, economic growth and structural reforms. The research program of DG ECFIN has paid great attention to the causes, consequences and cures of the current crisis. Results of our internal ECFIN analyses have been published in a special issue of European Economy in 2009. Our research work continues.

For this reason, the crisis was in the centre of DG ECFIN's 6th Annual Research Conference on "Crisis and Reform". Following the Opening Lecture, sessions dealt with the political economy of reform, the design of financial systems and issues related to the economic paradigm.

This ECFIN Economic Brief puts together the keynote lectures by Axel Leijonhufvud, Allan Drazen, and Charles Goodhart, while Paul DeGrauwe contributes a summary of his keynote lecture.