Researchers and policy makers tend to treat monetary, financial and fiscal policies separately. In the interest of clear accountability, countries often create three distinct policy institutions, each assigned to focus on its own objective-macroeconomic stability, financial stability or government debt sustainability. This tendency stems partly from a belief that the spillovers among policies are small enough to be negligible. Real-world developments since 2007 belie that belief.

It is against this background that the Deutsche Bundesbank initiated the Trinity research network together with the Sveriges Riksbank, Bank of Canada, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York under the auspices of Markus Brunnermeier (Princeton University) and Eric Leeper (Indiana University). The aim of the network is to study interactions among monetary, financial, and fiscal stabilization policies and to foster high quality research and interactions among the organizing institutions as well as external researchers.

Therefore, this year's spring conference is dedicated to the Trinity research network.