Asymptotic symmetries of AdS₂ and conformal group in d=1

We present a detailed discussion of the asymptotic symmetries of Anti-de Sitter space in two dimensions and their relationship with the conformal group in one dimension. We use this relationship to give a microscopical derivation of the entropy of 2d black holes that have asymptotically Anti-de Sitter behaviour. The implications of our results for the conjectured AdS_2/CFT_1 duality are also discussed.