Pennsylvania consistently ranks among states with the highest gas prices. eyecrave productions/iStock via Getty Images PlusWhen gas prices rise, not everyone feels the pain equally.

This box shows that older workers have contributed significantly to euro area employment growth in recent years, largely because they are retiring later. The share of retired individuals in the total population shows little sensitivity to the economic cycle, but has decreased steadily over the past two decades, with this decline having shifted more towards older age groups. The share of retirees is still falling among individuals in their early to mid-60s and appears likely to also do so among older age groups.

The impact of the protracted Iran conflict is now filtering into the Greek economy and is reflected in hard data and sentiment indicators covering periods after the war began at the end of February.

We empirically analyse the role of judgement in assigning overall scores by the euro area supervisors as part of the yearly Supervisory Review and Evaluation Process (SREP), which evaluates banks’ risks and sets supervisory actions. We also analyse its role in shaping the drivers of the Pillar 2 capital requirement (P2R) that banks must fulfil. We find that supervisors actively adjust the weight of the components of the overall score to reflect qualitative information, thereby smoothing fluctuations in the final assessment.