Financial institutions

Banks use their internal models to estimate capital requirements in a risk-sensitive way, subject to a set of rules laid down in banking regulation. However, these models are not flawless as the usage of models suffers from imperfections, such as oversimplifications or wrong assumptions. As a result, risks may be underestimated. This is particularly troublesome, where models are used to assess risks to banks’ solvency. In this paper we address an important gap in the literature with regard to such model risk.

This box examines the mechanisms behind the aggregate and distributional effects of energy price shocks on euro area households, taking its cue from the recent surge in energy prices following the outbreak of the war in the Middle East. Drawing on a quantitative heterogeneous agent New Keynesian model calibrated to the euro area, it shows that energy price shocks reduce aggregate consumption through real income losses.

This paper studies the dynamics of U.S. sectoral producer prices in a large Bayesian Vector Auto Regression (BVAR) model where the Input-Output (IO) matrix is used to structure their long-run relationships. The model provides evidence of a sectoral spillover channel in driving headline inflation without imposing such a mechanism in the model’s structure.

The onset of the war in the Middle East triggered a sharp deterioration in consumer confidence across the euro area, comparable in magnitude to that observed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This box examines the extent to which the decline in confidence is associated with actual consumption behaviour using microdata from the ECB Consumer Expectations Survey. The analysis reveals that nominal consumption growth softened materially in April 2026, driven mainly by reduced discretionary spending, particularly among higher-income households.