The European Central Bank (ECB) is the central bank of the 19 European Union countries which have adopted the euro. Our main task is to maintain price stability in the euro area and so preserve the purchasing power of the single currency.
Natalia Martín Fuentes, Isabella Moder 05 February 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented shock to the global economy and its potential scarring effects are thus difficult to predict. This column presents estimates of the long-term impact of past crises, suggesting that past epidemics and other exogenous shocks did not cause scarring effects, while the negative impact of financial crises on the long-term level of potential growth tends to be persistent. However, unlike previous exogenous shocks, the COVID-19 pandemic could affect the supply side of the economy through several channels and thus lead to a permanently lower level of potential output.
Debora Revoltella, Laurent Maurin, Rozália Pál
Despite the massive policy stimulus in the EU, both on the monetary and fiscal front, real GDP is contracting by levels unrivalled since WWII. An investment slump is underway. Aggregate investment contracted by 19% year-on-year in 2020 Q2, with all components of investment affected (IMF 2020, EIB 2021 forthcoming). The COVID-19 crisis will lead to structural changes in the global economy and most aspects of human life (Jorda et al. 2020, Brookings 2020). In this column, we present the results of the 2020 European Investment Bank (EIB) investment survey, detailing the impact of the crisis as felt by European and US corporates at the end of the first wave of the virus.