Policy publications
Policy publications
Save your energy: how the war in the Middle East could affect household savings and the economy, with Niccolò Battistini, Alina Bobasu, and Hanno Kase. ECB Economic Bulletin, Issue 3/2026.
This box analyses how households adjust their saving behaviour in an environment of heightened geopolitical tensions and rising energy prices. Using an empirical model together with two general equilibrium frameworks, it evaluates how adverse shocks to energy prices and consumer uncertainty could affect the saving rate, and it examines the implications for GDP growth, inflation and the distribution of consumption across households.
Macroeconomic impacts of higher defence spending: a model-based assessment, with Nikola Bokan, Pascal Jacquinot, Magdalena Lalik, Georg Müller, and Romanos Priftis. ECB Economic Bulletin, Issue 6/2025.
This article uses a suite of models to analyse the macroeconomic impact of higher government defence spending. In June 2025 members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) committed to increase core defence and other related spending by a volume unprecedented in recent history. In light of this pledge, we revisit the size of fiscal multipliers and their determinants across a range of ECB macroeconomic models. This article complements previous ECB analyses by highlighting the role of model differences in the quantification of economic effects of public spending.