Nordic & Swiss Economics Weekly Soft inflation won’t deter Riksbank or Norges Bank According to the minutes of the Riksbank’s July meeting, Sweden’s monetary policymakers were particularly worried about the weakness of non-energy inflation. And with some justification. Data... 13th July 2018 · 1 min read
Europe Economics Weekly ECB hawks still in the minority In an otherwise quiet week, the main economic news was the publication of the minutes of June’s ECB meeting. They showed that members of the Governing Council “widely agreed” to update their forward... 13th July 2018 · 1 min read
Nordic & Swiss Economics Weekly Riksbank hawkish, Norwegian housing recovering The main event this week was the Riksbank meeting , at which the Bank reiterated that it expected to raise interest rates in December. And data released since the meeting support the case for the... 6th July 2018 · 1 min read
Europe Economics Weekly German industry rebounds, but are politics a threat? Immigration has remained very high up the political agenda this week, and while EU leaders reached a compromise on Monday, this is not a closed issue and tensions may well flare up again. Meanwhile... 6th July 2018 · 1 min read
Europe Economics Weekly Surveys still fairly upbeat, little progress on integration In our opinion, this week’s media coverage of the June EC and Ifo surveys was too downbeat. Both indicators are still consistent with annual GDP growth of over 2%. Other data told a familiar story of... 29th June 2018 · 1 min read
Nordic & Swiss Economics Weekly Swiss-EU talks at risk, Riksbank to signal Q4 rate rise The Swiss Government this week made no progress towards reaching a deal with Brussels that would see Switzerland retain its unrestricted access to the Single Market. With the anti-immigrant SVP party... 29th June 2018 · 1 min read
Nordic & Swiss Economics Weekly SNB dovish, Norges Bank hawkish, Sweden ETI strong This week’s quarterly policy statement from the Swiss National Bank strengthened our view that tighter monetary policy in Switzerland is a long way off. By contrast, higher interest rates are imminent... 22nd June 2018 · 1 min read
Europe Economics Weekly Progress on Greece, ECB dovish, Ifo to offer comfort The big news this week was that Greece is finally emerging from a period of eight years under bailout programmes. But our judgement remains that the risks of a future Greek default and/or euro-zone... 22nd June 2018 · 1 min read
Europe Economics Weekly What could upend the ECB’s plans? The ECB finally announced this week that the end of its asset purchase programme is in sight and that rates will stay on hold at least until the second half of 2019. But the ECB is not on auto-pilot... 15th June 2018 · 1 min read
Europe Economics Weekly Mixed signals from Italy’s new government Italy’s new prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, gave his maiden speech to parliament this week, and his comments riled the markets. After all, he reiterated the Government’s intentions to cut taxes... 8th June 2018 · 1 min read
Europe Economics Weekly Spain can cope without Rajoy but Italian politics still a worry In any other week, the imposition of tariffs on the EU by the US would have taken centre stage. But amid the political and market turmoil in Italy and the downfall of Spain’s government, this was no... 1st June 2018 · 1 min read
Europe Economics Weekly Will the ECB’s hopes on growth be dashed? The “account” of the ECB’s April meeting, released this week, revealed that policymakers had taken a pretty sanguine view of the weakness of survey indicators and hard data in the first few months of... 25th May 2018 · 1 min read
Europe Economics Weekly Is the slowdown in exports a sign of things to come? Data released this week added to the evidence that soft global demand and the previous appreciation of the euro have taken a toll on euro-zone exports. We doubt that exports will regain all of their... 18th May 2018 · 1 min read
Europe Economics Weekly Macron’s first year bodes well for France One year into President Emmanuel Macron’s term, the French economy is performing well. Annual GDP growth is healthy and the labour market is recovering steadily. But this owes little to Macron’s... 11th May 2018 · 1 min read
Europe Economics Weekly Did the euro-zone catch a cold in Q1? We think that temporary factors – including industrial action, cold weather and an outbreak of the flu – explain about 0.2 percentage points of the slowdown in quarterly euro-zone GDP growth from 0.7%... 4th May 2018 · 1 min read
Europe Economics Weekly What do higher oil prices mean for euro-zone inflation? The upward revision to our 2018 oil price forecast means that the contribution from energy to headline inflation will be a bit bigger than we had previously assumed. But this effect is likely to be... 27th April 2018 · 1 min read
