European Central Bank

This box summarises the findings of recent contacts between ECB staff and representatives of 71 leading non-financial companies operating in the euro area. According to these exchanges, which took place between 29 September and 9 October 2025, business conditions improved slightly in recent months, but they remained consistent with only modest growth in activity, with the manufacturing sector still weighed down by tariffs, uncertainty and challenges to competitiveness. The employment outlook also remained relatively subdued. Price growth continued to moderate.

This paper studies the effects of fiscal policy announcements on household expectations. We document announcements of price-related expansionary fiscal measures in response to the cost-of-living crisis in the four largest euro area economies and exploit the exogenous timing of fiscal actions relative to household survey participation to estimate their causal effects. Following fiscal announcements, households revise their beliefs: inflation perceptions rise, and unemployment perceptions fall.

This paper proposes a unified framework to study the permanent and transitory origins of US economic fluctuations. The model provides a reasonable account of the evolution of the economy in the post-war period and of the recent inflation episode. Overall, it constitutes a comprehensive framework to offer policy guidance and a flexible empirical counterpart to more heavily-parametrized structural models.

This chapter of the Research Handbook of Inflation (2025) reviews the evolution and current relevance of medium-scale New Keynesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models, which serve as part of the core analytical framework in central banks and academic macroeconomics. The chapter assesses their capacity to analyse inflation dynamics, monetary transmission mechanisms, and policy interventions.