BizKnowledge Watch

The European Central Bank (ECB) has just published the results of the first wave of the Eurosystem Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS), a joint Eurosystem project carried out with the support of national statistical institutes of three euro area countries. The reference year for most country surveys is 2010.

The HFCS provides detailed household-level data on various aspects of household balance sheets and related economic and demographic variables, including income, voluntary pensions, employment and measures of consumption.

Key results of the survey are:

-60.1% of households in the euro area own their main residence – 40.7% outright and 19.4% with a mortgage. The median value of the main residence for the owners is €180,300.

-23.1% of households own other real estate property; the median value of other real estate property is €103,400.

-11.1% own a business in which at least one member of the household is employed; the median value of self-employment businesses is €30,000.

-75.7% own vehicles; the median value of vehicles is €7,000.

-96.4% of households own deposits (sight or saving accounts), while voluntary private pensions/whole life insurance is held by 33.0% of households; all other financial assets are owned by less than 15% of households.

-Ownership of financial assets other than deposits depends strongly on income; in the highest income quintile, 26.5% of households hold mutual funds, while 24.4% hold publicly traded shares.

-43.7% of households in the euro area have (some type of) debt; 23.1% have mortgage debt, while 29.3% have non-mortgage debt. Among households that have debt, the median value of mortgage debt (€68,400) substantially exceeds the median value of non-mortgage debt (€5,000).

Access the survey results here.

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The European Central Bank (ECB) has just published the book “Enhancing Monetary Analysis”. The study summarizes the results of a research agenda pursued by Eurosystem staff to enhance the set of tools used to conduct the ECB’s monetary analysis and describes how these results are used to support the preparation of monetary policy decisions.

The book is divided in two parts. The first part discusses the theoretical foundations of monetary analysis while the second summarizes the main analytical results of recent Eurosystem research.

The book can be downloaded from the ECB’s website.

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The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) today jointly released the second part of the Handbook on Securities Statistics, which covers debt securities holdings. The aim of the Handbook is to assist national and international agencies in the production of relevant, coherent and internationally comparable securities statistics for use in monetary policy formulation and financial stability analysis.

The Handbook is the first publication of its kind to deal exclusively with the conceptual framework for the compilation and presentation of securities statistics. The first part of the Handbook, which covers debt securities issues, was released in May 2009.

The Handbook can be downloaded from the IMF’s website and from the ECB’s website.

The Committee of European Banking Supervisors (CEBS) has just published the results of the EU-wide stress test exercise. The overall objective of the 2010 exercise is to provide policy information for assessing the resilience of the EU banking system to possible adverse economic developments and to assess the ability of banks in the exercise to absorb possible shocks on credit and market risks, including sovereign risks.

The exercise includes a sample of 91 European banks, representing 65 percent of the European market in terms of total assets, in coordination with 20 national supervisory authorities. The stress test will be conducted over a 2 year-horizon, until the end of 2011.

In total, aggregate impairment and trading losses under the adverse scenario and additional sovereign shock would amount to €566bn. For more detailed information, a summary of the 91 individual bank results, sorted by country, is now available.

Find all the information online.

-Summary report

-Q & As

-Joint Press Release CEBS, ECB, European Commission

-Summary of the 91 bank-by-bank results by country

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The European Central Bank (ECB) has just published its Structural Issues Report, which deals with “Energy Markets and the Euro Area Macroeconomy”.

The study analyses the impact of energy price fluctuations on the euro-area macroeconomy.

The response of euro area output to large energy price changes is determined by the level of energy dependency and the intensity of production, as well as by the degree of flexibility of the economy more generally. The promotion of energy efficiency and the flexibility of the euro area economy remain crucial to minimizing the costs of energy price volatility.

The full text is available on the web.