The ageing of the population will have a major impact on the public finances of advanced economies. The mechanism is well known: the ageing of the population and the consequent increase in dependency ratios can reduce tax revenues and increase public spending substantially. The main message of this article is that demographics will exert intense upward pressure on the public finances in Spain and Europe.
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The truce in the tariff tensions between Washington and Beijing ended up fuelling a renewed risk appetite in May. However, the optimism was gradually overshadowed as the month progressed by the predictable fiscal deterioration in the US and other developed economies, as well as by the persistent volatility in Trump’s trade policy.
After growing by 3.2% in 2024, in 2025 the economy is expected to continue to grow above the euro area average, supported by strong household consumption and the recovery of investment. The major geopolitical challenges and Europe’s weak growth represent the main risk factors.
We summarise the current state and future outlook of Spain’s real estate sector, in this preview of the CaixaBank Research Real Estate Sector Report 2S 2023.
Euro area inflation has been steadily declining for one clear reason: easing energy tensions. The question now is whether it will continue to fall rapidly towards 2% or whether it will encounter new pitfalls that hinder its downward path.
In his first six weeks in the White House, President Trump has succeeded in disrupting the world order repeatedly. On the trade policy front, uncertainty will cloud the economic outlook in the short and medium term, and the risk of protectionist escalation is high.
Having overcome the crisis triggered by the pandemic, which caused debt-to-GDP levels to skyrocket, debt ratios have now resumed the downward trajectory they were on prior to COVID. In particular, in the private sector, both businesses and households already have lower levels of debt than before the pandemic and much lower than they had during the financial crisis of 2008. All this, together with the greater weight of fixed-rate debt, puts them in a less vulnerable position to cope with the rise in interest rates.
We summarise the current situation and future outlook for the Spanish tourism sector, as set out in the Tourism Sector Report S1 2023, in this preview from the September edition of the CaixaBank Research Monthly Report.
The 20 economies that make up the Euro area have a single currency with a common monetary policy and, implicitly, a fixed exchange rate. However, in the last two years the region has suffered significant discrepancies in the inflation rates of its member countries. What is behind this dispersion?
The Spanish economy is growing at a good pace – more so than expected – and this leads us here at CaixaBank Research to revise our growth forecasts for 2025 upwards from 2.3% to 2.5%. Despite the good news, the focus is not on the improvement in the forecasts, but rather on the uncertainty that surrounds them.
We summarise the current situation and future outlook for the Spanish agrifood sector, as set out in the CaixaBank Research Agrifood Sector Report 2023.
We analyse the recent trend in consumption in Spain based on data from the CaixaBank Research Real-Time Economics portal, which we have expanded with information on direct debit payments, as well as more detail on each individual sector and on the evolution of e-commerce.
Portugal’s GDP recorded only a small advance in Q2, and job creation and inflation slowed in August.
The Spanish economy performed better than expected in the first half of the year, but a slight moderation is anticipated in the second half.
Between the 2nd and 5th of August, the financial markets experienced their most turbulent sessions in years, triggered by hasty fears of a US recession and an unexpected decision by the Bank of Japan that caused a spike in volatility. Since then the markets have turned a page, rendering those declines of early August no more than a scare and restating the soft-landing scenario as being the most likely.