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Portugal’s GDP recorded only a small advance in Q2, and job creation and inflation slowed in August.

For much of April, the tone in the financial markets was marked by geopolitical risks and investors’ bets about the near future of monetary policy in the major developed economies.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most disruptive and promising technologies of our time. Its ability to create, imitate and improve content of all kinds makes it a general purpose technology with a potential for economic and social transformation comparable to that of electricity or computer science. Its potential impact and how to use it in the best possible way – a major challenge for Europe and for the whole world – is what we will discuss in this article.

Europe is facing not only a demanding economic situation, but also a trident of underlying challenges: the decarbonisation of the economy, the revitalisation of productivity and technological development, and the growing geopolitical fragmentation in the world. Addressing these challenges will not be possible without mobilising significant investment and financing, on the one hand, or without strengthening the international role of the euro, on the other. And this is precisely what the Capital Markets Union (CMU) is pursuing.

In 2022 all households had to allocate a greater percentage of their income to paying their electricity and gas bills. However, the additional effort required to pay for energy consumption was not the same for everyone. In this article, we estimate that effort based on internal CaixaBank data.

We are now almost half way through the year and it is time to take stock in order to update a set of economic scenarios in which the divergence in the pattern of inflation between the United States and Europe has been key to explaining the adjustment of interest rate forecasts.

In this article we briefly review the main factors that have led us to slightly revise the macroeconomic outlook for 2024 and 2025.

The saying goes that better the devil you know than the devil you don’t, but perhaps inflation is a special case. What will happen with inflation in 2023?

The Spanish economy continues to show greater buoyancy than had been expected at the start of the year, thanks above all to the momentum of the tertiary sector, especially tourism-related activities, as well as the strength of job creation. Over the coming quarters supporting factors will emerge, such as a less restrictive monetary policy, an easing of inflationary tensions and an expected acceleration in the execution of the European NGEU funds.

The resilience shown by the international economy at the aggregate level, which is quite remarkable given the significant geopolitical uncertainty and restrictive financial conditions dominating the scenario, reflects disparate dynamics among the various international economies, with each one seeking to make an orderly landing amidst their own challenges. The US is experiencing strong growth and is seeking to normalise towards more sustainable rates, while the euro area is showing signs of less apathetic growth and China maintains mixed dynamics between industry and domestic demand.

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.

The indicators that have been published during the opening months of the year paint a picture of a buoyant Spanish economy in Q1 2025, albeit with a slightly less vigorous growth rate than in the previous quarter.

Central banks are now accelerating the tightening of financial conditions in an attempt to eliminate demand-side pressures, at least while supply remains subject to all kinds of obstacles.

Portugal’s growth in the first quarter of the year fell short of expectations, shrinking 0.5% quarter-on-quarter according to the preliminary estimate of Portugal’s National Statistics Institute.

At least for now, and despite the depreciation it has accumulated so far this year, the value of the dollar does not appear to reflect any major change in the currency’s central role in the international monetary system.

According to CaixaBank’s internal data, consumption grew by 2.2% in Spain during Q2 2022, despite the decline in consumer confidence due to the inflationary pressures and economic uncertainty.

A real-time analysis of wage incomes shows that, in 2022, the impact which the pandemic had on inequality has been undone and that it now stands at a very similar level to that which existed prior to the pandemic. 

The outbreak of the pandemic in 2020, and more recently the war in Ukraine, has accelerated the trend of decoupling between the US and China, and Europe also appears to have joined in, albeit somewhat timidly for now. We analyse the EU’s dependence on China in order to understand whether European strategic autonomy is possible, or even desirable.

A new indicator of the monthly expenditure at petrol stations using anonymised data from CaixaBank customers shows us how we have adapted our fuel consumption to the rise in prices.