Annual Economic Report 2026
This year's Annual Economic Report examines how the global economy is faring as progress meets rising perils – including a new fiscal-financial stability nexus and shifting inflation dynamics.
Institutional research & analysis
INSTITUTIONAL
This year's Annual Economic Report examines how the global economy is faring as progress meets rising perils – including a new fiscal-financial stability nexus and shifting inflation dynamics.
This paper estimates the macroeconomic and financial effects of fiscal risk shocks using a novel identification from bond yields. We first recover country-specific fiscal risk shocks from a daily Bayesian VAR model in sovereign and safe corporate bond yields, identified via contemporaneous sign restrictions that capture portfolio rebalancing away from government debt toward private safe assets.
Using high-frequency euro area monetary policy shocks and panel local projections for the period 2001-2020, this paper examines how macroeconomic variables respond based on the level and the maturity structure of public debt. The results show that public debt plays a significant role in influencing monetary policy transmission.
The Annual Report introduces the BIS's new strategy and shows how the BIS has supported stakeholders throughout the year.
The rapid growth of cryptoasset markets and the increasing integration of stablecoins into financial systems have prompted the Financial Stability Board (FSB) to take action. In July 2023, the FSB published its global regulatory framework for cryptoasset activities (FSB Crypto Framework), consisting of high-level recommendations for cryptoasset activities and markets (CA recommendations) and revised recommendations for global stablecoin arrangements (GSC recommendations), based on the princip...
We analyse the macroeconomic impact of stablecoins using a quantitative macroeconomic model. Stablecoins influence the economy through two opposing channels: (i) a bank lending channel, as household demand for stablecoins raises deposit rates, increases bank funding costs, and reduces loan supply; and (ii) a fiscal space channel, as stablecoin issuers' demand for Treasury bills lowers sovereign borrowing costs, expands fiscal space for tax reductions or higher spending.
Centralised exchanges remunerate stablecoin holders, using the return on the issuer's reserve assets or income from market activity. Under the reserve-based model, yields track policy rates – akin to yields on cash-management instruments – whereas under the activity-based model, yields are much more volatile. By turning stablecoins into substitutes for bank deposits or money market funds or into funding instruments for exchanges' risky activities, remuneration models may shape the macro finan...
In a more digitalised and interconnected world, cyber risk is increasingly recognised as a significant threat to economic and financial stability. The rapid evolution of cyber threats driven by technological advances, including artificial intelligence (AI), rising geopolitical tensions and the interconnected nature of digital ecosystems, is increasing the speed, scale, sophistication and systemic nature of both malicious and non-malicious cyber incidents.
We propose a framework for constructing fixed-income portfolios of sovereign bonds that integrates financial and environmental considerations. Central to our approach is the introduction of carbon returns, a concept analogous to financial returns, modeled as random variables to capture the inherent uncertainty of future carbon emissions.
Bond yields react to macroeconomic surprises, but the magnitude of this responsiveness depends on macroeconomic forecast disagreement and monetary policy uncertainty. Using intraday responses of US Treasury futures to surprises in macroeconomic data releases, we find that greater forecast disagreement about an economic indicator prior to its release dampens the yield curve response, while higher monetary policy uncertainty amplifies it. An exception is inflation surprises: prior to the post-C...
Central banks have begun recalibrating their lending operations to bolster market resilience given shifts in the demand for liquidity. Most currency trades are settled in ways that avoid or minimise settlement risk, but more work is needed to mitigate risks.
This paper examines the credit supply effects of sale-of-business (SoB) bank resolutions under the post-Global Financial Crisis regulatory framework, focusing on the resolution of a major Spanish bank. We provide the first micro-level evidence of how an SoB resolution reshapes credit allocation. The acquiring bank preserved lending relationships, prioritizing support for riskier inherited borrowers most exposed to competing banks' retrenchment. This stabilization was achieved despite tighter ...