Research areas

The SFA unit works in the following research areas:

• Banking and insurance regulation

The unit provides statistical analyses, computation tools, and modelling support to the Commission services in charge of financial markets regulation, taxation, and competition policies. The unit's competences in statistics, econometrics, and financial markets modelling have been deployed by the Commission especially for improving prudential regulation for banks and insurances and for tackling systemic financial risk.

• Macroeconomic analysis for the monitoring of the EU economic stance

The unit supports the Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN) in the development, estimation and simulation of QUEST III, the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model used by the Commission to analyze the status of the EU economy. QUEST is an important analytic instrument for monitoring the EU 2020 objectives and the impact of the flagships initiatives, in particular for the integrated surveillance of member countries economic stance, including their fiscal policy, reform programmes, and overall sustainability of public finances.

• Monitoring fiscal imbalances in application of the Growth and Stability Pact

The Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) is a rule-based framework for the coordination of national fiscal policies in the economic and monetary union (EMU). It was established to safeguard sound public finances, an important requirement for EMU to function properly. The unit has developed and maintains the Business Cycle Estimation Platform GAP used by the European Commission to monitor the adherence of Member States’ yearly budgets to the Stability and Growthty Pact.

For more information visit the Action "Analytic methods for Financial and Economic Protection"