Progress in economic theory and in empirical methods also highlights the usefulness of a more granular approach to macroeconomic outcomes. To be more precise, there are two areas of great importance for the ECB in which the use of household-level data can prove very useful: monetary policy and financial stability.
If large banking systems with access to foreign finance become involved in providing credit to the local economy they have the capacity to rapidly destabilise it. Furthermore, it will be difficult or impossible for the national fiscal authorities to deal with the failure of such a bank, if it is providing systemically important payment or transactions balance services to the domestic economy.