The degree of inflation dispersion across the euro area countries was characterised by a strong downward trend in the 1980s and 1990s and has broadly stabilised since the inception of the euro.
I would now like to focus on a third, and related, area of risk: global macroeconomic imbalances. Global imbalances An important backdrop to the global financial crisis and the ensuing recession was the configuration of large current account imbalances in major economies.