Our consumer protection mandate and macroprudential role gives us a critical role here. And, Third, where there are sufficient externalities that the social and overall costs of market failure exceed both the private costs of failure and the extra costs of regulation. This is more the ‘bread and butter’ of our work on authorisation, regulation, supervision and resolution.
Figure 7: Average absolute error in the GDP growth rate in the period 1999-2007: comparison between the main forecasters (percentage points; the transparent histogram refers to the error made in the forecast for 2008)  3 Forecast following year  Forecast current year  2.5  2  1.5  1.15 0.92  0.97  1.13  1  1.00  0.5  0.30 Bank of Italy  0.34  Prometeia  0.35  0.43  Consensus IMF  0.49  0 EC  Consensus IMF Bank of Prometeia Italy  EC  Note: Average of the forecasts made in the spring and autumn of each year by the Bank of Italy, Prometeia, Consensus Economics, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission.