The advantages or disadvantages firms experience as a result of their size, referred to in the economic literature as returns to scale, are of central importance in many economic models. Increasing returns to scale, whereby unit costs decrease as output volume increases, could explain productivity differences between Europe and the United States. We present fresh evidence on the returns to scale of European firms: most exhibit constant returns to scale, but a non-trivial share also show increasing returns to scale.

An improved net result of financial operations, write-downs and risk provisioning caused a slight increase in the Bundesbank's profit in 2015. At the same time, the Bundesbank's net interest income was lower than at any time since monetary union was launched.