as signalled by our bank lending survey for the euro area for the third quarter of 2020. the annual growth rate of loans to households stood at 3. 1 per cent in october, unchanged from september. overall, our policy measures, together with the measures adopted by national governments and european institutions, remain essential to support bank lending conditions and access to financing, in particular for those most affected by the ramifications of the pandemic. to sum up, a cross - check of the outcome of the economic analysis with the signals coming from the monetary analysis confirmed that an ample degree of monetary accommodation is necessary to support economic activity and the robust convergence of inflation to levels that are below, but close to, 2 per cent over the medium term. regarding fiscal policies, an ambitious and coordinated fiscal stance remains critical, in view of the sharp contraction in the euro area economy. fiscal measures taken in response to the pandemic emergency should, as much as possible, be targeted and temporary in nature. at the same time, weak demand from firms and households and the heightened risk of a delayed recovery in the light of the new lockdowns owing to the second wave of the pandemic warrant continued support from national fiscal policies. the three safety nets endorsed by the european council for workers, businesses and sovereigns provide important funding support in this context. the governing council recognises the key role of the next generation eu package and stresses the importance of it becoming operational without delay. it calls on member states to deploy the funds for productive public spending, accompanied by productivity - enhancing structural policies. this would allow the next generation eu programme to contribute to a faster, stronger and more uniform recovery and would increase economic resilience and the growth potential of member states ’ economies, thereby supporting the effectiveness of monetary policy in the euro area. such structural policies are particularly important in addressing long - standing structural and institutional weaknesses and in accelerating the green and digital transitions. we are now ready to take your questions. 4 / 4 bis central bankers'speeches

peter praet : market power - a complex reality speech by mr peter praet, member of the executive board of the european central bank, at the eib / compnet conference, luxembourg, 18 march 2019. * * * diagnosing and quantifying firms ’ market power – the ability of firms to maintain prices above marginal cost – has long been a central topic for economists studying industrial organisation. 1 on the basis of detailed firm - level data, researchers analyse the market power of firms in specific industries. for a long time, market power was of little interest to macroeconomists, including central bankers. it first entered the field of macroeconomics as a topic of interest in the mid - 1980s, but only with a narrow focus on the cyclical pattern of markups – the margin firms charge over the marginal cost of output. in part, this is because macroeconomic models are generally founded on kaldor ’ s stylised facts, such as a constant labour share, constant profits and a constant capital - to - output ratio. such models implicitly assume that there are no trend changes in firms ’ market power. recently, however, trend changes in market power have elicited interest from macroeconomists following a number of us - based studies that challenge the underlying conventional assumption in macroeconomic models, namely that firms have constant market power. these studies document a rise in the market power of us firms over the past three decades, and especially since 2000. such changes in firms ’ market power at the aggregate level can have important macroeconomic implications. they could affect investment and the pricing behaviour of firms, but also productivity growth and, therefore, the natural rate of interest. for a central banker, it is thus of crucial importance to understand whether and how the prevailing level of firms ’ market power is evolving. in theory, it is fairly straightforward to define market power. in practice, however, it is difficult to pin down the level and evolution of market power empirically. there are two reasons for this. first, markups are not directly observable. second, there is no one - to - one mapping between firms ’ market power and point - in - time markup estimates. a firm with a small markup at any given moment can have significant market power when its pricing strategy aims to build up an ever - larger market share. as a result, assessing the level of firms ’ market power requires a variety of approaches to