C22 - Single Equation Models; Single Variables: Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion ProcessesReturn

Reducing income inequality is one of the goals under the Sustainable Development Goals. This study examines the intricate relationship between financial development, policy uncertainty, inflation, and income inequality. Panel data for African countries covering the period 2000-2022 were used in the analysis. The study used the economic policy uncertainty (EPU) index to examine its effects on income distribution. Previous studies indicated the possibility of asymmetric effects of inflation and EPU on income inequality. Hence, a dynamic non-linear Panel ARDL was employed to examine the asymmetric nature of the relationship between these variables. The study found that in the long run a symmetric EPU reduces income inequality for the countries in the study and this is confirmed by the asymmetric negative EPU that had a negative and significant impact on inequality. Income equality was found to deteriorate with an increase in inflation. Moreover, inequality was found to be more sensitive to negative changes in inflation relative to a positive change as inequality's elasticity to positive change was much lower as compared to negative changes. Under certain conditions and economic context, redistributive policies can alleviate inequality during a period of heightened EPU. By examining the theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence, the study highlights that for the countries in this study, policy uncertainty reduces inequality. Also, countries should continue with inflation targeting policies and if possible, aim for a lower rate relative to the previous period.

Motivated by the persistent fall in oil prices due to incessant uncertainty-inducing events in recent years, this study empirically examined if economic growth in Africa's top five oil exporters (Algeria, Angola, Egypt, Libya, and Nigeria) is responding asymmetrically to changes in global economic uncertainty as well as uncertainties from U.S., Europe and China using nonlinear ARDL framework from 1997Q1 to 2021Q4. We find that rising global uncertainty hampers economic growth in these economies, while declining global uncertainty significantly enhances growth in Nigeria, Angola and Libya in the short run, but becomes growth-retarding in the long run. Thus, economic growth responds asymmetrically to global uncertainty, especially in the short run. The findings are robust to U.S., Europe, and China uncertainties, except that economic growth in Libya and Algeria remained unresponsive to U.S. and China uncertainties respectively. We concluded that Africa's oil exporters should embrace policies that can strengthen their resilience to global economic uncertainty as well as uncertainties from U.S., Europe, and China.

This study revisits the empirical relationship between output volatility and output for twelve OECD countries. An extended AR-EGARCH-M model was used to identify the structural break, asymmetric effect, jump effect and spillover effect. In addition to the classical logarithmic definition of growth, the study uses the Hodrick-Prescott filter to compute the deviations from the long-term trend as the output gap. The empirical results show that (i) the effect of output volatility on output differs across countries under the same model specifications; and (ii) while the in-mean effect and spillover effect are stronger for the output gap-based models, the jump effect has a major effect on output volatility under the classical logarithmic definition.

This paper deals with Czech household mortgage debt and its determinants in the period 1Q2005-2Q2021. Our analysis focuses on the variables determining the level of mortgage debt from both short- and long-term perspectives. Our contribution is two-fold. Firstly, we examine the relationship between the selected variables within a cross-correlation analysis. The results confirm the positive dependency of household mortgage debt and real GDP, real gross average income and the level of house prices. By contrast, a negative relationship was identified for real interest rates, the unemployment rate and the inflation rate. Secondly, we explore the ARDL and EC models and identify one cointegration relationship. Our results confirm that house prices and real wages are determinants of household mortgage debt in the long-term perspective. However, a wider range of variables plays a role in the short run, including house prices, real gross average income, inflation and long-term interest rates. Moreover, our model indicates the insignificance of unemployment in both the short and long run.

Motivated by the persistent rise in bilateral trade imbalance in Nigeria, this paper empirically examines whether Nigeria's four trading partners (China, India, the UK and the US) respond asymmetrically to changes in the oil price and exchange rate using a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag model over the period from January 1999 to December 2019. Interestingly, we find that oil price increase and decrease influence Nigeria's trade balance with four trading partners asymmetrically. Further evidence indicates that oil price increases predominantly exert greater influence than decreases. Furthermore, Nigeria's trade balances with India and the UK in the long run and the US in the short run significantly respond asymmetrically to changes in exchange rate. In addition the result establishes significant evidence of the J-curve pattern in the response of Nigeria's trade balance with the UK to differences in exchange rate.

This paper employs a dynamic herding approach that takes herding under different market regimes into account. We use daily data on US stock returns for the S&P 500 ranging from 2006 to 2017. The results of the linear model yield no evidence of herding. However, the findings of switching regression of Bai and Perron (1998) demonstrate evidence of herding during crisis regimes of S&P 500. The alternative approach of Markov switching also supports these findings.

This paper examines the role of structural change in the asymmetric adjustment of retail energy prices following changes in crude oil costs. The paper also examines the pattern of adjustment in retail energy prices when exchange rate is accounted for as part of the marginal cost of importing crude oil in European countries with high oil import dependency ratio. The paper shows that the results of Greenwood-Nimmo and Shin (2013) no longer hold when the structural change in the relationship between retail energy prices and crude oil costs is taken into the consideration. The paper also cautions that studies like Kristoufek and Lunackova (2014) that failed to account for exchange rate as part of the marginal cost of importing oil for countries with high oil import dependency ratio may be misleading. In fact, the results of this paper further indicate that once the exchange rate effect is taken into consideration, the possibility of rent-seeking behaviour in the gasoline markets of Italy and Spain disappears; while the rockets and feathers effect observed in most of the ex-tax gasoline, diesel, domestic heating oil and industrial fuel oil markets vanishes.

It is observed that purchasing power parity (PPP) as one of the controversial and most interesting topics of international macroeconomics literature is tested by using different econometric methods for certain countries and/or country groups by many researchers. The validity of PPP is important in terms of being a common exchange rate used in international comparison. In this context, the validity of relative purchasing power parities in the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) were analysed for the January 1993-March 2015 period. Non-linear stationarity analysis was used in the study. According to the findings of the analysis, it was concluded that all of the BRICS countries have a non-linear structure; the PPP approach was valid for Brazil and South Africa, but not valid for Russia, India and China in the relevant period.

This paper aims to theoretically derive and afterwards econometrically assess the impact of intellectual property protection (IPP) on national economies. The authors’ main hypothesis is that by creating a form of non-market protection, IPP limits free competition and has no positive effects on national economies and the world economy in general. The hypothesis is tested through estimation of relationship between charges for the use of intellectual property and 1) gross domestic product, 2) GDP growth, 3) unemployment, 4) exports of high-tech products, 5) FDI outflow, and 6) expenses on research and development in a panel dataset of 146 countries in years 2005–2014 based Arellano-Bond estimator for dynamic panel models. The data tells us that changes in these charges have not a significant impact on the studied indicators, which counts against claims of positive impact of IPP on economies and growth.

In this paper the authors examine the determinants of NPL ratio using a cross-county analysis from the sample of 25 emerging countries. Using the panel data approach, determinants of NPL are analysed for the period from 2000 to 2011. The main aim of this paper is to draw a relevant econometric model, to demonstrate the impact of independent variables on the dependent variable by using static and dynamic model estimation techniques. The results show that NPLs rate can be mainly explained by crucial macroeconomic factors, such as the GDP and inflation rate, and bank-specific factors, such as ROA, CAP and lagged NPLs rate.

The aim of our paper is to formulate and empirically verify the simple backward looking econometric model of the monetary policy rule, which would be able to describe the development of monetary policy rate, namely only on the basis of statistically measured and at the given time available information. We focus on the Czech National Bank, the National Bank of Poland and the Magyar Nemzeti Bank in the period of January 1999 to April 2012. In the present paper we discuss some methodological problems associated with the ex-post empirical verification of the central bank's monetary policy rule. We construct an empirical model of the monetary policy rule, justify the choice and the inclusion of explanatory variables, analyse the statistical properties of time series, and verify the alternative forms of econometric models. Our analysis showed that the development of monetary policy rate in the reporting period can be explained by the past and present development of four explanatory variables: yearly inflation rate, exchange rate, ECB main refinancing rate and growth rate of M2. The annualized inflation rate proved to be statistically insignificant in the model. We find interesting that the statistical quality of the estimated model was further increased after a six-month lag of the annual inflation rate added to the model.

Using time series data, the paper empirically analyzes the effects of trade liberalization on exports, imports and trade balance in Pakistan for the period 1981/82 to 2007/08. It concludes that trade liberalization stimulates both exports and imports with the effect being greater on latter than on former thereby worsening the trade balance. Other variables, that is, real exchange rate, domestic and foreign incomes, terms of trade and foreign exchange market distortions affect exports, imports and trade balance in the theoretically expected directions. Inclusion of interaction terms indicate that liberalization stimulates both price and income elasticities of exports, imports and trade balance. These results have important policy implications for degree of trade liberalization in Pakistan.

In case that a central bank is withdrawing excess liquidity, there arises a question whether the monetary policy based on repo operations (withdrawal repo) is identically efficient as the monetary policy relying on repo rate connected with reverse repo (issuance repo) when central banks provide liquidity. The analysis of this problem is a main subject of the article. Authors develop microeconomic model of commercial bank behaviour, which is used for the definition of conditions when the interest rate policy of central bank based alternatively on repo rates for repo and reverse repo operations is efficient. Statistical data (time series of 1998 - 2011, monthly data frequency) are analysed and econometric verification of alternative forms of econometric models is performed. The authors arrived at a conclusion that the Czech National Bank's monetary policy operating in conditions of excess liquidity withdrawal through repo operations is efficient. In case of the Czech Republic an increase in repo rate on withdrawal repo should lead to an increase in interest rates of commercial banks and to a reduction in the credit activity of commercial banks and hence to the successful implementation of Czech National Bank's restrictive monetary policy.

The paper examines development of economic balance and efficiency of monetary and fiscal policy in the Czech Republic and Slovakia during the crisis with the help of empirical verification of Robert Mundell's model of effective market classification. Our main findings show that although there was no direct 'loser' during the crisis, the Czech Republic seemed to have better coped with its economic imbalances due to the independence of its monetary policy. Slovakia, on the contrary, has preserved several problems on the side of external balance. However, as both countries show certain differences, it is impossible to assess whether the euro adoption had the same effect on both of them. In general, the paper contributes to the research on the Czech and Slovak economy and euro area membership.

The paper presents the development of monthly gross wages and wage distributions both by gender groups and for the total sample in the Czech Republic over the years 2002-2009. The first part deals with the development of sample characteristics of the level, differentiation and shape of the wage distribution in the research period, including characteristics of wage level forecasts for 2010 and 2011. Special attention is paid to the different behaviour of the wage distribution between men and women in the Czech Republic and the gender dependence of gross monthly wages. A comparison of the income level development in the Czech Republic with that of the other European Union countries in 2005-2009 is made in the final part of the paper. The comparison is drawn in relation to the income level development both in the original fifteen EU countries and the twelve newly-accepted EU member states.

This paper aims to analyze the cost factors that influence the export of the Czech Republic, and to estimate models suitable for quantitative analysis of export and its prediction. According to the macroeconomic theory, the fundamental export factors include foreign demand, domestic and foreign price level and exchange rate. Foreign demand reflects the business cycle of foreign economy, price levels and exchange rate characterize the competitiveness of the exported goods, and the exchange rate determines, among others, the production costs through the prices of imported crucial inputs. Several models are applied to set of these variables, and their impact on the export dynamics of the Czech Republic is evaluated.

The yearly inflation rate might not always be an appropriate measure of inflation, mainly due to the fact that it does not provide up-to-date information on the level of inflation. The harmonic analysis shows that the yearly inflation rate deforms and delays the information with respect to the monthly inflation rate and is thus delayed behind the true inflation at yearly levels. This conclusion can be extremely important in the forecasting of the inflation rate at yearly levels and in the process of economic decision making. The problem of the yearly inflation rate is illustrated on the example of the monetary policy of the Czech National Bank. The cointegration analysis revealed the presence of the long-run relationship of the repo rate, the yearly adjusted inflation rate and the euro area repo rate in the analyzed period.

The paper deals with the hypothesis of housing price bubble in the Czech economy. This topic is very popular among economists worldwide now, especially because of the U.S. housing crisis and subsequent collapses on financial markets. However, surprisingly there are not many analyses dealing with the Czech housing market (besides e.g. very brief Financial Stability Report published by the Czech National Bank in 2008) and with the possible housing bubble burst. The first standard bubble indicators like P/I ratio are used to identify the bubble possibility on the Czech housing market. As the second step a regression analysis (VAR model) is being used for deeper analysis of the situation. The whole analysis is complicated by a lack of relevant data and quite short-time series.

This contribution focuses on the modelling of volatility of returns in Czech and US stock markets using a two-factor stochastic volatility model, i.e. the volatility process is modeled as a superposition of two autoregressive processes. As the volatility is not observable, the logarithm of the daily range is employed as the proxy. The estimation of parameters and volatility extraction are performed using the Kalman filter. We have obtained a meaningful decomposition of the volatility process into one highly persistent factor and another quickly mean-reverting factor. Moreover, we have shown that although the overall level of the volatility of returns is roughly the same in both markets, the US market exhibits substantially lower volatility of the volatility process.

This paper studies whether the dynamic behaviour of real GDP, unemployment and inflation is systematically affected by the timing of elections and by changes of government in the Czech Republic. Two basic models of political cycles are tested - political business cycle models and partisan theories. Political business cycle models emphasize the opportunistic behaviour of incumbents who strive to get re-elected regardless of party affiliation. On the other hand, partisan politicians are faithful to their ideological opinions and therefore attract a specific constituency. The tests partly support the opportunistic motives for the behaviour of Czech politicians. On the contrary, suppositions of partisan motives were not proved.

The article discusses several factors that should be addressed when analysing linear dependences and testing the Efficient Market Hypothesis on the Czech capital market in order to avoid possible interpretation biases. The conclusions are based on the empirical analysis of the stock return behaviour in 1995-2005 and the generalization of the up-to-date local studies outcomes. It also discusses the market's relative efficiency compared to capital markets that are considered the most effective worldwide and on the European territory - the American NYSE and the German and Netherlands stock exchanges. Significant linear dependences of daily returns are typical on the Czech capital market; its relative efficiency still lags behind the efficiency of the developed markets.

New concepts have been presented in modelling of inflation dynamics recently, among others the new Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC). There are several traditional ways of NKPC model validity testing, but none of them seems to be practically applicable in conditions of the Czech Republic. We tried to test the validity of NKPC on the basis of time series. For this purpose we applied an interesting non-traditional method proposed by Demery and Duck. This method does not rely on direct estimation of NKPC parameters, but relatively easy tests based on the cointegration analysis of time series are employed. Its application indicates that the NKPC model cannot be considered as effective in conditions of the Czech Republic; this model does not describe the inflation process sufficiently and it is not a suitable model for inflation prediction or for the choice of appropriate monetary (anti-inflation) policy.

The article analyzes efficiency of the Czech treasury T-bill market and the interbank deposit market over period 1993 to 1999. An efficient market-expectation hypothesis and alternative preferred habitat hypothesis were selected to compare both the markets and to determine the extent to which they are affected by macroeconomic fundamentals. The results reveal that the treasury T-bill market is more effective compared to the interbank deposit market. This founding has strong implication in the sence that only the treasury market over the given period is appropriate to be empirically investigated.

The article is concerned with pro-natalist policies, examining empirically their effectiveness. There are proposed four hypotheses: continuous decline of the birth rate; adaptive model; natural-rate hypothesis; crowding-out hypothesis. Nine countries are tested: Germany, Italy, Sweden and France before the World War II and Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and East Germany during the communism. Best empirical results arise from the crowding-out hypothesis. Good results follow from the adaptive model and the continuous decline of birth rates. The natural-rate hypothesis has small explanatory power. Pro-natalist policies, according to this study, are not too effective.

This paper deals with the implementation of the inflation targeting regime in Poland. The study contributes to the discussion about opportunities and constraints of inflation targeting in the more advanced transitive economies. This analysis of monetary policy issues is based on an econometric investigation of the Polish inflation time series and on the estimation of the links between monetary policy instruments and inflation. In comparison with the Czech Republic, the Polish inflation targeting strategy faces more obstacles and limitations that are caused by the structural characteristics of Polish inflation and the country's less advanced money market.

The demand for money represents one of the most important components of the transmission mechanism. Its analysis plays an important role in the decision-making process of central banks dealing with monetary policies. This paper follows a post-Keynesian approach to the analysis of the demand for money. The econometric analysis is based on the Arestis's model, adjusted for the conditions of the Czech Republic. The cointegration analysis on the basis of both the VAR and ADL models is applied. The premise is confirmed that the demand for money in the Czech Republic from 1994 - 2000 had developed in the long-run mostly under the influence of GDP and interest rate development. This conclusion is valid for balances in both real and nominal money.