C32 - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models: Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes; State Space ModelsReturn

In the last two decades, advances in globalization have evolved remarkably and countries have become more integrated with the entire world. The implications of this process have attracted interest of researchers and monetary policy authorities. This paper provides an assessment of the impact of globalization on macroeconomic dynamics at the level of four representative Central Eastern European countries (Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Romania) between 2003Q2 and 2022Q4. The method proposed in this study is a time-varying vector autoregressive model with stochastic volatility estimated using the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm through Bayesian inference. The results of the impulse response functions suggest a slight decrease in inflation and an increase in economic activity for some of the analysed countries, after a positive shock in the degree of trade openness, a proxy used for the advance in globalization.

This study investigates the macroeconomic resilience of the Moroccan economy using a comprehensive analysis of key indicators and policy variables. Utilising data from sources such as the World Bank, we examined GDP per capita, government debt, government final expenditure, agriculture and industry sectors as a percentage of GDP, output gap, and trade openness. Applying the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) method, we established both long-run and short-run relationships between these variables and the output gap, which represents the cyclical trend in the economy. Our findings revealed that both government final consumption in % of GDP and government debt in % of GDP have a significant impact on the economy as they were found to be countercyclical measures, mitigating the adverse effects of shocks on the economy. The ARDL model's diagnostic tests confirmed the validity of our estimations, ensuring robust and reliable results. Overall, this study sheds light on the budgetary determinants of macroeconomic resilience in the Moroccan economy and provides valuable insights for policymakers to implement measures that promote stability and sustainability. By carefully managing government expenditure and debt levels, the Moroccan economy can better navigate economic shocks and foster a more resilient and prosperous future.

The balanced growth theory and the neoclassical growth model predict that certain macroeconomic variables such as output, consumption, and investment grow at a constant rate. Analytically, it indicates that the consumption-output ratio and the investment-output ratio (termed "great ratios") must be stationary. Moreover, consumption and investment must be cointegrated with output. This paper examines these implications with respect to developed (G7) and emerging (E7) countries using data for the period 1970-2019. The validity of the balanced growth hypothesis (BGH) is tested by using unit root tests (univariate analysis) and cointegration techniques (multivariate analysis) that permits endogenously determined structural breaks. The findings of our univariate analysis suggest limited evidence of the BGH in developed and developing countries. The multivariate analysis exhibits more supportive evidence of the BGH in five developed countries and limited evidence for two developing countries. The study also employs the Westerlund (2006) panel cointegration test with structural breaks to examine the validity of the BGH. Empirical findings validate the BGH for the G7 countries, while it is not validated for E7 countries. In sum, the study promulgates the use of structural breaks in a multivariate setup in testing the BGH to find robust evidence.

This paper uses symmetric and asymmetric testing procedures to examine the issue of the relationship between the output gap and inflation for the Turkish economy using data from 2002:01 to 2021:09. First, it analyses the cointegration by applying different cointegration tests taking into account structural breaks and asymmetric behaviour to reveal whether the relation varies between sub-periods. Afterwards, it examines the asymmetric causality between different shocks. Our empirical results indicate that there is a long-run relationship between series in the existence of two structural breaks and asymmetry. The results also show asymmetric causality running from positive (negative) output gap to positive (negative) inflation shock, and running from negative inflation shock to negative output gap shock. The overall findings indicate the importance of having in mind the structural breaks and asymmetric behaviour of macroeconomic variables in policy-making processes, such as in Turkey during high and volatile inflation.

This study aims to estimate a dynamic fiscal reaction function in a state-space setting to obtain time-varying reaction parameters for appraising the evolution of public debt sustainability in Turkey. The data set used for estimation is the longest for Turkey in the literature. Succinctly speaking, this function quantifies the corrective fiscal efforts exerted to preserve the stability of public debt. The time-varying estimation findings in this study suggest that the recent fiscal history of Turkey can be divided into two subperiods in terms of fiscal stability. Before the mid-1990s, no systematic fiscal response existed to restore the stability of public debt, whereas after the mid-1990s, a remarkable effort was evidenced by the positive fiscal reaction parameters. Notwithstanding some 20 years of strong positive reactions, the former performance appears to be far-off in recent years, and the strength of fiscal reaction has waned gradually, which is perturbing for the future course of fiscal sustainability.

Random forest models have recently gained popularity for economic forecasting. Earlier studies demonstrated their potential to provide early warnings of recession and serve as a competitive method to older prediction models. This study offers the first evaluation of the random forest forecast for the Czech economy. The one-step-ahead forecasting results show high accuracy on the Czech data and are proven to outperform forecasts from the Czech Ministry of Finance and the Czech National Bank. The following multi-step random forest forecast, estimated for the next four quarters, shows results similar to those from the central institutions. The main difference stems from the household and industrial confidence variables, which significantly impact on the random forest forecast. The variable-importance analysis further emphasizes the soft variables as valuable determinants for Czech forecasting. Overall, the findings motivate other forecasters to exercise this method.

This paper deals with the effects of distribution stress and macroeconomic factors on the composition of life insurance investment portfolios on the Central European market. Using a wide array of variables and the VAR model as our main method, we have found that a strong majority of insurers react to external shocks, induced by high levels of contract turnover or positive changes in macro-variables such as GDP and inflation, by strengthening bond components of their portfolio. The exception is connected to interest rates (two-week repo), which presumably have a negative effect on bond investments. Other components such as shares, funds and cash positions have been affected in a diverse way, yet to a minor extent. This implies that insurers tend to react to external stressors by beefing up the conservative part of their investments, potentially leading to an underperformance of managed assets. As such, our results point to conceivable regulatory implications, which would prevent those secondary negative detriments of life distribution growth (i.e., reselling), which are to be expected on the surveyed market.

This paper analyses the unemployment hysteresis in the Czech Republic on data from 1999 to 2016. The hysteresis is modelled by allowing for the impact of cyclical unemployment on the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment. Models are estimated using the Bayesian approach and provide robust evidence in favour of the hysteresis. The estimates imply that in response to an increase in the cyclical unemployment of 1 percentage point, the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment increases by 0.18 percentage points.

Although there is a strong theoretical framework for the economic growth and its relationship with education, the empirical evidence of this relationship is rather scarce. In this paper we investigated the causality and the long-run relationship between economic growth and higher education in the Czech Republic and Romania, using data series for 1980-2013 period. We used a VECM to analyse the long-run relationship between higher education and economic growth and Granger methodology to test the causality between variables. The results showed that higher education has an important positive effect on economic growth, although the impact level of the higher education on economic growth is different in the two countries. We also showed that there is a causality relationship that goes from higher education to economic growth for both countries.

The article describes approach proposed for the house price equilibrium assessment in the Czech Republic. It first explains why it is necessary to use multiple models simultaneously to correctly assess house price sustainability. It goes on to describe individual models proposed to estimate house price misalignment in the Czech Republic. Results given by these individual models are consonant in identifying periods of over- and undervaluation of house prices but slightly differ in the amplitude of the gaps. A method for aggregating the estimates produced by those approaches is then presented. It works on the premise that more correlated estimates may be evidence of a strong signal, while less correlated estimates may, on the other hand, bring additional information to the house price assessment. By using two sets of weights, it presents an interval of supposed under- or overvaluation of house prices. This method indicates that Czech house prices were roughly at their equilibrium level in mid-2014 following an extended period of slight undervaluation since the mid-2009. It also proves robust to the length of the sample used.

This paper examines if the volatility exhibits a symmetric or an asymmetric response to past shocks, particularly the relevance of structural breaks for Central European (hereinafter referred to as "CEE") stock markets. In addition, it is of great interest to see if the CEE emerging markets are correlated with other emerging ones, as well as to analyse the correlation with the developed markets, for optimizing investment portfolios. Using a CEE group approach (regional index) and daily data from 2002 to 2015, the results suggest that markets react differently to similar negative and positive returns, except for the rapid growth period, when the greed sentiment dominates the markets. Furthermore, the structural break dates affect volatility, the highest asymmetric coefficient being recorded for the pre-crisis period. For the bivariate approach, the emerging markets and developed markets indexes provided by the Morgan Stanley Capital International (hereinafter referred to as "MSCI") have been considered and the results suggest that CEE stock markets are correlated with emerging stock markets rather than developed ones. For both pairs, the correlation is consistently higher for the break dates characterized by an increase in volatility, which is in line with the literature that claims that the co-movements increase when international factors dominate the national ones, and influence stock markets.

The macroeconomic announcements and their effects on stock markets are considered to be a measure of stock market integration. Earlier studies show that integrated stock markets exhibit immediate reaction to international macroeconomic news, whereas partially integrated or segmented markets mostly do not react to such announcements. This paper investigates the effect of surprises disguised in the macroeconomic announcements made by the European Monetary Union on CIVETS (Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey, and South Africa) stock markets. Daily stock market data starting from January 1, 2007 to December 31, 2012 is analysed. The impact of macroeconomic announcements is estimated by using EGARCH model. The results show that the returns of four out of six CIVETS stock markets significantly react on the day of macroeconomic announcements, whereas the market volatility of all markets is affected due to the EMU's announcements. The results also show that not all types of announcements have significant impact on returns and volatilities in CIVETS, highlighting the importance of the contents of macroeconomic surprises.

In this article, we investigate the actual level of monetary policy independence in the Czech Republic. We formulate the research agenda in terms of the Euro Dominance Hypothesis. The situation of the non-euro EU countries with derogation in terms of joining the EMU, like the Czech Republic, is similar to the pre-euro situation of the euro area countries, in which the problem of the stability of the European Mechanism System was predominant. We investigate the co-movement of interest rates between the Czech Republic and the Eurozone to assess the potential costs of monetary integration. Using cointegration and VECM methods we show that the ECB monetary policy influences monetary policy in the Czech Republic and the actual level of monetary independence in the Czech Republic is much lower than it is presumed. Therefore, we argue that for the Czech Republic the cost of the joining the EMU will be lower than expected.

In this article we analyse the evolution of the relationship between budget and trade deficits in Turkey covering the period 1985:1 to 2013:4. The structural break tests suggest the existence of a regime shift after the severe 2001 crisis. Time-varying responses obtained from the TVP-VAR model up to 2003 support the Keynesian view by providing evidence in favour of twin deficits, whereas the remaining responses suggest the remarkable divergence between fiscal and trade deficits.

Many countries decided to launch car scrapping schemes during the 2009 crisis in order to support their car industries and to boost domestic demand. Owing to the existence of significant international trade links in the automotive sector, there is also a strong theoretical foundation for cross-border effects of such scrappage programmes. This paper explores spillovers of the German scheme to the Czech economy on the basis of a close mutual trade link between these two countries and the size of the Czech automotive sector. It is demonstrated that the German programme provided for a significant boost for Czech personal car exports, which were also coupled with increased imports due to large import requirements of the Czech automotive segment. Overall, the contribution of first-round effects of the German car scrapping scheme to the Czech real GDP growth in 2009 is estimated to have reached between 0.4 and 0.5 percentage points.

The main objective of this article is to test the existence of Stolper-Samuelson theorem between Turkey and EU-15 countries for the period 2005-2014. According to the results, a significant relationship is found between exports and real wages especially in the labour and raw intensive sectors of Turkish exports, where Turkey is relatively labour and raw abundant in comparison with the EU-15. Test results indicate a long-run relationship between exports of manufacture of wearing apparel, food, textiles and real wages, a unidirectional Granger causality relationship is found from exports to wages in manufacture of wearing apparel and food. The international trade between Turkey and the EU-15 validates to some extent the Stolper-Samuelson theorem.

This study analyses the Czech, Hungarian, and Polish currencies by examining the statistical characteristics of the Swiss franc as well as the ECB monetary policy in order to indicate shocks in these markets between 2002 and 2013. The abundance of monetary easing decisions can be used as a viable sign of market misbehaviour in addition to the low probability of extreme exchange rate fluctuations. Indeed, the temporal distribution of extreme currency fluctuations provides vital information about the nature of the recent crisis. Contagions can be defined as increased correlations during periods of crisis, while divergence means a significant decrease in this regard. Methodologically, common movements in this study were calculated by using DCC-GARCH modelling. The findings of this study underline the special features of the Swiss franc exchange rate, notably that its extreme fluctuations can be managed by using swap agreements and that it tended towards divergences during the crisis era. These results support the idea of avoiding lending in reserve currencies.

The aim of the article is to introduce a complex econometric model of cash-lows for the Czech life insurance market. Namely, technical-actuarial links among insurance variables observed in annually published summary balance sheets of life insurers are described by means of an econometric system of linear simultaneous equations. The suggested model is statistically veri ed and thus it can provide useful economic interpretations. Further, adjusted residual bootstrapping is introduced in this context as a straightforward alternative which can solve possible problems with questionable asymptotic distribution properties of residuals. This technique can be applied e.g. for signi cance testing purposes. Finally, an important practical illustration of scenario analysis is considered. Such an analysis might be really useful, e.g. for internal calculations of the Czech life insurers, nancial planning or stress testing in the framework of Solvency II. Two general approaches are presented: deterministic and stochastic. The second one is capable of delivering various empirical probabilities concerning possible future developments.

This paper empirically examines the possible causal relationship between financial development and economic growth in Serbia. In this regard, the focus is on the development of financial intermediation by banks, considering the fact that the banking sector plays an important role in Serbian financial system. The empirical research is based on quarterly data for the period Q1 2004-Q4 2011 by using Toda-Yamamoto causality test. Our empirical findings suggest that process of economic growth contributes to process of financial deepening. On the other hand, the results indicate that there is a significant unidirectional causality that runs from both private enterprise credit to GDP and household credit to GDP to economic growth. Bidirectional causal relation is confirmed only between the share of bank credit to nonfinancial private sector in total domestic credit and economic growth rate.

This paper examines the exchange rate pass-through to import, producer and consumer prices in South Africa using monthly data covering the period 2000M1 to 2009M5. The study uses innovation accounting tools (impulse response and variance decomposition) within the framework of an unrestricted VAR to examine the degree of pass-through as well as the relative importance of a number of variables in explaining changes in domestic prices. The key findings suggest that after 1 per cent shock to nominal effective exchange rate, the level of CPI increases by 0.125 per cent, giving a pass-through elasticity of 13 per cent. However, the pass-through elasticity of producer price is 20 per cent after 24 months suggesting that favourable shocks to producer price inflation can have considerable moderating effect on CPI inflation.

The population ageing is the main population problem of Europe. Population development may influence the economy and the economy may retrospectively influence population development. The consequences of this process may appear with a delay of several decades and they may have an unfavourable influence on the functioning of the economy and the prosperity of individual European countries. In connection with this, the international migration is often brought up, mainly the question whether the migration can solve or at least lessen the ramifications connected with the decrease in the number of population itself and population ageing. The migration itself is rather wide and extensive and cannot be dwelled upon in great detail, ergo we pointed out some of the ground ideas in this article, especially those which are most commonly connected with the demographic migration.

In this paper, the export demand and supply of German manufacturing industry is estimated for the period 1993 to 2005. The Johansen procedure (1991, 1994) is applied to estimate the long-run relationship in a VECM. Special attention is paid to the development of the German export prices being exposed to the competitive environment of fast growing countries like Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland. Since they offer similar high-technology products on the international export markets and are gaining the market share, German export prices are under downward pressure. The results show that German export prices grow at a slower pace than that of the competitors and that they are negatively influenced by the growing market share of the CEECs. On the export demand side, the empirical picture corresponds to the theoretical one displaying a less unity income elasticity of demand indicating the decreasing market share for German manufactures in the long run.

The behaviour of selected European stock indices in the period 2001-2005 was analysed. UKX (GB), DAX (Germany), CAC (France) and MIBTEL (Italy) represented well established West European markets, whereas PX-50 (Czech Republic), SKSM (Slovak Republic), BUX (Hungary) and WIG (Poland) were the examples of Central European emerging ones. The subject of this analysis were logarithmic daily returns computed from closing values of corresponding indices. Cross correlation function reached typical values 0.7 (West Europe) and 0.4 (Central Europe) excepting the Slovak Republic. The patterns of both common and solitary movements were revealed with the use of principal component and cluster analysis. To establish some dynamical relations in return time-series, vector autoregression models and Granger causality tests were employed. As for West Europe, the causal chain UKX_MIBTEL_DAX_CAC was revealed. On the other hand, the form of this chain for Central Europe was PX-50_BUX_WIG. Finally, the behaviour of both BUX and WIG returns was strongly determined by all West European counterparts.

This paper is aimed at testing the German Dominance Hypothesis (GDH) in the context of Eastern enlargement of the EU based on the hitherto unexamined former Eastern Bloc countries of Slovakia and Czech Republic using macroeconomic data spanning the period between 1991 and 2004. Cointegration analysis and a vector error correction mechanism validate the GDH. This finding raises the question of what drives these linkages and causes them to register these characteristics. While one could make the case that the Treaty of Maastricht may have caused some form of macroeconomic convergence and thus cointegration, it could also well be argued that, given our country sample and the fact that our data refers to the interbank market, these linkages may be more resulting from changes in the European banking sector and financial markets as the latter prepared for the adoption of the euro and responded to the harmonization of European banking and financial market regulations via the EU Banking Directives.

Estimation of the costs of disinflation policy is usually done using the sacrifice ratio (SR) coefficient. This paper provides two alternative estimates of SR for the Czech economy. The estimates are based on relatively simple, but transparent and verified models, i.e. their vector autoregression and vector moving average representations. When we analysze our estimates of the Czech SR from the accuracy point of view, we see that the results are very sensitive to the way of definition of monetary shocks. Even though the individual estimates of the SR are generally not accurate enough for monetary policy decision making, there is a good probability that the Czech SR was negative during the transition period analysed, with relatively low absolute value. We may therefore assume that if the Czech National Bank decides to incur monetary restriction, such action would not have long-term significant negative impact on output.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the time-series and distributional properties of Central European stock returns. We test the random walk hypothesis and then consider an alternative to random walk - the ARIMA model for stock prices. The behavior of volatility of returns over time is studied using the GARCH-t model which also allows us to learn more about the distribution properties of stock returns. We employ the BDS test to assess the ability of the estimated GARCH-t model to capture all nonlinearities in stock returns. Our empirical findings reveal that the Czech and Hungarian stock market indices are predictable from the time series of historical prices, whereas that of Poland is not. The returns on all three indices are conditionally heteroskedastic and non-normal. The estimated number of degrees of freedom ranges from 18 to 4.

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.