E31 - Price Level; Inflation; DeflationReturn

This paper examines exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) to prices in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, focusing on the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, and Romania. We employ a Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) model to analyse the transmission of exchange rate shocks to imported, producer, and consumer prices. Results indicate significant heterogeneity in ERPT across countries and price stages. While all countries exhibit higher pass-through for import prices, variations emerge in producer and consumer price responses. Monetary policy credibility and trade openness are found to influence ERPT dynamics. The findings highlight the importance of understanding ERPT for effective monetary policy in the region. Our results highlight the need for policymakers to consider the complex interplay between exchange rate fluctuations and domestic prices when formulating monetary policy strategies.

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 paper analyses the asymmetric behaviour of exchange rate pass-through in Turkey using a threshold VAR model. The main purpose is to examine the asymmetries in the exchange rate pass-through based on size, direction and inflationary environment of an emerging market economy with a highly depreciated domestic currency and two-digit inflation rate. Monthly exchange rate movements and monthly inflation rates were used as threshold variables. Nonlinear impulse response functions were employed to compare upper and lower regimes. According to our findings, the transmission of exchange rate shocks to domestic inflation in the upper regime is stronger than that in the lower regime. The pass-through increases with the magnitude of shocks. Besides, positive shocks have more effect on domestic prices than negative shocks, especially in the upper regime. A positive relationship between inflation and exchange rate pass-through exists. During high inflation periods, pass-through to domestic prices increases.

In this study, using the recent recursive unit root tests proposed by Phillips et al. (2015), we identify and date-stamp periods where food and energy prices deviate explosively relative to other prices in the economy and analyse the implications in terms of anchoring inflation expectations. During the period from January 2003 to July 2018, we have detected the existence of such periods for 17 out of 27 EU countries. Identifying these explosive periods is particularly important since evidence reveals that consumers change, i.e., revise their inflation expectations during periods when headline consumer prices deviate explosively from core prices. Furthermore, it is realized that consumers take macroeconomic variables into account as well as past inflation when forming inflation expectations in both normal and explosive periods. On the other hand, there are particular differences among groups of countries while adjusting their inflation expectations during explosive phases. A common feature for all the countries is that during explosive periods, consumers change and update their inflation expectations on the basis of information coming from the interest rate. More specifically, consumers in all the countries perceive a higher current interest rate as an indication of higher future inflation, leading to higher inflation expectations in explosive periods. A particularly important policy implication of these findings is that periods of explosive deviations in headline prices from core prices should be monitored closely while designing policies to anchor inflation expectations.

This study investigates the sensitivity of Consumer Price Index (CPI) sub-items to output gap for an emerging market economy, Turkey. To this aim, we estimate standard Phillips Curve equations for each of the 152 sub-indices of the CPI and determine the goods and services that respond to output gap in a statistically and economically significant manner. Thereby, we propose an alternative view to assess core inflation as a complementary tool to better monitor underlying inflation with respect to its main drivers. Empirical findings show that about one-third of the consumer basket is affected by the output gap. Remaining items that are found to be insensitive to business cycle extensively co-move with import prices and exchange rate. The results imply that controlling inflation through counter-cyclical policies may be a more challenging issue, especially when external factors work in the opposite direction. Policy efforts to reduce exchange rate volatility and import content of aggregate production are as important as cyclical policies geared toward steering the economy with respect to its potential.

We investigate commonality and heterogeneity of inflationary processes in ten Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries over the period 2001-2013. The research is important for the analysis of monetary policy as it helps understand the origin of price formation from both sectoral and country perspective. With a multi-level factor model we decompose product-level inflation rates into the CEE region-wide, sector, country, country-sector, and idiosyncratic components. The outcomes indicate that CEE region-wide and country specific components are more persistent than sector and product-level components, which is in line with similar studies for core EU countries. Regional factors explain about 17% of variance in monthly price changes, which is more than any other factors (below 10% each). This result is at odds with the assumptions of many sectoral DSGE models and empirical evidence on the importance of sectoral price shocks in developed economies. The difference may be related to the conclusion that the first regional factor is associated with common disinflationary process that occurred in CEE economies in the 2000s, whereas the second one reveals significant correlations with global factors, especially commodity prices and euro area price developments.

The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between inflation and income inequality. The article is mainly theoretical, but considerations presented are illustrated by relevant empirical data. Based on our analysis, we claim that inflation, which accelerated after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971, could have contributed to the rise in income inequality in the USA since the 1970s. Our article transcends the simple notion of an inflation tax and focuses on other redistributive mechanisms of inflation (Cantillon effect) as one of the main causes of income inequality.

This study empirically attempts to unveil the contradictive findings regarding the relationship between fiscal imbalances and inflation in the context of the latest theoretical indications. The empirical analysis covers the period of 1970 to 2009 and applies dynamic panel techniques in a pool of 52 countries that comprises 19 developed and 33 developing ones. This segmentation is applied to illustrate the groups' specific features and the implications of heterogeneity. The findings provide supportive evidence for developing countries. We also find a significant degree of heterogeneity between the groups and the statistical significance of the relationship between fiscal imbalances and inflation in the case of developed countries cannot be ratified.

The main objective of this paper is to fill a critical gap in the literature by analyzing the effects of decentralization on the macroeconomic stability. A survey of the voluminous literature on decentralization suggests that the question of the links between decentralization and macroeconomic stability has been relatively scantily analyzed. Even though there is still a lot of room for analysis as far as the effects of decentralization on other aspects of the economy are concerned, we believe that it is in this area that a more thorough analyses are mostly called for. Through this paper, we will try to shed more light on the issue notably by looking at other dimension of macroeconomic stability than the ones usually employed in previous studies as well as by examining other factors that might accentuate or diminish the effects of decentralization on macroeconomic stability. Our results found that decentralization appears to lead to a decrease in inflation rate. However, we do not find any correlation between decentralization with the level of fiscal deficit. Our results also show that the impact of decentralization on inflation is conditional on the level of perceived corruption and political institutions.

In this paper we discuss the issue of the choice of foreign exchange rate regimes in transitive economies, their effect on the relative changes and the volatility of the foreign exchange rate and the development of the national foreign exchange market. The results of our analysis indicate that the choice of the foreign exchange rate regime is not a passive factor regarding both average relative changes in exchange rates and volatility as measured by the standard deviation. They also show that increased volatility of spot rates and a growing interest rate differential lead to the growth of the share of outright forwards and swaps (e.g. transactions that might be used for hedging) in relation to spot transactions.

There is empirical evidence that the introduction of the euro led to a significant increase of perceived inflation in most countries. Such an increase and persistence in the perceived inflation might then have an impact on inflation expectations and other macroeconomic variables. The authors have used expectational errors to describe the difference between inflation expectations/anticipations and its observed values, subsequently to identify the causality between these variables.

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.

In this article we argue that the balance sheet of a central bank contains valuable information for the quality of a currency. As an illustration we analyze the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve System (FED) during the subprime crisis between June 2007 and December 2008. Until September 2008 the balance sheet of the FED did not expand strongly. However, the structure of the FED assets varied pronouncedly. Starting in September 2008 the balance sheet expanded dramatically. The calculation of certain balance sheet ratios supports the assessment of an important decrease of the quality of the currency. Our analysis shows that the analysis of central bank balance sheet policies should not rely solely on quantitative issues but rather include qualitative issues.

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 examines money-output and price-output relations in developed countries between 1980 and 2005. We observe that declines in the nominal monetary base are connected with a moderately below-average behaviour of the real output. The same result applies for small positive growth rates of nominal M1 and M2. High growth rates of money are associated with the above-average product growth. We have some evidence that broader monetary aggregates are more closely associated with the real product than narrower monetary aggregates. As opposed to the money-output connection, we show that low inflation was accompanied by high product growth.

The less developed Slovak economy was converging quickly to the Czech economic level after the World War II, thanks to the massive reallocation of resources. The inflow amounted to 11% of the Slovak GDP, the outflow from the Czech Lands represented 4% of their GDP. The Slovak GDP per capita reached around three quarters of the Czech one in 1992. After the split of Czechoslovakia, the economic policy adjusted to the changed conditions by sinking real wages and depreciation of Slovak koruna, so that the Slovak ULC are the lowest among the Central European countries now. The cost competitiveness, accompanied by an abundant inflow of FDI and economic reforms after the EU accession helped to speed the real convergence. As a result, the Slovak GDP per capita reached 84% of the Czech one in 2007. The balance of costs and benefits of the euro adoption varies due to different conditions in the succession states and to a certain extent justifies the more rapid advancement to the single currency in Slovakia. The common challenge for both economies is to overcome the one-sided orientation on cost/price competitiveness based on low wages.

The article analyses the process of nominal convergence of the new EU member states (NMS) with particular attention paid to some applied and theoretical aspects, which may have impact on the process of the euro adoption. Chapter two addresses selected theoretical and methodological issues connected with the International Comparison Project (ICP). It discusses determinants and influences affecting price level convergence and some issues that have set off new trends, such as the globalization or process of the on-going European integration. This chapter also presents a brief summary of the main trends of price convergence observed by focusing on changes of comparative price levels (CPL) for various disaggregated items of GDP. It also deals with potential issues and problems arising in this context. Chapter three is aimed at an empirical verification of price convergence and at a search for main driving factors using data for the NMS and the old EU member states over 11 years (1995-2006). There are some differences in results depending on the applied econometric method. The most important determinants of price level are GDP and population, the openness and public finance's indicators are not significant. The last section summarises the main findings.

Financial sector is prone to cyclical movements and procyclicality of the financial system may endanger financial stability, which depends on asset prices and loan losses due to the fact that the deterioration of bank assets through non-performing loans is characteristics of banking distress. This was the case during Japan's lost decade and the Nordic banking crises. Even the classic banking panics of the Great Depression are being revised in the light of new evidence on the fundamental deterioration of bank assets. Much empirical evidence supports the view that balance sheet variables, such as net worth affect investment and produce business cycle dynamics. In an upswing, the greater availability of credit leads to higher asset prices, which then serve as collateral for more borrowing. Relatively unstable development of share prices on the capital market increases equity risk. This paper is based on the presumption that the stability of macro economic environment, less pronounced cyclical movements and insignificant procyclicality between GDP and equity (used as collaterals for credit insurance) lower equity risk. There was proved no significant procyclicality between collaterals and GDP according to low stock market capitalization. And due to the relation that equity risk (as a part of market risk) is determined by unstable development of shares prices, I accepted the hypothesis of low equity risk in the analysed transition economies on the basis of tested procyclicality.

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.

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 fiscal deficits in the majority of transition countries continue to deteriorate and pose risks for the sustainability of public finances in the longer time horizon. Due to short time span and data limitation (1993 - 2003) I concentrate on the short-run dynamics using fixed-effect model with panel data. I found a very small effects of fiscal deficits on inflation for the group of Visegrad countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia) with slightly better results after the exclusion of Poland. The perspective of adopting the euro in the horizon of several years has prevented until now the use of surprise inflation to reduce the real burden of servicing the increasing public debt. In the periods of social conflicts which are likely to characterize times of delayed fiscal reforms the temptation to resort to seignorage may become more stronger than nowadays.

This paper uses a small-scale dynamic rational expectations model based on an openeconomy version of Fuhrer-Moore-type staggered wage setting to quantify the secondround effects of selected supply-side shocks and of shocks to the nominal exchange rate on wages and subsequently on inflation. In order to analyse the desired reaction of the central bank to these shocks, optimal time-consistent policy rules are derived within the presented New-Keynesian framework. The conclusions presented in the paper suggest that the second-round effects of shocks to import prices and the nominal exchange rate on inflation should not be ignored in practical policy-making.

This paper is aimed at addressing general characteristics of growth and development that concerns all transition countries before their accession to the EU when their convergence to the EU average gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is expected. By looking back at the GDP statistics of major industrial countries for the last 90 years, a question is posed why some countries get on a path of a fast growth while some others go from one secular crisis to another. In assessing the policies supporting growth it is concluded that conditions on the company and industry level are more important than national macroeconomic policies.

The article analyses the economic development of transition economies (the CR, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia) in the nineties by means of the original graphical method based on a multidimensional view, with the intention to assess convergence or divergence of their economic level vis-a-vis the average level of the EU countries. The polydimensional aspect is based in the first step on four basic objectives of economic policy depicted by the macroeconomic (magic) tetragon. In the second step, an each quadrant of the magic tetragon is extended by six detailed indicators to get a multidimensional convergence polygon. The polygon framework allowed carrying out more detailed analysis of the convergence process. The detailed results of the multidimensional convergence analysis varied across individual countries and over time; the time path of these differences partly reflected the uneven progress in macroeconomic stabilization and recovery of economic growth.

In this paper we discuss the issue of the choice of exchange rate regimes in transitive economies and the effect of exchange rate policy on the development of macroeconomic indicators (e. g. the average growth rate of real GDP in domestic currency, the development of domestic inflation and the real exchange rate). Our analysis indicates that monetary and exchange rate policy is not a passive factor, at least in the medium term. Monetary policy should, in the first phases of transformation development, warn against two extremes: absolute stability even appreciation of the nominal exchange rate, or, on the contrary, chronic and severe depreciation.

This article addresses the issue of macroeconomic policies in the pre-accession period. The key theme is an assessment of the relationship between the real and nominal convergence of the candidate countries towards the EU. Support for real convergence cannot procced on a long-term basis in contradiction to the nominal convergence criteria. Despite a renewal of growth in 1999, a whole range of persisting structural problems, chiefly in the fiscal area, confirm the benefit of voluntary pursuance of the nominal concergence criteria. Fof the central bank, the inflation criterion is particularly relevant. The issue of catchingup with the EU price level is discussed from this point of view. Neither the theoretical models (the law of one price and the Balassa-Samuelson effect) nor the empirical evidence provide arguments for abandoning the efforts for price stability. The most appropriate monetary policy regime linking the interests of monetary policy and government economic policy is inflation targeting.

This essay is concerned with the long term period, i.e. what will happen after accession to the EU. For those long term analyses, it is practical to identify different phases after accession to the EU - the period before the anticipated participation in the ERM II, the period of participation in the ERM II and the period of membership in the eurozone. These periods bring different costs, benefits and risks and they allow for different possibilities of economic policy, especially monetary policy (exchange rate policy included). The five following issues are dealt with in this essay: the speed of joining the eurozone after accession to the EU, the danger of speculative attacks on local currencies while participating in the ERM II, instability of public finances and its impact, possible real price shocks with their economic consequences and economic growth for convergence with the EU average.