E43 - Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and EffectsReturn

Uncertainty about monetary policy associated with uncertainty in interest rate is an important determinant of economic decisions. Due to the dominant position of the US economy on global financial markets, in addition to countries' own uncertainties, uncertainty related to the monetary policy of the USA may have an impact on other economies. In this study, we investigated the impact of interest rate uncertainties for different maturities on industrial production, inflation, unemployment and exchange rate. We used the impulse response functions based on the vector error correction model (VECM). We also conducted the Granger causality test to analyse the causality. We examined the impact of US monetary policy uncertainty on the mentioned variables of Turkey. Our findings suggest that uncertainty in long-term interest rates increases unemployment and inflation rates. Although we find that uncertainty in interest rate reduces growth of industrial production, we do not find a causal relationship between these variables. Finally, we show that a shock related to US monetary policy uncertainty tends to increase unemployment significantly, while reducing the growth of production.

This paper analyses uncertainty as one of the factors that affect the public debt-growth nexus. We put forward a hypothesis that uncertainty mediates the effect of public debt on economic growth. The empirical examination of the mediating effect is based on the neoclassical growth equation and consistent with specifications previously used to analyse the sources of heterogeneity in the debt-growth relationship. Since one part of the uncertainty is financial risk, which is closely related to the financial sector stability, we use interest rate spread as a main variable, and the risk premium on lending as an alternative one to proxy financial risk and thus, to some extent, uncertainty. Our results show that lower uncertainty is related to a bigger positive effect of debt on growth and a higher turning point in the debt-growth nexus. On the contrary, higher uncertainty leads to a lower positive and more considerable negative effect of debt on growth in both linear and quadratic specifications.

For successful monetary policy implementation, it is crucial to know the pricing behaviour of banks and the determinants of banks' lending rates. With the onset of the global financial crisis, markets in unsecured lending ceased to provide a reliable level of market costs, while markets in cross-currency products gained significance. The aim of this research is to gauge the extent to which the EUR-CZK cross-currency basis spread is reflected in the corporate lending rates provided by Czech banks. We discovered that just over 50% of the changes in the basis pass through to the lending rates. The greater part of this pass-through can be identified in EUR lending rates, which are, as a result, higher. In the case of CZK, the negative basis should tend to decrease the lending rates. However, the impact is fairly limited, and we were not able to confirm any significant long-run relationship.

Based on the AMSZ (1989) criterion, we exploit comprehensive datasets to estimate the dynamic efficiency of world economy. The results reveal that the representative econo-mies conform to a "U-shaped pattern" in their evolution of capital accumulation. That is, a period of decreasing efficiency (over-accumulation) followed by increasing efficiency (de-accumulation). Contrary to previous evidence, the bias-corrected estimates show that major economies have been inconsistently dynamically efficient. As a prime example, China today is unquestionably in a state of severe dynamic inefficiency, and the inefficient status is likely to continue in near future. We also document the limitations of the AMSZ criterion and point out promising research directions in the efficiency literature.

Interest rates in many advanced countries have reached zero lower bound and this has led to the widespread use of unconventional monetary policies after the global crisis. Hence, it has been more and more important to better understand the effects of these policies on major economic variables and the transmission mechanism through which they influence the economy. This study analyses the impact of quantitative easing (QE) policies on local currency government bond yield in emerging market (EM) economies in a heterogeneous panel setting. An Augmented Mean Group (AMG) estimator is used that allows for cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneous slopes. Model results show that government bond interest rates in EM economies are determined by country-specific factors such as central bank policy rate, inflation and budget deficit as well as external global factors such as US ten-year government bond yield and QE policies of advanced countries' central banks.

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.

This article demonstrates that the pure time-preference theory of Ludwig von Mises is inconsistent. A productivity element is studied in the Fisher model, and it is shown that time preference is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the existence of interest. An attempt is also made to reconcile the Austrian theory with the neoclassical theory of interest. It is suggested that the key difference lies in the definition of interest as such, and it is concluded that the Austrian theory is only a special case of a more general neoclassical framework.

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.

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 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.

We investigate valuation of derivatives with payoff deined as a nonlinear though close to linear function of tradable underlying assets. Interest rate derivatives involving Libor or swap rates in arrears, i.e. rates paid at wrong time, are a typical example. It is generally tempting to replace the future unknown interest rates with the forward rates. We show rigorously that indeed this is not possible in the case of Libor or swap rates in arrears. We introduce formally the notion of linear plain vanilla derivatives as those that can be replicated by a inite set of elementary operations and show that derivatives involving the rates in arrears are not (linear) plain vanilla. We also study the issue of valuation of such derivatives. Beside the popular convexity adjustment formula, we develop an improved two or more variable adjustment formula applicable in particular on swap rates in arrears. Finally, we get a precise fully analytical formula based on the usual assumption of log-normality of the relevant tradable underlying assets applicable to a wide class of convexity related derivatives. We illustrate the techniques and different results on a case study of a real life controversial exotic swap.

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.

The article examines the impact of the budget deficit upon the term structure of Czech interest rates. An important feature of the model is that it enables us to directly test the predictions of the three alternative paradigms, the Keynesian, neoclassical and the Ricardian, concerning the long-term and short-term impact of deficit on interest rates. The result of the study, obtained by the IV method suggests that the budget deficit is negatively related to the interest rate level in the short-run. Therefore, the long-run Ricardian proposition cannot be rejected in favour of any alternative hypothesis.

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.

This theoretical paper maps the transition experience of the financial sector using evidence from the Czech money market. Especially, the respect is paid to the structure of interest rates during the period from 1993 to 2001. The main components of the money market that mostly determine the term structure are the interbank deposit market and the market for short-term securities. The study abstains from interbank market survey and provides a detailed description of the default-free short-term securities market and its impact on past interest rate movements.