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Assessing the Fiscal Sustainability of the Czech Republic
Ambriško, Róbert ; Dingová, Vilma ; Dvořák, Michal ; Hájková, Dana ; Hromádková, Eva ; Kulhavá, Kamila ; Štiková, Radka
We present a model of public finance for the Czech Republic that addresses the main sources of risks to long-term fiscal sustainability: ageing-related expenditures and revenues, and the corresponding evolution of government debt. The baseline model is based on recent demographic projections issued by the Czech Statistical Office that forecast a shrinking share of the working-age population. Along with regulations and microeconomic incentives embedded in the tax and expenditure systems, demographic developments will affect economic growth and government expenditure and revenues in the long run. Population ageing is found to have a significant impact on future government expenditure via spending on old-age pensions and health care, where the cost profiles are modelled to reflect technological progress in the treatment of ageing-related illnesses. The analysis shows that under the current policy settings, a compound demographic effect will cause the primary government balance to turn negative at the beginning of the 2030s. The growing primary deficits, along with interest payments, which react to debt dynamics, will lead to a rapid escalation of government debt. While the outcome of the model is dependent on the specific settings of macroeconomic trends and policy variables, our wide range of sensitivity analyses show that without a policy response, even the most optimistic population scenario delivers an unsustainable path for public finances.
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Labour Market Adjustment since the Global Financial Crisis: Evidence from a Survey of Czech Firms
Babecký, Jan ; Galuščák, Kamil ; Žigraiová, Diana
The paper reports how Czech firms reacted to changes in economic conditions in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008–2009 until 2013 and identifies specific patterns of employment, wage and price adjustment by firms. The results are drawn from a survey of firms conducted within the third wave of the ESCB Wage Dynamics Network (WDN3). Overall, while changes in demand were both positive and negative over the period, aggregate wage growth remained low, although more firms experienced an increase in average productivity over labour costs than a decline. Labour cost reduction was achieved mainly by reduction of new hires and by individual layoffs. The main obstacles to hiring workers were uncertainty about economic conditions, high payroll taxes and a shortage of labour with the required skills. The frequency of wage changes was lower in 2010–2013 than before and was attributed by firms inter alia to stronger competition. Wage freezes and wage cuts were still in use, while wage growth was more likely to be observed in very small and large firms and firms with a foreign owner. The frequency of price changes in 2010–2013 compared to 2008–2009 remained unchanged for more than 80% of firms. More frequent price changes were due to stronger competition and volatility in demand, while exchange rate changes contributed to higher frequency of price changes on foreign markets.
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Similarity and Clustering of Banks: Application to the Credit Exposures of the Czech Banking Sector
Brechler, Josef ; Hausenblas, Václav ; Komárková, Zlatuše ; Plašil, Miroslav
After the recent events in the global financial system there has been significant progress in the literature focusing on the sources of systemic importance of financial institutions. However, the concept of systemic importance is in practice often simplified to the problem of size and contagion due to interbank market interconnectedness. Against this backdrop, we explore additional features of systemic importance stemming from similarities between bank asset portfolios and investigate whether they can contribute to the build-up of systemic risks. We propose a set of descriptive methods to address this aspect empirically in the context of the Czech banking system. Our main findings suggest that the overall measure of the portfolio similarity of individual banks is relatively stable over time and is driven mainly by large and well-established banks. However, we identified several clusters of very similar banks whose market share is small individually but which could become systemically important when considered as a group. After taking into account the credit risk characteristics of portfolios we conclude that the importance of these clusters is even higher.
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Evaluating a Structural Model Forecast: Decomposition Approach
Brázdik, František ; Humplová, Zuzana ; Kopřiva, František
Macroeconomic forecasters are often criticized for a lack of transparency when presenting their forecasts. To deter such criticism, the transparency of the forecasting process should be enhanced by tracing and explaining the effects of data revisions and expert judgment updates on variations in the forecasts. This paper presents a forecast decomposition analysis framework designed to examine the differences between two forecasts generated by a linear structural model. The differences between the forecasts considered can be decomposed into the contributions of various forecast elements, such as the effect of new data or expert judgment. The framework allows us to evaluate the contributions of forecast assumptions in the presence of expert judgment applied in the expected way. The simplest application of this framework examines alternative forecast scenarios with different forecast assumptions. Next, a one-period difference between the forecasts’ initial periods is added to the examination. Finally, a replication of the Inflation Forecast Evaluation presented in Inflation Report III/2013 is created to illustrate the full capabilities of the decomposition framework.
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The Exchange Rate as an Instrument at Zero Interest Rates: The Case of the Czech Republic
Franta, Michal ; Holub, Tomáš ; Král, Petr ; Kubicová, Ivana ; Šmídková, Kateřina ; Vašíček, Bořek
This study examines the use of the exchange rate by the Czech National Bank as a monetary policy instrument at the zero lower bound on interest rates. It provides a review of the economic literature on unconventional monetary policy instruments and particularly on the possibility of using the exchange rate. It explains the CNB’s reasons for further easing monetary policy and for choosing the exchange rate instrument and its specific level, and discusses its expected benefits in the case of the Czech Republic. It also explains why the CNB ultimately decided to transparently declare a one-sided exchange rate commitment with potentially unlimited foreign exchange interventions. The article concludes by assessing the impacts of the exchange rate weakening on the Czech economy to date, as compared to what the CNB had expected, and by describing the public debate of the CNB’s action and related changes in its communication strategy.
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Capital Buffers Based on Banks’ Domestic Systemic Importance: Selected Issues
Skořepa, Michal ; Seidler, Jakub
Regulators in many countries are currently considering ways to impose domestic systemic importance-based capital requirements on banks. Aiming to assist these considerations, this article discusses a number of issues concerning the calculation of a bank’s systemic importance to the domestic banking sector, such as the choice of indicators used and the pros and cons of focusing on an individual or consolidated level. Also, the “equal expected impact” procedure for determining adequate additional capital requirements is presented in detail and some of its properties are discussed. As an illustrative example of the practical use of the procedures presented, systemic importance scores and implied capital buffers are calculated for banks in the Czech Republic. The article also stresses the crucial role of public communication of the motivation for the buffers: regulators should make every effort to explain that the imposition of a non-zero systemic importance-based capital buffer on a bank is not to be interpreted by the markets as a signal that the bank is too big to fail and would therefore be guaranteed a public bail-out if it got into difficulties.
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Price-Level Targeting – A Real Alternative to Inflation Targeting?
Böhm, Jiří ; Filáček, Jan ; Kubicová, Ivana ; Zamazalová, Romana
This paper reviews price-level targeting in the light of current theoretical knowledge and past practical experience. We discuss progress in the economic debate on this issue, starting with the traditional arguments discussed in the early 1990s, moving to Svensson’s seminal paper in the late 1990s and ending with the most recent literature from the beginning of the new millennium. We devote special attention to the issues of the zero interest rate bound, time consistency and communication. Practical experience from Sweden in the 1930s and Czechoslovakia in the first few years after WWI is used to illustrate the advantages and disadvantages of price-level targeting. Finally, the similarities of price-level and inflation developments with hypothetical outcomes under price-level targeting are investigated in selected inflation-targeting countries.
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What We Know About Monetary Policy Transmission in the Czech Republic: Collection of Empirical Results
Babecká Kucharčuková, Oxana ; Franta, Michal ; Hájková, Dana ; Král, Petr ; Kubicová, Ivana ; Podpiera, Anca ; Saxa, Branislav
This paper concentrates on describing the available empirical findings on monetary policy transmission in the Czech Republic. Besides the overall impact of monetary policy on inflation and output, it is useful to study its individual channels, in particular the interest rate channel, the exchange rate channel, and the wealth channel. The results confirm that the transmission of monetary impulses to the real economy works in an intuitive direction and to an intuitive extent. Our analyses show, however, that the global financial and economic crisis might have somewhat slowed and weakened the transmission. We found an indication of such a change in the functioning of the interest rate channel, where elevated risk premiums played a major role.
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Incorporating Judgments and Dealing with Data Uncertainty in Forecasting at the Czech National Bank
Brůha, Jan ; Hlédik, Tibor ; Holub, Tomáš ; Polanský, Jiří ; Tonner, Jaromír
This paper focuses on the forecasting process at the Czech National Bank with an empha- sis on incorporating expert judgments into forecasts and addressing data uncertainty. At the beginning, the core model and the forecasting process are described and it is presented how data and the underlying uncertainty are handled. The core of the paper contains five case studies, which reflect policy issues addressed during forecasting rounds since 2008. Each case study first describes a particular forecasting problem, then the way how the issue was addressed, and finally the effect of incorporating off-model information into the forecast is briefly summarized. The case studies demonstrate that a careful incor- poration of expert information into a structural framework may be useful for generating economically intuitive forecasts even during very turbulent times, and we show that such judgements may have important monetary policy implications.
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