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Inflation Reports and Models: How Well Do Central Banks Really Write?
Bulíř, Aleš ; Hurník, Jaromír ; Šmídková, Kateřina
We offer a novel methodology for assessing the quality of inflation reports. In contrast to the existing literature, which mostly evaluates the formal quality of these reports, we evaluate their economic content by comparing inflation factors reported by the central banks with ex-post model-identified factors. Regarding the former, we use verbal analysis and coding of in flation reports to describe inflation factors communicated by central banks in real time. Regarding the latter, we use reduced - form, new Keynesian models and revised data to approximate the true inflation factors. Positive correlations indicate that the r eported inflation factors were similar to the true, model-identified ones and hence mark high-quality inflation reports. Although central bank reports on average identify inflation factors correctly, the degree of forward-looking reporting varies across fa ctors, time, and countries.
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Economic research bulletin (2007, No.1)
Heřmánek, Jaroslav ; Hlaváček, Michal ; Jakubík, Petr ; Geršl, Adam ; Derviz, Alexis ; Podpiera, Jiří ; Šmídková, Kateřina
This issue of the CNB Research Bulletin looks at advances in the area of financial stability. Financial stability issues have attracted the attention of central banks in the last 10 years, mainly due to the rapid development of financial systems, the emergence of new financial products and the increased integration of the financial system across borders. These issues are extremely important for the Czech financial sector as well. One of the most widely used analytical tools for evaluating the stability of the financial sector is stress testing. The first article – by Jaroslav Heřmánek, Petr Jakubík and Michal Hlaváček – describes progress in this area as compared to earlier versions of stress testing. Progress has been made primarily in the areas of modelling credit risk and linking the stress testing to the CNB’s official macroeconomic forecast. The second and third articles – by Adam Geršl and by Alexis Derviz and Jiří Podpiera – are devoted to the issue of cross border-contagion in the Czech Republic. This problem is of great importance for the Czech Republic due to the strong foreign ownership of the Czech banking sector and the increasing crossborder flows of capital. The article by Adam Geršl uses macroeconomic data from BIS and compares the threats of cross-border contagion from other CEECs using a common creditor index. The article by Alexis Derviz and Jiří Podpiera presents the results of a sophisticated microeconomic model of lending contagion within multinational banking groups together with an empirical model of lending contagion using individual bank data from Bankscope.
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Targeting inflation under uncertainty: policy makers's perspective
Šmídková, Kateřina
Reflecting the further progress of the methodological debate inside the CNB, this paper aims to provide suggestions to policy makers as to which methods could be used to assess uncertainty during the monetary policy decision process. Suggestions for each stage of the process are summarised in the final chapter. These take into account the findings of surveys of three very distinct sources – the economic literature on monetary policy under uncertainty, the managerial literature on decision analysis, and the real-life strategies of five central banks.
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Central banks' voting records and future policy
Horváth, Roman ; Šmídková, Kateřina ; Zápal, Jan
Writers assess whether the voting records of central bank boards are informative about future monetary policy. First, they specify a theoretical model of central bank board decisionmaking and simulate the voting outcomes. Three different versions of model are estimated with simulated data: 1) democratic, 2) consensual and 3) opportunistic. Next, the model predictions are tested on real data on six countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States).
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