|
|
The Determinants of Inflation Differentials across Central and Eastern European Countries
Gurbulea, Mihaela ; Horváth, Roman (advisor) ; Geršl, Adam (referee)
The thesis aims at identifying the reasons behind the heterogeneous inflation performance of countries across Central and Eastern Europe. The impact of a large number of variables is being assessed in a dynamic panel data model covering 20 countries over the period 2003-2013. The empirical results suggest that cross-country differences in inflation are attributed to the structure of the economy, to the capital deepening effects and openness. Along with the structural factors, cyclical positions also prove to be of particular importance in explaining inflation across the region, since during the last decade most of the Central and Eastern European countries have experienced fast GDP growth, a credit boom and increased domestic demand that in turn fueled inflation.
|
|
|
Distributional Effects of Inflation in the Czech Republic
Linhartová, Petra ; Janský, Petr (advisor) ; Křehlík, Tomáš (referee)
Consumer price index captures the changing costs of the consumer basket of a typical household. Despite differences in spending patterns, change in con- sumer price index is used as a measure of inflation for the whole population. The aim of this thesis is to assess how close to the official inflation rate house- holds are and determine which groups have significantly different inflation. Using the Czech data from the Household Budget Survey over the 1990-2012 period we calculated specific inflation for each household in our sample. We first found out that on average only two thirds of households are close to the official inflation rate, which led us to the construction of subgroup price indices. In the empirical part, we examined the effect of household characteristics on inflation by applying the fixed effects estimation. We found that low-income households, pensioners, households in urban areas and households with few members have higher than average inflation.
|
|
|
Je evropská měnová unie optimální měnovou oblastí? Empirická analýza úrpkových a inflačních diferenciálů v eurozóně
Gúth, Ondřej ; Klosová, Anna (advisor) ; Villaverde Castro, José (referee)
The economic crisis of 2008 had substantial impacts on the global economy. The European Monetary Union was affected as well, however, the economic impacts also stirred up political discussions concerning functioning of the European Union and its unity as divergence of economic means among the member countries intensified during the crisis. Inflation and real interest rate differentials have to substantial degree the ability to measure the divergence among the member countries of a monetary union. A number of empirical studies measuring the differentials in the Euro area were conducted since the start of the financial crisis in 2008. These studies show growing inflation and real interest rate differentials among the countries of the Euro area, argue that the European Monetary Union is becoming less stable and often question its future. This paper conducts similar empirical analysis; however, it differs from the above mentioned works of other authors by the larger time gap between the start of financial crisis and the time of conducting the analysis as it uses data until the year of 2013. This paper also contributes to current literature by the methodology it uses. The inflation and interest rate differentials in EMU are calculated by two methods and their results are subsequently compared, which has not been done before. The inflation and interest rate differentials are calculated for the USA as well in order to have an entity which can be considered as a hypothetical optimum currency area and to which the differentials of EMU could be compared. The results of the analysis in this paper will state whether the magnitude of inflation and interest rate differentials is too high and it will also either confirm the trend of divergence of inflation and real interest rates within the Euro area or show that this divergence is only a short-time period phenomenon of after-crisis years. As this is an important and very recent issue of European Monetary Union the results of this paper should form interesting contribution to current literature on this topic.
|
|
| |
|
| |
guest ::
