Transmission Mechanism of Monetary Policy in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

As more central banks across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) move towards inflation control - either in the form of direct inflation targeting or indirectly through informal targets - good knowledge of transmission mechanism in the economy becomes crucial for implementing good policies. So far the volume of studies in the region devoted to this issue is not overly impressive. There have been no attempts made to study the issue in a comparative context of several economies.

In the case of CEE, this research field, like many others, is naturally constrained by at least two important factors. The first is the lack of data in terms of both length of time series and of quality and reliability. The second is the constant institutional changes in the studied environment which renders the different models and techniques structurally unstable and the results - generally volatile.

The purpose of this study is to review the existing literature on transmission mechanism in CEE and put it in a broader context of the problems related to research on monetary policy. Also, we attempted to conduct empirical analysis for 10 transition economies using analogous methodology for the same sample period 1995-2000. In this comparative framework a series of Granger causality tests and impulse response analysis were carried out to asses the strength of two major transmission channels: interest rate and exchange rate channel. Also in the empirical part, we tried to look for the existence of long-run relationships between the basic set of macroeconomic variables in the countries under investigation.

The paper is composed as follows. Chapter 2 briefly reviews the transmission mechanism research in CEE with special emphasis on the origin of studies, methods used and general inferences. Then, chapter 3 presents a problembased discussion of issues related to transmission mechanism in the special context of transition economies. Goals, targets and tools of monetary policy as well a exchange rate regimes are reviewed and discussed. Chapters 4 and 5 present empirical results. Chapter 4 describes core inflation estimates and selection process as well as presents all remaining variables and tests for the level of integration. Chapter 5 includes the empirical analysis of transmission mechanism through Granger causality and impulse responses as well as cointegration analysis. Finally, chapter 7 concludes the paper with summary of results.

Keywords: transmission mechanism, monetary policy, inflation, transition