Using a simple single-equation approach, many studies have shown that the term structure of interest rates or its approximation - the term spread - is a useful indicator of future inflation and/or future real economic activity. However, this paper argues that shortcomings of the single-equation...

This paper investigates the predictive ability of money for future inflation in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. We construct monetary indicators similar to those the ECB regularly uses for monetary analysis. We find some in-sample evidence that money matters for future...

This paper presents evidence on the extent of real wage flexibility in 24 EU member countries based on the Eurostat labour cost data covering 2000Q1-2010Q2. The term 'wages' refers, for brevity, to total hourly labour costs and their two main components, namely wages and salaries per hour, and...

We evaluate the out-of-sample forecasting performance of six competing models at horizons of up to three quarters ahead in a pseudo-real time setup. All the models use information in monthly indicators released ahead of quarterly GDP. We estimate two models – averaged vector autoregressions...

The main goal of the paper is to obtain quantitative evidence describing determinants of FDI in the case of the Czech economy in order to empirically support the decision-making process within the Czech National Bank. The paper builds on the recent economic literature and at the same time...

A fixed exchange rate regime eliminates one degree of freedom in absorbing macroeconomic shocks. Therefore, there is a call for higher labor market flexibility in countries which are members of the monetary union or those which intend to join the monetary union. Focusing on the cross-country...

Is inflation persistence in the new EU Member States (NMS) comparable to that in the euro area countries? We argue that persistence may not be as different between the two country groups as one might expect. We confirm that one should work carefully with the usual estimation methods when...

This paper examines the usefulness of Google Trends data for forecasting mortgage lending in the Czech Republic. While the official monthly statistics on mortgage lending come with a publication lag of one month, the data on how often people search for mortgage-related terms on the internet are...

The purpose of this paper is to provide a novel look at the evolution of inflation dynamics in selected Central European (CE) countries. We use the lens of the New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) nested within a time-varying framework. Exploiting a time-varying regression model with stochastic...

We examine whether and how selected central banks responded to episodes of financial stress over the last three decades. We employ a new monetary-policy rule estimation methodology which allows for time-varying response coefficients and corrects for endogeneity. This flexible framework applied...