The objective of this study is the quantification of inflation expectations in Latvia using the results of consumer surveys and the assessment of the impact inflation expectations have on actual inflation. In order to attain the objectives set, the authors of the study quantified inflation...

We propose an export price indicator adjusted for non-price factors as a measure of a country's competitiveness. Based on the approach by Broda and Weinstein (2006) who adjust price developments for changes in varieties of imported products, we relax their assumption of unchanged quality over...

We propose a comprehensive analysis of a country's price and non-price competitiveness that accounts for changes in the value added content of trade by combining two datasets – highly disaggregated trade data from UN Comtrade and internationally integrated supply and use tables from the WIOD....

The paper proposes a theoretical framework for explaining gains and losses in export market shares by considering both price and non-price determinants. Starting from a demand-side model a la Armington (1969), we relax several restrictive assumptions to evaluate the contribution of unobservable...

The paper evaluates competitiveness of Latvia's exporters from various aspects by using detailed trade data from Comtrade. Competitiveness represented by the market share of Latvia's products in world trade was on the rising trend, growing almost two times between 1999 and 2010. Such a dynamic...

This paper evaluates the inflation effect of recent VAT rate changes in Latvia by using CPI micro data. Our findings suggest that the pass-through of the tax rate to consumer prices is strong in case of upward tax adjustments, especially when there are no demand restrictions, while the...

The evolution of total factor productivity (TFP) is a key determinant of long-run economic growth of a country. In this paper we analyse the contributions from technological change at the industry level to an economy's aggregate growth performance. Our derivation of total TFP growth entails...

The present paper analyses trade linkages between EU Member States and Russia taking into account the indirect trade links through global value chains based on data for 2011 from the World Input-Output Database combined with gross flows between Russia and individual EU countries. We base our...

The paper presents the first version of Latvia's Macroeconomic Model (LMM) built using the features and structure of an Area-Wide Model (AWM) for the euro area and Multi-Country Model (MCM) for a typical country block of the European System of Central Banks. This is one of the first attempts to...

The conjunctural information from monthly indicators, e.g. industrial production, retail trade turnover, M3, confidence indicators, etc. could partly replace GDP data before the first official release is published. It is possible to incorporate monthly indicators into short-term forecasting...