Poland stands out among transition economies as having experienced a relatively short and shallow contraction followed by sustained, vigorous growth. This paper examines various aspects of Poland`s growth performance from 1992 through 1998 at the macroeconomic level as well as across sectors and...

Since the start of the 2008 - 09 financial crisis, the Polish Overnight Index Average (POLONIA) has persistently been below the policy rate, suggesting a limited influence of the NBP's open market operations on the short-term interbank rate. In this regard, this paper analyzes the behavior of...

Many emerging market economies have in the recent past experienced a surge in capital inflows that may threaten their economic and financial stability. The IMF in early 2011 proposed a framework intended to guide Fund advice to policymakers on how to best respond to such inflows, including both...

This paper discusses interlinkages between Poland and the euro zone using a simple and agnostic econometric approach. Specifically, we estimate a trend-cycle VAR model using data for real and nominal variables, imposing powerful but uncontroversial assumptions that allow us to identify how...

This paper constructs a financial conditions index for Poland to explore the link between financial conditions and real economic activity. The index in constructed by applying two complementary approaches — factor analysis and vector auto-regression approach. We evaluate the index's...

This paper examines whether the clarity of central bank communication about inflation has changed with the economic environment. We use readability statistics and content analysis to study the clarity of communication on the inflation outlook by seven central banks between 1997 and 2010....

Countries in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe (CESEE) experienced a credit boom-bust cycle in the last decade. This paper analyzes the roles of demand and supply factors in explaining this credit cycle. Our analysis first focuses on a large sample of bank-level data on credit growth for...

This paper examines the impacts on welfare, savings, labor supply, and the government budget of several possible reforms of the Polish pension and unemployment benefit systems. The framework of analysis is a life cycle simulation model of household consumption, labor supply and retirement...

This paper presents calculations of the efficiency with which value-added taxes are collected in five transition economies in Central and Eastern Europe. Actual VAT revenues in 1994 are compared with those that would have resulted if the statutory VAT rates had been applied without any revenue...

This paper analyzes the degree to which volatility in interbank interest rates leads to volatility in financial instruments with longer maturities (e.g., T-bills) in Kenya since 2012, year in which the monetary policy framework switched to a forward-looking approach, relative to seven other...