This paper shows how fan charts generated from Bayesian vector autoregression (BVAR) models can be useful for assessing 1) the forecasting accuracy of central banks’ prediction models and 2) the credibility of stress tests carried out to evaluate financial stability. Using unique data...

We assess whether the voting records of central bank boards are informative about future monetary policy. First, we specify a theoretical model of central bank board decision-making and simulate the voting outcomes. Three different versions of model are estimated with simulated data: 1)...

This paper examines the potential for concurrence of crises in the foreign exchange, stock, and government bond markets as well as identifying asset price misalignments from equilibrium for three Central European countries and the euro area. Concurrence is understood as the joint occurrence of...

This working paper, based on an empirical analysis, discusses factors affecting property prices and tries to identify periods of property price overvaluation by three approaches: using simple ratios related to house prices (price-to-income and price-to-rent), using time series analysis for the...

In this paper, we investigate the effects of an anticipated future change in monetary policy regime in small open economies targeting either inflation or the exchange rate. The announcement of a future change in the monetary policy regime triggers an immediate change in the behavior of...

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...

We identify a set of "rules of thumb" that characterise economic, financial and structural conditions preceding the onset of banking and currency crises in 36 advanced economies over 1970–2010. We use the Classification and Regression Tree methodology (CART) and its Random Forest (RF)...

Estimation and simulation of sustainable real exchange rates in some of the new EU accession countries point to potential difficulties in sustaining the ERM2 regime if entered too soon and with weak policies. According to the estimates, the Czech, Hungarian, and Polish currencies were overvalued...

Are there indications of real exchange rate misalignment in the case of the five pre-accession countries? Will stable real exchange rates, required by two of the Maastricht criteria, be in line with economic fundamentals in the pre-EMU period in these countries? In order to address these...

Inflation-targeting central banks have a respectable track record at explaining their policy actions and corresponding inflation outturns. Using a simple forward-looking policy rule and an assessment of inflation reports, we provide a new methodology for the empirical evaluation of consistency...