This article attempts to answer a few open questions related to price convergence in the Czech Republic and in other Central and Eastern European Countries toward prices in the European Union. The authors address the following issues: First, what, from the theoretical viewpoint, should the...

The article summarizes the main points discussed at the seminar on Monetary Policy during Very Low Inflation, held by the Czech Economic Association in June 2003. There were two main speakers at the seminar. The first was Jan Frait (Czech National Bank), who summarized the main ideas of...

Czech economy has recently accelerated the real economic convergence to the European average. Nevertheless, in terms of price convergence the Czech economy is still lagging behind the expected dynamics, which should theoretically respond to the pace of relative economic growth. This asymmetry...

The article deals with the relationship of post-Keynesian economics to new consensus as a theoretical framework of inflation targeting. First, new consensus with its roots in Wicksell´s approach is briefly introduced. In the next parts differences and meeting-points of new consensus and...

The main goal of this paper is to analyse the process of price convergence (beta and sigma convergence) in new EU Member States towards the Euro area (EU-12). The theoretical part of the paper consists of a brief overview of methods that are employed for analyses of the process of price...

This paper begins with a description of simple select models of inflation and their ability to fit the data. The paper in turn measures the stability of particular parsimonious models. One-step forecast tests are applied, which establish the instability of the money demand model compared with...

There are three possible price movements in a market economy: stability, inflation, and deflation. Inflation and deflation are defined in this article as changes in the purchasing power of money caused by the money creation. Inflation and deflation have many asymmetric, and even some symmetric,...

The paper provides an introduction to essays published in this volume, which focus on nominal and real convergence in transition countries. The paper is based on the idea that the process of convergence can, to a large extent, be viewed via developments in real exchange rates. Key issues...

The Czech Economic Association, in co-operation with the Czech National Bank, organised a public seminar on ?The State of the Phillips Curve,? which featured a lecture by Professor Laurence Ball, in Prague in April 2001. Professor Ball, a professor of economics at John Hopkins University, began...

According to the results of the International Comparison Project, based on exchange rates and prices recorded in 1996, prices in the Czech Republic (CR) were markedly lower than prices charged for many comparable products and services in the European Union. This observation led some commentators...