Original versions of the included papers were written by an extensive team of authors for the meeting of the Bank Board with experts. The aim of this meeting was to assess the ten-year experience with inflation targeting and to contribute to its improvements in the forthcoming years. Following...

In this paper we propose a new approach to the assessment of excessive risk-taking by a banking sector. We use the portfolio approach to assess the optimal risk-return combination of a bank’s portfolio, based on data for 32 categories of loans. It provides a benchmark for the optimality...

By quantifying the determining factors of Czech trade during 1993-2002, this paper enriches the empirical trade literature with evidence from an economy that has undergone intensive structural changes. Our findings lend significance to standard macroeconomic variables such as aggregate demand...

The banking sector is a dominant component of the financial system in the Czech Republic. The stability of the banking system is of key importance as regards the financial stability of the economy as a whole. Any turbulence in the banking system can, moreover, generate a need for additional...

Using the simple arbitrage model, we decompose real appreciation in tradables in three Central European countries between the pricing-to-market component (disparity) and the local relative price component (substitution ratio). Appreciation is only partially explained by local relative prices....

We study the interdependence of lending decisions in different country branches of a multinational bank. This is done both theoretically and empirically. First, we formulate a model of a bank that delegates the management of its foreign unit to a local manager with non-transferable skills. The...

In this paper we show the relevance of the degree of competition for inferences about changes in export-production relative prices when the nominal exchange rate changes. We devise a model for tradable goods that combines the market competition and the pricing-tomarket literature and we...

In this paper we develop a two-country dynamic general equilibrium model by means of which we seek to explain the long-run paths of a converging emerging market economy. The model’s novel feature is the inclusion of quality investment to the standard framework of applied general...