The first 10 years of Czech Republic's inflation targeting regime have been remarkable by the persistent undershooting of the inflation targets. This article is an introduction to a special issue aimed at analyzing the factors of the undershooting. The articles in this issue explore the...

Inflation persistence has been put forward as one of the potential reasons of divergence among euro area members. It has also been proposed that the new EU Member States (NMS) may struggle with even higher persistence due to convergence factors. We argue that persistence may not be as different...

We offer a novel methodology for assessing the quality of inflation reports. In contrast to the existing literature, which mostly evaluates the formal quality of these reports, we evaluate their economic content by comparing inflation factors reported by the central banks with ex-post...

Over the recent decades researchers in academia and central banks have developed early warning systems (EWS) designed to warn policy makers of potential future economic and financial crises. These EWS are based on diverse approaches and empirical models. In this paper we compare the performance...

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...

The paper is aimed at the evaluation of quality and the success-rate of the past Czech National Bank’s forecasts created from 2004 until mid-2006. It strives to identify the factors which have caused deviations from reality in the past forecasts and could contribute to non-fulfilment of...

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the causes of deviations of inflation from the CNB targets. In the short term, shocks relating to prices of agricultural producers represent the most important factor. In the medium-term horizon, foreign exchange shocks form the most important factor....