This paper investigates the predictive ability of money for future inflation in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. We construct monetary indicators similar to those the European Central Bank regularly uses for monetary analysis. We find in-sample evidence that money matters for...

We analyze the determinants of interest rate spreads of different loan categories in the Czech Republic during 2004–2011. We employ a detailed bank supervisory dataset that allows us to construct the actual spreads for four loan categories, namely small and large corporate loans, consumer...

What are the factors that explain reversals in the implementation of structural reforms? Our main hypothesis is that reversals in different reforms are driven by different factors. This paper presents novel evidence showing that (a) FDI inflows reduce the likelihood of privatization reversals,...

We examine the relationship of selected Board of Directors´ characteristics and firm´s financial performance. Using a sample of large U.S firms in 2005-2009, we find that the degree of insider ownership influences positively fi rm performance, because it reduces agency problems. The age of the...

This paper examines the relationship between capital and liquidity creation. This issue is of interest to determine the potential impact of tighter capital requirements such as those involved in Basel III reforms on liquidity creation. We perform Granger-causality tests in a dynamic GMM panel...

We assess whether the voting records of central bank boards are informative about future monetary policy using data on five inflation targeting countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom). We find that in all countries the voting records, namely the difference...

We examine the effect of generalized trust on long-term economic growth. Unlike in previous studies, we use Bayesian model averaging to deal rigorously with model uncertainty and attendant omitted variable bias. In addition, we address endogeneity and assess whether the effect of trust on growth...

In this paper, the authors link real exchange rates and optimum currency area criteria. The authors examine the hypothesis that countries not fulfilling optimum currency area criteria in full will tend to have volatile bilateral real exchange rate. The authors find that, based on a study of data...

This article analyzes the main issues for monetary policy in new EU member states before their euro adoption. These are typically rooted in the challenge of fulfilling concurrently of the Maastricht inflation and exchange rate criterion, as these countries are experiencing equilibrium real...

The paper provides an empirical analysis of inflation persistence in one of inflation targeting countries, the Czech Republic, using 412 detailed product-level consumer price indexes underlying the consumer basket over the period from 1994 to 2005. Subject to various sensitivity tests, our...