The balance of payments for 2015 shows an increasing surplus in the current account balance, which has resulted from the shrinking deficit in the balance of services, the investment income balance and wages, coupled with the decreasing surplus in the trade balance. The accelerated weakening of...

In September, the Central Bank of Russia made a decision to cut the key rate by 0.5 p.p. to 10%. The intention of the Central Bank of Russia to stick to a moderately tough monetary policy is justified by the need to consolidate the trend towards sustained reduction of the rate of inflation

Price growth of gasoline on Russian domestic market in the wake of declining world crude oil prices is due to the ruble's devaluation and excise rate growth. In Russia, the share of indirect gasoline taxes has gone up from 30–40% to 35–45% over last two years. Regarding the share of taxes in...

The trend that first became visible in early 2016 – decline giving way to zero rates of growth – towards the end of H1 had spread across a majority of segments of the economy's real sector. The lack of a noticeable domestic demand and dependence upon foreign equipment supplies coupled with...

The analysis of consumer prices dynamics and the forecast based on the model of exchange rate pass-through effect indicates that in the Q3 2016, one should not expect significant inflation growth. The forecast of price dynamics in consumer segments is quite heterogeneous: the prices of non-food...

The BOP (Balance of Payments) data show that a current account surplus contracted considerably in H1 2016 over the same period previous year. This is because there were serious cutbacks in exports while the decline in imports slowed down. Despite growth in non-bank sector's foreign asset...

We estimate two parsimonious structural models for inflation, the output gap, the domestic interest rate and the exchange rate for Hungary and Poland, for the period of "transition" (1991-1998). The empirical analysis shows that, at the aggregate level, the transmission of monetary policy...

We review the experience of Hungary with the preannounced crawling band exchange rate system during 1995-97. When selecting the exchange rate regime, several key characteristics of the transition process must be taken into account: reform-induced inflationary pressure, the necessity to...

This paper has three objectives. First, it aims at revealing the logic of interest rate setting pursued by monetary authorities of 12 new EU members. Using estimation of an augmented Taylor rule, we find that this setting was not always consistent with the official monetary policy. Second, we...

On 15 January 2015, the Bank of Russia Board of Directors decided to reduce the key rate by 2 pp., to 15% per annum, due to the shift in the balance of risks of accelerated consumer price growth and an economic cool-down. In January 2015, the Consumer Price Index increased by 3.9% (vs. 0.6% in...