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MONETARY TRANSMISSION MECHANISM IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE: SURVEYING THE SURVEYABLE
Author(s) -
Égert Balázs,
MacDonald Ronald
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of economic surveys
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.657
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 1467-6419
pISSN - 0950-0804
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-6419.2008.00563.x
Subject(s) - economics , monetary economics , monetary policy , bond , stock (firearms) , credit channel , interest rate , inflation (cosmology) , monetary transmission mechanism , exchange rate , inflation targeting , finance , mechanical engineering , physics , theoretical physics , engineering
This paper surveys recent advances in empirical studies of the monetary transmission mechanism, with special attention to Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Our results indicate that the strength of the exchange rate pass‐through substantially declined over time mainly due to a fall in inflation rates and to some extent due to the so‐called composition effect. The asset price channel is weak and is likely to remain weak because of shallow stock and private bond markets and because of low stock and bond holdings of domestic households. House prices may become an exception with booming mortgage lending and with high owner occupancy ratios. While the credit channel could be a powerful channel of monetary transmission – as new funds raised on capital markets are close to zero in CEE – it is actually not, as both commercial banks and non‐financial corporations can escape domestic monetary conditions by borrowing from their foreign mother companies. The moderately good news, however, is that those banks and firms are influenced by monetary policy in the euro area because their parent institutions are themselves subjected to the credit channel in the euro area.