The effects of EU shocks on the newly acceded countries

This paper analyses the response of seven of the newly acceded countries (NACs) to EU supply and monetary shocks. A typical NAC perceives an EU technology disturbance as a negative supply shock and an EU monetary expansion as a negative demand shock. When we split the seven countries into two groups, results for group 1 which includes the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia suggest that an EU supply shock feeds through as a demand shock, increasing both prices and output. This suggests trade acts as a channel of EU shock propagation. Monetary disturbances explain 2% and 3% of the output fluctuation of group one and two and 10% and 42% of interest rate variations, respectively. EU shocks are identified as given by Canova and De Nicolo (2002) using sign restrictions of the cross-correlation function of the variables' responses to orthogonal disturbances. These restrictions are derived from a DSGE model. Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.