This paper concentrates on describing the available empirical findings on monetary policy transmission in the Czech Republic. Besides the overall impact of monetary policy on inflation and output, it is useful to study its individual channels, in particular the interest rate channel, the...

We survey discretionary measures of Czech fiscal policy in the period 2001-2011 and analyze their episodes and macroeconomic impacts. We use bottom-up and top-down methods to identify fiscal discretion and we compare the results with Kalman filtering. Fiscal discretion is found to be used...

This paper reviews price-level targeting in the light of current theoretical knowledge and past practical experience. We discuss progress in the economic debate on this issue, starting with the traditional arguments discussed in the early 1990s, moving to Svensson’s seminal paper in the...

This paper discusses the role of foreign exchange interventions in the inflation-targeting regime, focusing on the Czech experience since 1998. It proposes criteria for assessing whether the interventions are consistent with the inflation targeting. While the CNB's interventions in mid- 1998 and...

This paper focuses on the forecasting process at the Czech National Bank with an emphasis on incorporating expert judgments into forecasts and addressing data uncertainty. At the beginning, the core model and the forecasting process are described and it is presented how data and the underlying...

Monetary policy makers need to build two pillars for their inflation targeting strategy. Firstly, a methodology for producing the central forecast should be developed, since the whole decision process is more easily organised around a model forecast. Secondly, a methodology for dealing with...

The note is a review of the literature on the quantitative methods used to assess the vulnerabilities of financial systems to risks. In particular, the author focuses on the role of system-wide stress testing. He summarizes the recent developments in the literature, highlighting topics relevant...

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision in 1999 issued a draft New Basel Capital Accord (Basel 2). Its principles are to be incorporated into the European legislation and into the Czech banking regulations. The Standardised Approach to calculating the capital requirement for credit risk is...

Macroeconomic forecasters are often criticized for a lack of transparency when presenting their forecasts. To deter such criticism, the transparency of the forecasting process should be enhanced by tracing and explaining the effects of data revisions and expert judgment updates on variations in...

After the recent events in the global financial system there has been significant progress in the literature focusing on the sources of systemic importance of financial institutions. However, the concept of systemic importance is in practice often simplified to the problem of size and contagion...