The primary objective of Magyar Nemzeti Bank is to achieve and maintain price stability. The central bank of Hungary defines its 3 per cent inflation target in terms of the consumer price index. However, this indicator is quite volatile, and many of its components are sensitive to temporary...

We show that in both time-dependent and state-dependent sticky price models, prices of sticky price products (i.e. whose price changes rarely) contain more information about medium term inflation developments than those of flexible price products (i.e. whose price changes frequently). We do this...

This article examines how the trade balance (or net exports) changed during the crisis. In the early-to-mid-2000s, Hungary ran a trade deficit as external indebtedness grew. Since the crisis, balance sheet adjustments by economic agents have substantially reduced imports for consumption and...

This paper uses Hungarian micro-CPI data between December 2001 and June 2007 to provide descriptive statistics of store-level pricing practices in Hungary. First we present simple descriptive statistics about the frequency and average size of price changes, and compare it with similar statistics...

In a normal economic cycle, monetary policy decisions are not influenced directly by the size of potential output. In making their decisions, central banks take into account the difference between potential and actual output, i.e. the size of the output gap, which shows the cyclical position of...