We document significant and robust empirical relationships in cross-country panel data between government size or social expenditure on the one hand, and trade and financial development indicators on the other. Across countries, deeper economic integration is associated with more intense...

The move to monetary union in Europe led to convergence of interest rates among the participating countries. This was associated with notable cross-country differences in the behaviour of key macroeconomic aggregates. Compared to the low interest rate countries, former high interest rate...

This article analyses residential developments using a database of individual projects for the years 2006–2010. Changes in the supply structure towards smaller apartments in recent years were identified in this unique database. These changes were probably a reaction to higher demand for...

Excessive credit growth is often considered to be an indicator of future problems in the financial sector. This article examines the issue of how best to determine whether the observed level of private sector credit is excessive in the context of the “countercyclical capital bufferâ€, a...

This article sets out to contribute to the understanding of the dynamics of retail credit premiums (i.e. the difference between reference interest rates and rates on retail loans with comparable maturities) in the Czech economy. The text documents the history of the credit premium. A model that...

To what extent can Czech exporters cushion the impact of currency appreciation shocks by using imported intermediates? We apply a partial equilibrium model with firms that are heterogeneous in their productivities. Producers can serve the domestic market, export final goods, or import inputs. In...

This paper focuses on the development of the interbank market risk premium in the Czech Republic during the global financial crisis. We explain the significant departure of interbank interest rates from the key monetary policy rate by a combination of different factors, including liquidity risk,...

We offer a novel methodology for assessing the quality of inflation reports. In contrast to the existing literature, which mostly evaluates the formal quality of these reports, we evaluate their economic content by comparing inflation factors reported by the central banks with ex-post...

This paper evaluates the impact of structural reforms, mainly liberalization and privatization, on economic growth. To provide stylized facts on how such reforms worked in the past, we quantitatively review 60 studies that estimate the relation between reforms and growth empirically. These...

This paper discusses comovement between inflation and output in the euro area. The strength of the comovement may not be apparent at first sight, but is clear at business cycle frequencies. We propose a new estimation approach to trimmed mean inflation, determining jointly the upper and lower...