Volumen 11 (2022): Heft 1 (January 2022)

This study investigates the relationship between profitability and market power in the banking sector using data from the financial reports of the banks that operated in Serbia and Montenegro, covering the period from the first quarter of 2010 to the last quarter of 2019. In order to investigate this relationship, determinants of bank profitability are split between internal and external. As the external determinants, selected ratios of concentration were calculated and used in order to measure market power. The total of sixteen panel regression models were applied, eight for each country. The results indicate that variations of return on assets and return on equity in Serbia can be explained by the variations of the ratios of concentration. On the other hand, results of the panel regression model applied for the banking sector of Montenegro does not give enough argument to support such explanation, and bank profitability can be explained by bank efficiency to some extent.

While all EU Member States can join the group's monetary union, the euro area, some members are far more ready for the adoption and use of the single European currency. Here, we construct a new Monetary Union Readiness Index (MURI) for the EU Member States. The theoretical framework of the index is built on the economic theory of Optimal Currency Areas and EU regulations such as the Treaty and the Maastricht criteria, and the Regulation on the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure. The index measures (i) nominal convergence, (ii) real convergence, and (iii) macroeconomic stability. The MURI Index provides an easy to use real-time policy tool to evaluate both candidate and current euro area members. Hence, it complements, aggregates and communicates key information in annual convergence reports and in official statistics. Our evaluation finds that Austria, Finland, Denmark, Sweden and Germany showed the highest level of compliance with the different euro area criteria in 2018, while Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Spain, and Italy were the least compliant.

This paper analyses the impact of central bank interventions in the inflation targeting regime. The results of empirical studies in this paper show if there is a shock of the exchange rate, which would lead to depreciation of the exchange rate, a central bank may decide to mush instability on the foreign exchange market with foreign exchange interventions, thereby preventing the sudden exchange rate depreciation, which would then require a smaller reaction by the interest rate. Namely, through foreign exchange interventions, the central bank greatly absorbs the depreciation shock and, consequently, inflation is lower. As a result of lower price growth, the need for a monetary policy response to an interest rate is also lower. Based on this example, we can see that central bank intervention in some cases can be very useful in order to correct disturbances in the foreign exchange market. Therefore, some central banks accumulate foreign exchange reserves at a very high level so as to have enough space for foreign exchange intervention, without the risk of falling foreign exchange reserves below the optimum level.

We conduct a Monte Carlo experiment using an ad-hoc New Keynesian model and a tractable agent-based model to generate artificial credit cycle episodes. We show that fluctuations in the implicit measures of the natural rate of interest obtained using a conventional trivariate Kalman filter on these artificial datasets occur in the vicinity of credit cycle peaks without any underlying changes in fundamentals (that is the agents’ type or their behaviour). The empirical analysis confirms that the measures of the natural interest rate tend to increase prior to a credit cycle peak and decrease afterwards. We conclude that a decline in the estimated natural rates of interest does not necessarily indicate changes in macroeconomic fundamentals. Instead, it may simply reflect the innate properties of the measurement technique in the vicinity of credit cycle peaks.

One of the focuses of recent literature has been the macroeconomic effects of macroprudential policy instruments. The innovation of this paper is that it studies the effects of transparent macro-prudential policies on price stability. The results presented herein provide the first empirical evidence that macroprudential transparency can aid to achieve stable inflation in emerging and developing countries. The effect is necessarily transmitted through reduced occurrence of banking crises. We also record a particular advantage of macroprudential transparency for non-inflation targeting countries. Overall, the results are robust to the use of two proxies of price stability.

This paper analyses the concentration of the banking system in Croatia and the impact of concentration on stability of the economic system as a whole over the period since 2002 to 2017. The level of concentration is usually related to the competitiveness of a particular sector, in this case the banking system, which affects the development and health of the country's entire economic system. The banking system, as the basis for the development of all other sectors of the economy, has been analysed here in the context of the concentration trend and efficiency in the selected time period using selected concentration indices: Concentration Ratio, Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, the Gini coefficient and the entropy measure using the variables of total assets of banks, loans granted, and received deposits. This research concludes that in the considered period of nearly 20 years, Croatia was among the EU countries with increased concentration level of the banking system.

This paper investigates inconsistencies between countries’ official exchange rate regime declarations (the so-called de jure exchange rate regimes) and their actual policy (de facto exchange rate regimes). These exchange rate regime gaps decrease the credibility of monetary policy and are considered an overall negative economic phenomenon. In this paper, I attempt to disclose the determinants of these gaps using the data on several de facto classifications and a wide array of explanatory variables of economic and institutional nature. The results suggest that a number of macroeconomic factors such as foreign exchange reserves, current account balance and economic openness influence the probability of monetary authorities breaking commitment to their official exchange rate regime. At the same time, I also discover that the exchange rate regime gaps are less frequent in more democratic and institutionally advanced countries although the results tend to differ depending on the de facto classification used and the nature of gap (either de jure floating – de facto fixed or de jure fixed – de facto floating).

This study examines the liquidity dynamics of banks in emerging market economies. Using annual data of 91 commercial banks from 11 countries, the study established that banks in emerging markets have target liquidity ratios they pursue and partially adjust due to market frictions. Overall, risk aversion and prudence play a significant role in explaining the liquidity dynamics by banks in emerging market economies.

This study explores the effect of regulatory governance on financial stability using cross-sectional data from 55 countries. The findings show that regulatory governance and various subcomponents of regulatory governance are positively correlated with financial stability in the selected countries. The results, based on the ordinary least square method, explain that the regulatory governance has a significant positive influence on financial stability in the selected countries. Further, concerning different dimensions of regulatory governance, it is showed that an individual impact of all components on financial stability is positive except for the strength of external audit, and supervisory independence and accountability. However, central bank`s independence and economic independence have a statistically significant effect on financial stability, whereas central bank accountability, supervisory independence and accountability, political central bank independence as well as the strength of external audit have an insignificant statistical influence on financial stability. Finally, the study concludes that regulatory governance and individual dimension of regulatory governance played the most significant role in improving financial stability in the selected countries.

This paper studies the international transmission of the euro area´s monetary policy and financial stress to Russia. The results show that financial stress in the euro area damages Russian economic activity and stock prices, but not its trade balance. The contractionary euro area monetary policy shock decreases Russian GDP, leads to real appreciation of the euro against the Russian rouble, damages Russian stock prices, but does not significantly affect the trade balance between countries. We also found that the Central Bank of the Russian Federation adjusts to monetary policy shocks in the euro area.