CNB Research News

Finance, Growth and (Macro)Prudential Policy: European Evidence

This paper examines the interactions between financial development, economic growth and prudential policy measures of banking regulation and supervision. The paper shows that active prudential policy has the potential to increase the economic benefits stemming from financial sector development.

How to Organize Research in Central Banks: The Czech National Bank’s Experience

This paper describes the Czech National Bank’s experience with the implementation of a new research model, which was motivated by a weakened link between research outputs and their application. The changes implemented in 2017 have helped increase the relevance of research outputs and the flexibility of the whole process.

Dynamics of Czech Inflation: The Role of the Trend and the Cycle

This paper decomposes Czech inflation into the trend and deviations from the trend. Regression analysis is then applied to examine these two components. The results indicate a fall in the inflation trend, coinciding with changes in inflation expectations, while the transitory component exhibits features of an open-economy Phillips curve.

A Tale of Two Crises: An Early Comparison of Foreign Trade and Economic Activity in EU Countries

This article compares two episodes of decline in domestic economic activity and foreign trade in EU countries: the 2008/2009 global financial crisis and the current downturn in economic activity related to the coronavirus pandemic. The results show that although the origins of the two crises are different, as is the pace and size of the economic downturn, many features are similar; the difference between the two episodes under review consists in the dynamics of foreign trade prices.

The Coal Market and Its Future

This article focuses on coal – still a very important energy commodity – which some advanced countries are trying to phase out, due mainly to a political preference for renewable resources. For developing countries, however, coal is important not only for electricity generation, but also for the production of other energy-intensive products.

Mortgage Loan Regulation Instruments around the World

This article presents the key principles and motives of macroprudential policy for maintaining financial stability, focusing on mortgage loan regulation. The article presents the dichotomy of opinion on setting instruments such as LTV and DSTI caps (cyclical and structural approaches) to mitigate the risks caused by excessively fast growth in house prices, and also academic evidence on the impact of these instruments on the real economy.

The Household Stress Test

This article presents the methodology of the new stress test for households with a mortgage loan, which the CNB uses to analyse the sector’s resilience. Thanks to granular data on new mortgage loans and a forward-looking approach to simulating the overall mortgage portfolio, the test has a broad application for assessing the impacts of macroeconomic scenarios and calibrating macroprudential instruments.

The CNB’s Approach to Releasing the Countercyclical Capital Buffer

This article describes the CNB’s approach to releasing the countercyclical capital buffer (CCyB) in two alternative scenarios of declining cyclical risks. In its decision-making, the CNB assesses whether and in what form the cyclical risks in institutions' balance sheets are declining and how that decline will affect their loss coverage capacity and available capital capacity for lending to the real economy. In a severe recession, it can be assumed with high probability that the CCyB rate will be lowered as far as zero. In a mild recession, the cyclical risks may disappear naturally without the banking sector simultaneously incurring systemic losses and the CCyB rate will probably be gradually lowered to 1%.

This Year’s Convergence Reports and the Entry of Bulgaria and Croatia into ERM II

This article discusses this year’s Convergence Reports of the ECB and the European Commission, mainly from the perspective of the recent entry of Bulgaria and Croatia into ERM II.

The CNB’s research is headed by two divisions – the Economic Research Division in the Monetary Department (left) and the Financial Research Division in the Financial Stability Department (right).

— Focus of our research

Economic research:

— monetary policy and analysis of monetary policy transmission,

— macroeconomic modelling,

— the real sector and fiscal policy.

Financial research:

— developing and refining the methodology for stress testing the sectors of the financial system,

— developing instruments for identifying and quantifying hidden systemic risks,

— analysing the transmission of macroprudential and microprudential instruments,

— understanding the interactions between macroprudential, microprudential and monetary policies.