E50 - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit: GeneralReturn

Initiatives dealing with the creation of the European Monetary System and the zone of monetary stability in Europe emerged in the 18th century, despite the fact that greater manifestations of these considerations and efforts only started in the 1960s and early 1970s. The proof is the Marjolin Memorandum of 24 October 1962 and the Barre Plan, presented in The Hague in February 1969. In October 1970, the Commission's initiative was followed by preparation of a plan for the progressive establishment of the Economic and Monetary Union, known as the Werner Report. Fundamentally different political views and approaches in the field of economics and integration, crisis phenomena in the Member States of the European Economic Community prevented the coordination of economic and monetary policy and the expected introduction of a common system of exchange rates. Other factors that contributed to that state were the currency crisis (1971-1973) and the oil crisis (1973-1974), as well as conflicts of interest between the French and German sides.

After 2007, financial market turmoil began and shortage of dollar funding liquidity disrupted not only the US dollar funding market but also overseas. To address the shortage of dollar liquidity, the FED introduced swap lines with systematic important central banks, including emerging markets. The paper discusses the main feature of the FED's swap lines in the context of the funding pressures on the FX swap market. The main objective of the paper is to reveal technical aspects and effectiveness of the swap lines. The paper explains connectivity between un/secured money markets and the FX swap market during the financial and debt crises. The FX swap market was hit significantly. During the liquidity crisis of 2007-2010, the main driver of the deviation from covered interest parity was a shortage of dollar liquidity jointly with counterparty risk. During the debt crisis, the main driver was counterparty risk of the euro zone banks and sovereigns. The FED swap lines were used as a liquidity backstop. The paper concludes that the swap lines were an effective tool of cooperation between central banks and significantly alleviated the pressure on the FX swap market. In addition, the swap lines were flexible, supported financial stability, no losses were recorded, the problem of adverse selection was avoided and exit was successful. Finally, the swap lines have become a permanent tool for solving temporary shortages of foreign currency liquidity in national banking systems.

Many of the Central and Eastern European countries faced general government balance problems in the 1990s, already during their transition period. Moreover, these problems continued during their EU accession. After both the Eastern enlargements, the situation was improving and, besides, the general government debt were kept at low levels. Later on, however, the economic crisis brought serious difficulties to general government balances. General government debt were also increasing. The article brings an overview and comments on these facts in a macroeconomic context. (Figures and comments are primarily deduced from Eurostat and OECD sources.)

This paper assesses the performance of the monetary policy in Egypt during the periods following the introduction of the economic reform and structural adjustment program (ERSAP). It sets out to answer the question why the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) has not been able to achieve the goal of price stability under the ERSAP? The study compares the economic performance from the 1990s with both its counterpart in Germany, during the same periods, and with the economic performance of the Egyptian economy during the periods before the 1990s, i.e., 1975-1990. The study concludes that the CBE could have brought the rate of inflation down; nevertheless, the unemployment and real GDP growth rates have worsened and a price stability is still far away. The failure to achieve price stability is explained by two reasons, namely, a conflict between monetary policy objectives and a chronic budget deficit financed by issuing new money.

The purpose of this study is to answer the question 'Is Egypt ready to apply an IT regime?' The study presumed that a country is ready to apply an IT regime once the prerequisites for an IT regime are met. Comparing the current position of Egypt with some emerging market economies, the conclusions of the study are as follows: (i) the CBE is not factually independent. Although the CBE has been granted legal instrument independence, the existence of government representatives as voting members on the MPC and the coercion of the CBE to extend finance to the government are two elements sufficient to undermine the de facto independence of the CBE; (ii) inflation targets are expected to be missed under the possibility that the behavior of the CBE will be similar to the behavior of the majority of emerging market economies, i.e., adopting an IT regime whereas implicitly targeting FX rates; and (iii) the current level of knowledge about some central issues of designing an IT regime and the quality of the available data are not satisfactory to support the adoption of an IT regime. The study concludes that Egypt is still not ready to apply an IT regime.

Modifying IS-MP-IA model by using EU economic characteristics allows for better interpretation of the results. Specifically, from the point of view of the IS and MP curves we obtain useful information about the influence of EU economy on the Czech economy (i.e. on its GDP). We may conclude that the GARCH methodology seems to be a suitable tool for estimation of modified IS-MP-IA model and for subsequent anticipation expected development of basic macroeconomic variables, relevant for the Czech economy after its accession to EU.