E52 - Monetary PolicyReturn

The paper focuses on the reactions of economic policy to external and internal shocks. It refers to the current economic situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic that generated a combination of internal and external negative economic shock and an unprecedented termination of some sectors or industries. The aim of the paper is to observe the change in economic policy responses over the last decade by comparing a monetary and fiscal policy responses after the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008 with the current economic situation. Most of the observed states indicated faster and stronger reactions of economic policy during the COVID-19 pandemic in comparison to the global financial crisis. The change may be explained by the expectation of a larger economic downturn caused by an abnormal negative shock, however a possible transformation in the ability of the economic policy to react should be also considered as a conceivable reason. The dynamics of the responses was observed especially in the case of fiscal policy, which corresponds to the consensus of the authors of the literature.

The transformation process in market economies is inherently connected with the inflow of foreign capital, which replaces the missing domestic resources. This also applies to the Czech and Slovak economies, whereto the capital primarily in the form of foreign direct investment has flown since the early nineties. The following article is devoted to the comparison of the impact of these investments on the external balance in terms of the balance of payments in both countries after their accession to the EU. It deals with the impact of revenues from foreign direct investment on the current account deficit of the balance of payments and methods of its coverage from the impact on the external balance point of view. Attention is also paid to the comparison of the development of the total external debt of both countries, both in terms of volume and structure of the foreign debt.

Milton Friedman, American Nobel price winner for Economics, was one of the most important economists in the 20th century. He contributed to the development of macroeconomic theory as well as to the new concept of monetary policy. In the area of economic theory two of main Friedman´s contributions are recorded: the new interpretation of the Quantity Theory of Money and the theory of the Natural Rate of Unemployment. In the area of economic policy his criticism of neo-Keynesian orientation to the stimulation of effective demand and the interest rate targeting is mentioned and his recommendation to manage the money supply is underlined. Friedman´s criticism of the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve during the Great Depression is also paid attention to as well as the contemporary monetary policy of the American central bank.

Main target of the article is to point out potential methodological obstacles to balance of payments budgeting and to show an impact of foreign direct investments on country's external economic equilibrium. The article consists of three parts. The first one is devoted to short review of a development of balance of payments methodology with respect to main changes that were a part of individual manuals. The second one is devoted to an analysis of foreign direct investments impact on current and financial accounts of balance of payments. The last part focuses on a capability of external economic equilibrium indicators.

The paper deals with G. Rudebusch's paper Federal Reserve Interest Rate Targeting, Rational Expectations and the Term Structure published in Journal of Monetary Economics in 1995. I define main resources of the study, discuss the most important parts of Rudebusch's paper and present key conclusions about the impact of central banks on the dynamics of money market interest rates. Besides I point out some problems that can influence our understanding of the behavior of interest rates. First of all this is the problem of instability of the period in which it is possible to make the correct prediction of the value of targeted interest rates. Hereafter I call attention to few technical aspects of managing the open market operations and last but not least I stress the problems of potential instability of term premium.