Jiri Podpiera

Real exchange rates in emerging economies

We analyse the role of various investment margins in explaining the real exchange rate appreciation recorded in European transition countries. We present a model that introduces a quality investment margin and show that the margin is needed for replicating the observed pace of real exchange rate appreciation.

The Price Effects of an Emerging Retail Market

This paper analyzes the effects of a changing market structure on the price dynamics of final goods in an emerging Czech retail market. We estimate the extent of up-and downstream market power and find that the changing market structure was responsible for an average yearly price decrease of retailed products by 0.8 percentage points during 2000-2005. At the same time, however, we anticipate that a period of mergers and acquisitions that has already started could cause yearly price increases of retailed products by 1.2 percentage points—approximately 0.5 percentage points in the consumer price index inflation—over the next ten years.

The Role of Policy Rule Misspecification in Monetary Policy Inertia Debate

Operational monetary policy rules are characterized by a parsimonious specification and are therefore prone to specification error when estimated on real data. I devise a policy rule estimation procedure, which is robust to marginal misspecification, and study the effects of specification error in least squares. I find the robust evidence of upward bias in policy inertia in least squares applied to most commonly used Taylor type rule. In effect, least squares learning of a central bank can lead to increasing monetary policy inertia over time.