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Drivers of Inflation
Though high and rising inflation has been a challenge for most economies across Europe in 2022 and into 2023, it has accelerated in Hungary to the highest level in Europe. This paper examines how and why Hungary reached historically high inflation. It draws on an augmented Phillips Curve to estimate the impact of common drivers of inflation, examines the role of labor market tightness and policy stances, and analyzes possible changes to the degree of exchange rate pass-through in recent years. Overall, a rapid recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, a series of exogenous shocks, and too loose a policy mix fueled inflation to its highest level in decades. Though monetary and fiscal policies are now tightening, regulatory price caps undermine those efforts. Going forward, a consistently and persistently tight overall policy mix is needed to drive inflation back to the central bank’s target.
Regional Disparities in Europe
While the level of disparities across regions in 10 advanced European economies studied in this paper mostly reflects productivity gaps, the increase since the Great Recession has resulted from diverging unemployment rates. Following the pandemic, this could be further exacerbated given teleworkability rates are lower in poorer regions than in high-income regions, making them ex-ante more vulnerable to the pandemic’s likely material impact on the prevalence of remote work. Preliminary evidence from 2020 confirms that regional disparities between countries increased during 2020. A further concern is that the pandemic might accelerate the automation of jobs across Europe, something which oft...
Republic of Croatia
Republic of Croatia: Selected Issues
Bosnia and Herzegovina
After a strong post-pandemic rebound in 2021, growth moderated to 3.9 percent in 2022 (from 7.4 percent in 2021), with Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) beset by negative food and fuel price shocks, the economic slowdown in Europe, and ongoing domestic political tensions. Inflation has been declining from an all-time high of 17.4 percent in October, but it remains high. Most structural reforms remain on hold, and EU candidacy status, granted in December 2022, has yet to create momentum.
Hungary’s Corporate Sector Risk
In recent years, Hungary’s non-financial corporations were confronted with multiple shocks, ranging from the pandemic and rising geopolitical tensions to the historic tightening of domestic monetary policy. Employing machine learning techniques, this paper examines the determinants of Hungarian listed firms’ credit risk evolution over this period. Our analysis shows that both firm-specific and macroeconomic factors played a role in explaining the observed rise in firms’ default probability at onset of the pandemic, although Hungarian corporates proved broadly resilient, with risk indicators quickly improving a year after. Firms’ credit risk rose again in 2022, however, as both long-term interest rates and sovereign risk premia sharply increased, despite continued improvements in firms’ financial ratios. This development merits continued monitoring, particularly since a significant portion of corporate loans are set to mature within the next few years and could be repriced at higher interest rates.
European Labor Markets and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Fallout and the Path Ahead
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic caused by far the largest shock to European economies since World War II. Yet, astonishingly, the EU unemployment rate had already declined to its pre-crisis level by 2021Q3, and in some countries the labor force participation rate is at a record high. This paper documents that the widespread use of job retention schemes has played an essential role in mitigating the pandemic’s impact on labor markets and thereby facilitating the restart of European economies after the initial lockdowns.
Reforming the EU Fiscal Framework
The EU’s fiscal framework needs reform. While existing fiscal rules have had some impact in constraining deficits, they did not prevent deficits and debt ratios that have threatened the stability of the monetary union in the past and that continue to create vulnerabilities today. The framework also has a poor track record at managing trade-offs between containing fiscal risks and stabilizing output. Finally, the framework does not provide sufficient tools for EU-wide stabilization. This was most visible during the decade following the euro area sovereign debt crisis, when structurally low real interest rates stretched the policy tools of the European Central Bank (ECB), leading to a persis...
U.S. and Euro Area Monetary and Fiscal Interactions During the Pandemic: A Structural Analysis
This paper employs a two-country New Keynesian DSGE model to assess the macroeconomic impact of the changes in monetary policy frameworks and the fiscal support in the U.S. and euro area during the pandemic. Moving from a previous target of “below, but close to 2 percent” to a formal symmetric inflation targeting regime in the euro area or from flexible to average inflation targeting in the U.S. is shown to boost output and inflation in both regions. Meanwhile, the fiscal packages approved in the U.S. and the euro area, and a slower withdrawal of fiscal support in the euro area, have a similar impact on output and inflation as changing the monetary policy frameworks . Simultaneously implementing these policies is mutually reinforcing, but insufficient to fully explain the unexpected increase in core inflation during 2021.
Regional Disparities in Hungary
Hungary is gradually converging to the average income level of the EU, but regional disparities remain persistently high and may worsen with the digital and green transitions. This paper employs income convergence and growth decomposition techniques to pin down the drivers of regional disparities in Hungary and analyze these trends through the lens of the ongoing digital and green transitions. The results indicate that divergence in productivity and labor force participation has played an outsized role in driving regional disparities, especially due to the concentration of economic activity in low-value-added and carbon-intensive sectors in lagging regions. Targeted reforms, particularly aimed at strengthening governance, increasing female labor force participation, and incentivizing migration, can promote economic dynamism and growth in lagging regions. Enhancing digital infrastructure and literacy has a statistically significant effect in reducing the urban-rural productivity gap, while investment in reskilling workers and incentivizing green R&D can promote an inclusive transition from brown to green jobs in regional economies.
Europe’s Shift to EVs Amid Intensifying Global Competition
European countries have set ambitious goals to reduce their carbon emissions. These goals include a transition to electric vehicles (EVs)—a sector that China increasingly dominates globally—which could reduce the demand for Europe’s large and interconnected auto sector. This paper aims to size up the tradeoffs between Europe’s shift towards EVs and key macroeconomic outcomes, and analyze which policies may sharpen or ease them. Using state-of-the-art macroeconomic and trade models we analyze a scenario in which the share of Chinese cars in EU purchases rises by 15 percent over 5 years as a result of both a positive productivity shock for car production in China and a demand shock tha...
