Publications

We study the welfare implications of distortions, such as markups and returns to scale, when firm entry is slow to adjust, allowing quasi-rents to persist for longer. First, we present evidence on differences in speed of firm entry adjustment across US industries. In some industries, such as hospitality, firms respond rapidly to profit opportunities, arbitraging quasi-rent quickly. Whereas, in other industries, such as construction, entrants respond slowly, sustaining incumbents’ quasi-rents for longer. We develop a model of sluggish firm adjustment, which shows that the sluggishness of firm adjustment magnifies the welfare costs of distortions. We study a model with a fixed cost and increasing marginal cost such that a perfectly competitive equilibrium exists, and in the absence of distortions market and planner equilibrium coincide with firms operating at minimum efficient scale. We contrast outcomes when there is curvature on the demand-side of the economy from markups and curvature on the supply-side of the economy from returns to scale, adding counter-evidence to the perception that the setups are isomorphic.

Keywords: Markups, Firm Entry, Returns to Scale, Welfare

JEL codes: E32, D21, D43, L13, C62

This paper examines the influence of export activity on a firm’s energy intensity, with a particular focus on the role of the upgrading process. We introduce a firm-level complexity index incorporating two dimensions: the complexity of the goods traded, and the complexity of the destination markets served. By employing a quasi-experimental shift-share research design (Borusyak et al., 2022), we show that growth in external demand incentivizes firms to undertake upgrading activities, resulting in lower energy intensity. Furthermore, financial constraints diminish the energy efficiency gains from upgrading, especially for small firms. In addition, we explore whether upgraded firms can leverage higher markups, and show that this strategy is effective only for large firms. These findings indicate the need for targeted support policies for small firms and highlight the critical importance of maintaining open trade in an increasingly fragmented world.

Keywords: Firm Upgrading, International Trade, Energy Intensity, Complexity, Structural Transformation, Economic Development.

JEL classification: F14, D22, O33, Q56.

Amid ongoing geoeconomic tensions, industrial policy has emerged as a prominent tool for policymakers. What are the dynamic and welfare effects of these policies? How does the short-sightedness of policymakers influence their choice of instruments? What are the distributional consequences of these protectionist measures? We address these questions with a dynamic two-country open-economy macro framework that incorporates firm heterogeneity, trade, and the offshoring of tasks. By calibrating the model to the contexts of the US and China, we explore the effects of four popular industrial policies: import tariffs, offshoring friction, domestic production subsidies, and entry subsidies. Our findings indicate that myopic policymakers are incentivized to subsidize production, while more forward-looking policymakers favor imposing import tariffs. Although all of these policies initially reduce wage inequality, some result in aggregate welfare losses, either in the short run or the long run.

Keywords: Macroeconomic Dynamics, Firm heterogeneity, Trade, Trade-in-tasks, Industrial policies, Welfare, Global value chains.

JEL classification: F23, F41, F51, F62, L51.

This paper presents an analysis of optimal policies within a New Keynesian model that incorporates households’ concerns regarding fair price markups. Fluctuations in inflation shape perceptions of fairness, which constitute a pivotal factor in the design of policies. The optimal fiscal policy is an income subsidy designed to address inefficiencies resulting from price markups; however, it is ineffective in mitigating households’ perceptions of fair pricing. In the event that inflation targeting by the monetary authority is not sufficiently strict, the optimal policy shifts to a tax. The planner is thus able to mitigate both demand-driven inflation and concerns regarding the fairness of pricing, albeit at the cost of welfare losses. Furthermore, an analogous policy to price caps is examined, in which the planner determines an optimal markup path for firms in lieu of providing subsidies to households. This approach is demonstrated to be equivalent to a subsidy within this framework. Consequently, when fairness and inflationary pressures are relatively low to moderate, a price markup cap is an effective means of enhancing welfare. However, as these factors intensify, the planner sets a high markup, resulting in welfare losses.

Keywords: New Keynesian model, fair markups, optimal fiscal policy, price cap.

JEL classification: D11, E10, E31, H21, H31.

The Baltic states experienced the most substantial consumer price inflation of any of the EU countries shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic. The year-on-year all-items inflation rate averaged 11% from January 2021 to September 2023, peaking at around 22% in late 2022. This study examines how consumer price rigidity in the region during this period of high inflation differed from the preceding period of low inflation in 2019-2020. We use the detailed price records that underlie the official consumer price indexes to assess the frequency and the size margins of price changes. The average frequency of price changes increased by about four percentage points when inflation was high, as an increase of five percentage points in the frequency of price increases combined with a fall of one percentage point in the frequency of price cuts. The average size of price changes increased by 2.8 percentage points, mainly because the share of price increases changed. We further show that structural shocks in energy prices and aggregate demand contributed significantly to fluctuations in the inflation rate through the frequency of price changes during the period of high inflation. All this points to pricing being state-dependent in the Baltic states.

Keywords: consumer price rigidity, price-setting, high inflation, frequency of price changes.

JEL classification: D40, E31.

We document how worker flows between employment, unemployment, and out of the labor force, vary by age and gender for a large panel of European countries. We develop and calibrate an extended Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides model that captures all the salient features of these data. The model assigns a major role to the production technology in driving differences in aggregate employment, while, in contrast to Standard analyses, labor-market policies play only a secondary role. Search intensity and a laborforce participation decision are key for propagating the effects of technology across age and gender groups, and for explaining the variation in aggregate employment.

Keywords: Employment, Unemployment, Labor Force Participation, Life cycle, Worker Flows, Labor Market Institutions

JEL classification: E02, E24, J21, J64, J82

Consensus forecasts by professionals are highly accurate, yet hide large heterogeneity. We develop a framework to extract the judgement component from survey forecasts and analyse the extent to which it contributes to respondents’ disagreement. For the average respondent, we find a substantial contribution of judgement about the current quarter, which often steers unconditional forecasts towards the realisation, thereby improving accuracy. We identify the structural components of judgement by exploiting stochastic volatility and give an economic interpretation to expected future shocks. For individual respondents, just over one-third of the disagreement is due to differences in the coefficients or models used, and the remainder is due to different assessments of future shocks; the latter mostly concerns the size of the shocks, while there is general agreement on their source.

Keywords: Expectations Formation, Identification via Stochastic Volatility, Judgement, Survey of Professional Forecasters

JEL classification: C32, C33, C51, D84, E37

This paper explores how fluctuations in the house price-rent spread influence household spending, taking into account credit constraints. We incorporate a housing spread shock, representing changes in the future value of residential property, into a model of household decisionmaking with borrowing frictions. Using halfcentury data from 28 OECD countries, we find that housing spread shocks are more persistent than credit shocks, which induce ‘boom-bust’ dynamics. We also identify asymmetries once the joint effect of shocks to housing spread and borrowing frictions is analyzed, particularly in crisis periods, underscoring the importance of policies addressing credit conditions and household expectations to stabilize the economy when traditional tools are less effective.

Keywords: household expectations; house price-rent spread; credit frictions; interest rates; household consumption

JEL classification: D15, E21, E5, G51
 

We quantify wage bargaining shocks’ effects on macroeconomic aggregates in Germany using a structural vector auto-regression model. We identify exogenous variation in bargaining power from episodes of minimum wage introduction and industrial disputes. This disciplines the impulse responses of unemployment and output, and sharpens inference on the behaviour of other variables, which is consistent with theoretical predictions from search and matching models. We find that wage bargaining shocks are an important contributor to agregate fluctuations in unemployment and inflation, exhibit close to full passthrough to consumer prices, and imply plausible dynamics for the vacancy rate, firms’ profits, and the labor share.

Keywords: Wage bargaining, minimum wage, industrial action, narrative restrictions, structural vector autoregression.

JEL classification: J2, J3, E32, C32.
 

Uneven family responsibilities are at the root of gender gaps. Using a new dataset  covering all firm-level agreements signed in Spain between 2010 and 2018, we explore whether the presence of female worker representatives can facilitate the negotiation of family-friendly policies with management. We compare firms that operate under the same set of labor regulations but differ in the presence of women among employee representatives. Our findings suggest that having female representatives at the bargaining table can help transform workplaces to better meet women’s needs and ultimately close the gender gap.

Keywords: women representation, bargaining, family-friendly firms

JEL codes: J16, J32, J53

This paper studies the margins and heterogeneity of adjustments to trade shocks by estimating how Covid-19 restrictions affected imports and exports. We use data from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia on foreign trade at the level of the firm and the partner country and at monthly frequency from January 2019 to December 2020. The focus is on the short-term adjustment and on the first wave of the pandemic. We find that the adjustment to the restrictions mostly occurs through the intensive margin, meaning trade values are reduced rather than trade in certain markets or products ceasing. It is further observed that quantity played a more important role in the adjustment process than prices and that both upstream and downstream restrictions played an equally important role in the decline of foreign trade. It is shown that differentiated products that are difficult to replace are responsible for this adjustment pattern.

Keywords: transmission of shocks, input-output linkages, global value chains, Covid-19, workplace closing.

JEL codes: F14, F61, D22

This paper characterizes the power dynamics of firms in both product and labor markets in Lithuania between 2004 and 2018. We first show that both markets are not perfectly competitive, as both price markups and wage markdowns are far from unitary and homogeneous. Interestingly, we unveil that the Dynamics of these margins followed different patterns. On the one hand, both the dispersijon and the economy-wide markup have increased, indicative of an increase in product market power. On the other hand, we document a decline in monopsony power, as both the heterogeneity and the aggregate level of markdowns have declined. Altogether, our results underline the importance of jointly analyzing product and labor markets when assessing firms’ market power.

Keywords: Firm heterogeneity, Monopoly, Markups, Monopsony, Markdowns.

JEL Classification: D4, E2, J3, L1.

Does competition in the labor market affect wage inequality? Standard textbook monopsony models predict that lower employer labor market power reduces wage dispersion. We test this hypothesis using Social Security data from Lithuania. We first fit a two-way fixed effects model to quantify the contribution of worker and firm heterogeneity to wage dispersion and document that the compression of dispersion in firm fixed effects has been the main source of the decline in inequality over the past 20 years. Using a theory-based relationship, we then leverage variation across sectors and over time to show that a 10 percentage point increase in labor market competition leads to a 0.7 percentage point reduction in the variance of firm-specific wage components. A counterfactual exercise using our preferred estimates suggests that the increase in labor market competition can explain at least 15 percent of the observed decline in overall wage inequality.

Keywords: Wage inequality, Firm heterogeneity, Monopsony, Labor supply elasticity.
JEL Classification: J31, J42, O15.

This paper analyzes a model of multiple overconfident traders submitting market orders where traders’ private information is subject to correlated errors, as well as its extension to endogenous information. We consider two standard types of overconfidence: overconfidence in own signals and underconfidence in others’ signals. The analyses on the effects of overconfidence on traders’ behavior and the equilibrium price suggest that these effects are richer than our typical understanding of overconfidence focusing on its positive effect on trading volume as follows: First, trading volume may increase or decrease with overconfidence depending on its type. Second, these different types of overconfidence may differ radically on the patterns of trading volume and price informativeness with respect to the number of traders. Third, overconfidence can cause equilibrium multiplicity in information acquisition.

JEL Classification: G11, G14, G4
Keywords: Overconfidence; Disagreement; Strategic trading; Information aggregation; Efficient market hypothesis

The carbon intensity of U.S. output has experienced a secular decline in recent decades. Using an agnostic identification approach we show that news about future total factor productivity explain the bulk of longrun variation in emission intensity. News about green technologies give rise to similar dynamics. Both innovations precede a persistent increase of output and TFP. Yet, they are associated with only a temporary decline of emissions, followed by a hump-shaped rebound. New technologies have thus been a key driver of growth in recent decades but have not permanently reduced emissions. We discuss the Economic underpinnings of this rebound effect.

Keywords: carbon emissions, carbon intensity, news shocks, structural vector autoregressions.

JEL Classification: C32, O47, Q43, Q55.

We investigate how firms adjust to the introduction of sudden, unanticipated and eventually long-lasting economic sanctions. In 2014, Russia introduced sanctions on imports from Europe, which caused an abrupt negative shock to the food production sector in Lithuania. We find that part-time employment is used as the first shock absorber, followed by investment and full-time employment. At the same time, firms dampen shock effects by expanding to other export markets. To rationalize this firm behavior, we provide a theoretical mechanism where forward-looking firms face nonconvexities in the labor market along with heterogeneous variable trade costs.

Keywords: economic sanctions, firm adjustment margins, part-time employment, new export markets.

JEL Classification: D22, D25, F14, F16, F51

Using detailed administrative data from Spain, we investigate the impact of having an initial work experience in an employee-owned firm (EOF) versus a conventional business on subsequent earnings. We find that young workers’ exposure to EOFs at the time of labour market entry reduces earnings by about 8% during the first 15 years in the labour market. The selection of individuals with low initial ability in EOFs does not appear to be a relevant channel. Our results seem to be rather related to differences in job mobility and wage returns to experience. On the one hand, we document lower wage returns to experience acquired in EOFs, although no differences in subsequent career progression in terms of promotions. On the other hand, we find that workers who had their first job in EOFs show a strong attachment to such a business model and are less likely to voluntarily leave their employers. Taken together, our findings suggest the existence of nonpecuniary job attributes offered by EOFs that might compensate for lower lifetime earnings.

Keywords: Employee-Owned Firms, Careers, Wages, Job Mobility

JEL Classification: J31, J50, J62

I use data from the European Central Bank’s Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) to examine how house price expectations differ across Europe and to identify the main drivers of such expectations. During the period 2010-2017, housing-related assets drove the household balance sheet evolution. Therefore, house price expectations remained highly heterogenous across European countries. The paper found that changes in income and house prices are the key determinants of house price expectations. Homeownership status, income and wealth distributions also explain part of the heterogeneity in household expectations about house prices in Europe. All these effects appear to be stronger for renters and for households from the bottom quintiles in income and wealth distributions.

Keywords: house price expectations; housing; household portfolio.

JEL Classification: D10, D31, D84, G11

In this paper, a factor-augmented version of the hybrid New Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC) is assessed using a data set comprised of a large panel of European Union (EU) member countries. The factor-augmentation is natural given that country-level inflation rates are highly co-moving. The presence of unattended common factors is important because it raises the issue of omitted variables bias, as the real marginal cost, which is a regressor of the NKPC, is likely to load on the same factors as inflation. One possibility here is to employ the regular instrumental variables approach. However, if the external instruments are subject to the same factors as those in the error term of the NKPC, the instruments would be invalid and the approach would therefore be inappropriate. We propose a novel econometric approach to estimate the hybrid NKPC, which allows for very general forms of factor dependencies and endogeneity, and should as a result lead to improved identification. Our main findings provide support for the hybrid NKPC when the presence of unknown common factors as well as external instruments are accounted for, although the results differ depending on the countries included in the estimation. More specifically, the evidence is stronger when the full sample of EU or Euro Area countries is used, rather than solely the new EU member countries which joined the EU in 2004 or later.

Keywords: New Keynesian Phillips curve, Inflation, Dynamic panel data model, Cross-sectional dependence, Common factors.

JEL codes: E31; E52; C13; C23.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This paper investigates how the introduction of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) impacts the banking sector. The deposit market is modeled as a Salop circle and deposits are subject to liquidity shocks. Absent a CBDC the interbank market can redistribute liquidity between banks. However, the central bank does not take part in the interbank market and CBDC leads to greater reliance of the banking sector on central bank standing facilities. The model shows adjusting the remuneration rate of CBDC has little pass-through to the deposit rate set by banks and may have implications for transmission of monetary policy.

Keywords: central bank digital currency, banking, money, interbank Market.

JEL Classification: E42, E52, E58, G21.

We develop a model connecting financial shocks, capital investment decisions by firms, and change in measured aggregate productivity using a dynamic general equilibrium model. Data shows that post the 2008 crisis, firms changed their allocation between assets of varying depreciation rates as credit conditions tightened, which is connected to changes in measured TFP. We propose a model that shows the mechanism of an adverse shock to credit access causing firms to change the balance sheet portfolio composition of productive assets. This reallocation of assets leads to an increase in measured productivity.

Keywords: Financial crisis, measured productivity, collateral, capital assets, credit constraint.

JEL Classification: D5, E13, E22, E32, G01, G11, G23.

We show that advance information on future income can be identified from the correlation between consumption growth and future income growth conditional on current income growth. Employing PSID data, we find that this conditional correlation is positive and significant. We use this evidence to structurally estimate a standard incomplete markets model and discover that US households possess enough advance information to reduce their income forecast errors by 15%. This significantly affects the measurement of consumption insurance. With advance information, 25% more income shocks pass through to consumption on average, and more than twice as much for the 5% asset poorest.

Keywords: income risk, advance information, consumption insurance, panel data, incomplete markets.

JEL Classification: C23, D12, D31, D52, D81, E21, G52.

This paper studies the effect of school closure on student outcomes in the Lithuanian context. Using administrative student-level data over 2013–2017 and propensity score matching, we create a balanced sample of control and treatment groups. In contrast to other studies, we focus on students in the final years of high school, possibly eliciting the upper bar of the disruption effect. Also, we follow students after high school graduation, providing evidence on labor market outcomes. We find that the school closure effect depends on the main teaching language. If we match students on a large set of student and school characteristics but the main teaching language, school closings have a lasting negative effect on exam performance and enrolling in higher education. Matching students on the main teaching language significantly reduces the negative school closure effect, suggesting that the disruption effect is considerably smaller and also has limited outcomes after high school if we take the main teaching language into account.

Keywords: School closure, education finance, student outcomes.
JEL Classification: H52, I22, I24.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

Additional housing equity collateral can loosen borrowing constraints and increase spending for households that value their home highly. However, rising home values also raise the cost of living via higher imputed rental costs, offsetting their impact on consumption. Usage of Household Finance and Consumption Survey microdata and third-party evaluation of housing value enable identification of the causal effect of house price changes on consumer spending. This paper is one of the first that explores this relationship European-wide with an application of an instrumental variable technique. The paper identifies heterogeneities among different households based on their housing status. A $1 increase in home values leads to a $0.127 increase in spending for homeowners overall, and $0.185 for homeowners with mortgages specifically. Results reflect large responses among credit-constrained households, suggesting borrowing constraints as one of the key drivers of the MPC out of housing wealth.

Keywords: Housing Wealth, House Prices, Household Consumption.

JEL codes: E21, G51, O18.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

Using CPI micro data for 11 euro area countries covering about 60% of the euro area consumption basket over the period 2010-2019, we document new findings on consumer price rigidity in the euro area: (i) each month on average 12.3% of prices change, which compares with 19.3% in the United States; when we exclude price changes due to sales, however, the proportion of prices adjusted each month is 8.5% in the euro area versus 10% in the United States; (ii) differences in price rigidity are rather limited across euro area countries but much larger across sectors; (iii) the median price increase (resp. decrease) is 9.6% (13%) when including sales and 6.7% (8.7%) when excluding sales; cross-country heterogeneity is more pronounced for the size than for the frequency of price changes; (iv) the distribution of price changes is highly dispersed: 14% of price changes in absolute values are lower than 2% whereas 10% are above 20%; (v) the overall frequency of price changes does not change much with inflation and does not react much to aggregate shocks; (vi) changes in inflation are mostly driven by movements in the overall size; when decomposing the overall size, changes in the share of price increases among all changes matter more than movements in the size of price increases or the size of price decreases. These findings are consistent with the predictions of a menu cost model in a low inflation environment where idiosyncratic shocks are a more relevant driver of price adjustment than aggregate shocks.

Keywords: price rigidity, inflation, consumer prices, micro data.

JEL codes: D40, E31.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

The ‘aid conditionality’ hypothesis as advocated in the literature suggests that aid is effective in augmenting growth only in the presence of a sound policy environment. This hypothesis was so influential that its policy recommendation, to provide aid conditional upon recipient domestic policies, is currently the dominant ODA allocation criterion. However non-economic dimensions of development (political and institutional) are increasingly seen as fundamental. For this reason, this paper focuses on the linkage between aid and a noneconomic factor like Human Rights (reflecting repression and corruption) as a measure of aid effectiveness, in explaining growth outcomes across 42 Least Developed economies. We find that countries with better human rights experience positive growth from aid receipts, signifying the role of strong institutions and good governance in enabling more effective use of aid. The paper thus concludes that the measurement and monitoring of human rights provision is a useful tool in gauging the likely effectiveness of foreign aid.

Keywords: Human rights, aid effectiveness, corruption, oligarchy.
JEL Classification: F35, P16, P40, O19.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This paper evaluates the worker-level effects of a historically large and permanent increase in the minimum wage in Lithuania. Our identification strategy leverages variation in workers’ exposure to the new minimum wage, and exploits the fact that there has been no increase in the minimum wage in previous years, to account for heterogeneous labor market prospects of low-wage workers relative to high-wage workers. Using detailed administrative records to track workers before and after the policy change, we show that the minimum wage hike significantly increased the earnings of low-wage workers. This direct effect was amplified by wage spillovers reaching the median of the income distribution. Overall, we find no negative effects on the employment prospects of low-wage workers. However, we provide suggestive evidence that young workers, highly exposed municipalities, and tradable sectors may be more negatively affected. Taken together, our findings imply an employment elasticity with respect to the minimum wage of -0.021, and an own-wage elasticity of -0.033, suggesting that wage gains dominated employment losses.

Keywords: Minimum Wage, Employment, Wages.

JEL codes: J23, J38, J48.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

In this paper we study how labor market duality affects human capital accumulation and wage trajectories of young workers. Using rich administrative data for Spain, we follow workers since their entry into the labor market to measure experience accumulated under different contractual arrangements and we estimate their wage returns. We document lower returns to experience accumulated in fixed-term contracts compared to permanent contracts and show that this difference is not due to unobserved firm heterogeneity or match quality. Instead, we provide evidence that the gap in returns is due to lower human capital accumulation while working under fixed-term contracts. This difference widens with worker ability, in line with skill-learning complementarity. Our results suggest that the widespread use of fixed-term work arrangements reduces skill acquisition of high-skilled workers, holding back life-cycle wage growth by up to 16 percentage points after 15 years since labor market entry.

Keywords: labor market duality, human capital, earnings dynamics.

JEL codes: J30, J41, J63.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

ABSTRACT

This paper provides empirical evidence on how the aftermath of the 2008 crisis affected firm productivity in the UK, taking account of the cohort effect of firms established after 2008. We test this using firm-specific and time-varying credit scores to capture firms’ ability to access credit. To overcome the identification problem, a matched sample based on firm’s credit score, firm age, size and ownership status is used by undertaking the propensity score matching approach. While we find evidence that smaller firm size and changes in credit conditions affect productivity, about half of the difference in productivity remains unexplained. We extend the matching analysis to examine sectors and cohorts, and find that, during 2011-2016, the low productivity is driven primarily by newer firms operating in the services sector, rather than in manufacturing. Within services, the underlying productivity puzzle is driven by a cessation of growth in high-productivity financial services, while abundant labour supply has led to a ‘levelling down’ of performance of newer firms in the rest of services, in line with relatively low productivity manufacturing.

Keywords: Total Factor Productivity, Cohort, Crisis, Firm Survival, Credit Score.
JEL Classification: E00, D24, E30, G21

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This paper proposes a new strategy for modeling and solving state-dependent forward guidance policies (SCFG). We study its transmission channels using a DSGE model with search and matching frictions in which agents account for the fact that the SCFG is an endogenous regime-switching system. A fully credible SCFG causes a boom in inflation and output but no rapid exit from the ZLB. Thus, the transmission of its effects is primarily through the realization of additional ZLB periods more than through changes in expectations. We next consider the implications of imperfect credibility. In this case of uncertainty, an SCFG is less impactful. Finally, using counterfactual experiments on the December 2012 FOMC statement, we find that it led to about 1.5 pp gain in unemployment and 0.5 pp in inflation.

Keywords: New Keynesian model, Search and matching, ZLB, Forward guidance.

JEL codes: E30, J60.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

Variable markups and multinational production have gathered considerable attention in the trade literature because of their empirical prevalence and welfare implications. This paper studies the welfare implication of tariffs and optimal tariffs in an environment that features firm heterogeneity, variable markups, and FDI. I find: (i) Tariffs endogenously affect firm entry level, producing different comparative statics in the short run versus long-run. (ii) Variable markups generate multiple externalities in this economy, causing market outcome to differ from the socially optimum outcome systematically. Permitting tariff-jumping FDI can lower the domestic cutoff levels and reduce the misallocation in the economy. (iii) Free trade is not always socially optimal. If the domestic marginal cost cutoff is sufficiently high, a positive tariff can be welfare-improving since it encourages firm entry. The Nash equilibrium tariff level will also be higher than the socially optimal tariff. (iv) The interaction of variable markup and FDI generates novel welfare implications that are absent if consumers possess CES preference.

Keywords: Optimal tariff, Firm heterogeneity, Misallocation, Variable markups, FDI.

JEL codes: F12, F13, F23, F60, R13.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

Is there any specific structure of the financial system which promotes economic growth or does this structure depend on the level of economic growth itself? Financial development and financial reforms affect economic growth, but less is known on how this effect varies across different levels of the conditional distribution of the growth rates. We examine this by using panel data for 81 countries for more than 30 years. We account for unobserved heterogeneity and operate within alternative econometric approaches. The findings indicate that financial reforms are important determinants of growth, especially when a country faces relatively low levels of economic growth. Financial development does matter for growth, however, the size and significance of the effect vary. Financial reforms affect economic growth more than financial development. We reveal that the components of financial reforms, which are more important for economic growth, are the supervision of banks and the regulation of securities markets.

Keywords: Financial Development, Financial Reforms, Economic Growth, Quantile Regression, Panel Data.

JEL codes: O16; O40; G10; G20; C21; C23.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

We contribute to research on mixed-frequency regressions by introducing an innovative Bayesian approach. We impose a Normal-inverse Wishart prior by adding a set of auxiliary dummies in estimating a Mixed-Frequency VAR. We identify a high frequency shock in a Monte Carlo experiment and in an illustrative example with uncertainty shock for the U.S. economy. As the main findings, we document a “temporal aggregation bias” when we adopt a common low-frequency model instead of estimating a mixed-frequency framework. The bias is amplified in case of a large mismatching between the high-frequency shock and low-frequency business cycle variables.

Keywords: Bayesian mixed-frequency VAR, MIDAS, Monte Carlo, uncertainty shocks, macro-financial linkages.

JEL codes: EC32, E44, E52.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

The Circular Economy (CE) challenges the traditional linear economy model to arrive at a sustainable  economy that minimizes resource use, its negative environmental impact, and dependency on resource imports. We develop a multi-sector dynamic stochastic general equilibrium small open economy model with endogenous adoption of exogenous foreign technology innovations, endogenous environmental quality, and CE elements, comprising recyclable waste as well as recycling and refurbishing sectors. We analyze the model-implied impulse response functions with respect to several economic shocks and conduct a rich scenario-based analysis, for which the scenarios are derived from the 9R strategies. We find important trade-offs to be considered by the economy with respect to circularity, trade, environment, and growth – the four dimensions of the quadrilemma of a small open circular economy. We find that none of the six shocks considered and in none of the eight scenarios analyzed the quadrilemma can be resolved. However, a positive shock to the price of energy or a lower energy share in one of the two intermediate goods sectors provide benefits to three out of four dimensions of the quadrilemma.

Keywords: Circular economy, Small open economy, Recycling, Refurbishing, Endogenous economic growth, Technology adoption, General equilibrium, Energy.

JEL codes: E2, F4, O3, O4, Q4, Q5.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

The use of social contacts in the labor market is widespread. This paper investigates the impact of personal connections on hiring probabilities and re-employment outcomes of displaced workers in Portugal. We rely on rich matched employer-employee data to define personal connections that arise from interactions at the workplace. Our empirical strategy exploits firm closures to select workers who are exogenously forced to search for a new job and leverages variation across displaced workers with direct connections to prospective employers. The hiring analysis indicates that displaced workers with a direct link to a firm through a former coworker are roughly three times more likely to be hired compared to workers displaced from the same closing event who lack such a tie. However, we find that the effect varies according to the type of connection as well as firms’ similarity. Finally, we show that successful displaced workers with a connection in the hiring firm have higher entry-level wages and enjoy greater job security although these advantages disappear over time.

Keywords: Job Displacement, Coworker Networks, Re-Employment.

JEL codes: J23, J63, L14.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

Subprime lending is concentrated among minorities and in minority neighborhoods. However, the literature has little evidence for what led to the rise of subprime lending in minority neighborhoods. We use the endorsement of FICO credit scores in mortgage underwriting by the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) in 1995 to answer this question. The use of credit scores led to the sorting of prime and subprime lenders across minority and non-minority neighborhoods. In minority neighborhoods prime lenders were substituted by subprime lenders and, as a result, the share of subprime lending in minority neighborhoods increased by 5 percentage points. Prime lenders with a stronger relationship with the GSEs reduced their lending in minority neighborhoods more. The level of securitization by the GSEs in minority neighborhoods also decreased.

Keywords: Mortgages, Subprime lenders, GSEs, Securitization, Minorities

JEL codes: G21, G28, J15, R23.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

At the aggregate level, I find that the euro changeover did not lead to a significant change in the overall inflation rate between 2015 and 2019 in Lithuania. When the measures are diversified, however, some inflationary effects emerge in sub-categories. I therefore analyze this heterogeneity at the disaggregated level using a large sample of prices that constitutes the CPI from 2010 to 2018. I show that significant price changes have been confined to the low-weighted components of the HICP. This explains why a spike in the overall price level did not occur at the time of the changeover.

Keywords: Euro changeover, synthetic difference-in-differences, regression discontinuity in time, price changes.

JEL codes: E31, F33, L11.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This paper surveys the main ingredients and results of heterogeneous firms trade policy literature that has been developing since the early 2000s. First, I present the stylized facts regarding firm heterogeneity, firmlevel markups, and multinational production’s global structure. I then survey the trade policy papers that build on the workhorse model of firm heterogeneity. Third, I summarize the recent development of theoretical approaches of modeling the firm-level markups and its trade policy implication. Fourth, I discuss the theoretical frameworks that incorporate multinational production into heterogeneous firms’ framework and their trade policy implication. Finally, I discuss directions for future research and offer suggestions for further readings.

Keywords: Trade policy, Firm heterogeneity, Variable markups, Multinational production.

JEL codes: F12, F13, F23, F60.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

In this study, we re-visit the factor analytical (FA) approach for (near unit root) dynamic panel data models, whose asymptotic distribution has been shown to be normal and well centered at zero without the need for valid instruments or correction for bias. It is therefore very appealing. The question is: Does the appeal of FA, which so far has only been documented for fixed effects panels, extends to panels with incidental trends? This is an important question, because many persistent variables are trending. The answer turns out to be negative. In particular, while consistent, the asymptotic normality of FA breaks down when there is an exact unit root present, which limits its applicability.

Keywords: Dynamic panel data models, Unit root, Factor analytical method

JEL codes: C12, C13, C33

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This paper analyses the instrumental variables (IV) approach put forward by Norkutė et al. (2021), in the context of static linear panel data models with interactive effects present in the error term and the regressors. Instruments are obtained from transformed regressors, thereby it is not necessary to search for external instruments. We consider a two-stage IV (2SIV) and a mean-group IV (MGIV) estimator for homogeneous and heterogeneous slope models, respectively. The asymptotic analysis reveals that: (i) the √NT-consistent 2SIV estimator is free from asymptotic bias that may arise due to the estimation error of the interactive effects, whilst (ii) existing estimators can suffer from asymptotic bias; (iii) the proposed 2SIV estimator is asymptotically as efficient as existing estimators that eliminate interactive effects jointly in the regressors and the error, whilst; (iv) the relative efficiency of the estimators that eliminate interactive effects only in the error term is indeterminate. A Monte Carlo study confirms good approximation quality of our asymptotic results.

Keywords: Large panel data, interactive effects, common factors, principal components analysis, instrumental variables.

JEL codes: C13, C15, C23, C26.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This paper analyzes the macroeconomic consequences of foreign currency losses by banks, corporates and consumers in order to find whether some allocations of losses are better from a macroeconomic perspective than others. To that end, we construct a New Keynesian DSGE model with debt overhang for corporate borrowers, monitoring costs for household mortgage debt and leverage constraints for banks. The Hungarian experience at the end of 2008 and model estimation on Hungarian data motivate these financial frictions. Model simulation shows that making corporate borrowers bear currency risk results in worse macroeconomic outcomes than shifting currency mismatch losses to banks. Foreign currency mortgages to households, however, generate lower output than currency mismatch in the banking sector. The fact that households do not suffer from debt overhang, among other reasons, is driving this result.

Keywords: Currency mismatch, household debt, corporate debt, leveraged banks, small open economy, Bayesian estimation

JEL codes: E44, G21, F41, P2.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

We characterize the joint dynamics of a large number of macroeconomic variables and Treasury yields in a dynamic factor model. We use this framework to identify a yield curve news shock as an innovation that does not move yields contemporaneously but explains a maximum share of the forecast error variance of yields over the next year. This shock explains more than half, and along with contemporaneous shocks to the level and slope of the yield curve, essentially all of the variation of Treasury yields several years out. The news shock is associated with a sharp and persistent increase in implied stock and bond market volatility, falling stock prices, an uptick in term premiums, and a prolonged decline of real activity and inflation. The accommodative response by the Federal Reserve leads to persistently lower expected and actual short rates. Treasury yields do not react contemporaneously to the yield curve news shock as the positive response of term premiums and the negative response of expected short rates initially offset each other. Identified shocks to realized and implied financial market volatility imply essentially the same impulse responses and are highly correlated with the yield news shock, suggesting that they act as unspanned or hidden factors in the yield curve.

Keywords: term structure of interest rates, yield curve, news shocks, uncertainty shocks, structural vector autoregressions, factor-augmented vector autoregressions.                                                                                                                                                                  
JEL codes: C55, E43, E44, G12.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.
 

What would have been the hypothetical effect of monetary policy shocks had a country never joined the euro area, in cases where we know that the country in question actually did join the euro area? It is one thing to investigate the impact of joining a monetary union, but quite another to examine two things at once: joining the union and experiencing actual monetary policy shocks. We propose a methodology that combines synthetic control ideas with the impulse response functions to uncover dynamic response paths for treated and untreated units, controlling for common unobserved factors. Focusing on the largest euro area countries, Germany, France, and Italy, we find that an unexpected rise in interest rates depresses inflation and significantly appreciates exchange rate, whereas GDP fluctuations are less successfully controlled when a country belongs to the monetary union than would have been the case under the independent monetary policy. Importantly, Italy turns out to be the overall beneficiary, since all three channels – price, GDP, and exchange rate – deliver the desired results. We also find that stabilizing an economy within a union requires somewhat smaller policy changes than attempting to stabilize it individually, and therefore provides more policy space.

Keywords: Dynamic causal effects; Monetary union; Price puzzle; Common factors.

JEL codes: C14; C32; C33; E52.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This paper studies the impact of the Great Recession on the relationship between reallocation and productivity dynamics in Lithuania. Using detailed microlevel data, we first document the aggregate contribution of firm exit and employment reallocation to productivity growth. Next, we estimate firm-level regressions to confirm the findings and to perform a heterogeneity analysis. This analysis shows that productivity shielded firms from exit, and that this relationship became stronger during the Great Recession. Moreover, we demonstrate that more productive firms experienced on average lower employment losses, and that this effect was even stronger during the economic slump. Taken together, our results suggest that reallocation was productivity-enhancing during the Great Recession. However, the analysis also indicates that reallocation intensity varied with sector's dependence on external financing or international trade as well as market concentration.

Keywords: firm dynamics, job reallocation, productivity, Great Recession

JEL Codes E24, E32, L11, J23

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

International trade flows are volatile, imbalanced, and fragmented across off-shored supply chains. Yet, not much is known about the mechanism through which trade flows adjust in response to shocks over time. This paper derives a dynamic gravity equation from a theory of habits in the supply chains that generates autocorrelated bilateral trade flows that are heterogeneous across different country pairs. We estimate our version of the dynamic gravity equation for 39 countries over the period of 1950-2014 and find that the transmission of local and global trade shocks is fundamentally different. We show that the trade persistence coefficient falls from 0.91 to 0.35 when we depart from the existing empirical gravity models that draw inference from the pooled coefficient estimates without controlling for the variation in the unobservable global factors. Thus, our approach escapes the excess trade persistence puzzle and adds to the explanation of the sharp decline and the rapid recovery of the global trade flows during the "Great Trade Collapse" of 2008-09. In addition to the traditional variables in the gravity equation, we also show that a cross-country habit asymmetry creates bilateral and multilateral trade imbalances, which are an important determinant of bilateral trade flows both theoretically and empirically.

Keywords: Dynamic Gravity Equation; Habits; Trade Persistence; Trade Imbalance; Global Shocks; Parameter Heterogeneity.                                                                                                                                                                   
JEL codes: C23, F14, F41, F62.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.
 

We build a new empirical model to estimate the global impact of an increase in the volatility of US monetary policy shocks. Specifically, we admit time-varying variances of local structural shocks from a stochastic volatility specification. By allowing for rich dynamic interaction between the endogenous variables and time-varying volatility in the global setting, we find that US interest rate uncertainty not only drives local output and inflation volatility, but also causes declines in output, inflation, and the interest rate.  Moreover, we document strong global impacts, making the world move in a very synchronous way. Crucially, spillback effects are found to be significant even for the US economy.

Keywords: US Monetary Policy, Volatility Shocks, Uncertainty, Global Economy.

JEL Codes: C32, C54, E52, E58, F44.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This paper assesses the financial channel of exchange rate fluctuations for emerging countries and the link to the conventional trade channel. We analyse whether the effective exchange rate affects GDP growth, the domestic credit and the global liquidity measure as the credit in foreign currencies, and how global liquidity affects GDP growth. We make use of local projections in order to look at the shocks transmission covering 11 emerging market countries for the period 2000Q1-2016Q3. We find that foreign denominated credit plays an important macroeconomic role, operating through various transmission channels. The direction of effects depends on country characteristics and is also related to the policy stance among countries. We find that domestic appreciations increase demand with regard to foreign credit, implying positive effects on investment and GDP growth. However, this is valid only in the short-run; in the medium-long run, an increase of credit denominated in foreign currency (for instance, due to appreciation) decreases GDP. The financial channel works mostly in the short-run except for Brazil, Malaysia and Mexico, where the trade channel always dominates. Possibly there is a substitution effect between domestic and foreign credit in the case of shocks in exchange rates.

Keywords: emerging markets, financial channel, exchange rates, global liquidity.

JEL Codes: F31, F41, F43, G15.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

In the US, black workers spend more time in unemployment, lose their jobs more rapidly, and earn lower wages than white workers. This paper quantifies the contributions of statistical discrimination, as portrayed by negative stereotyping and screening discrimination, to such employment and wage disparities. We develop an equilibrium search model of statistical discrimination with learning based on Moscarini (2005) and estimate it by indirect inference. We show that statistical discrimination alone cannot simultaneously explain the observed differences in residual wages and monthly job loss probabilities between black and white workers. However, a model with negative stereotyping, larger unemployment valuation and faster learning about the quality of matches for black workers can account for these facts. One implication of our findings is that black workers have larger returns to tenure.

 Keywords: Learning; Screening discrimination; Job search; Indirect inference.

JEL Codes: J31; J64; J71.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

We develop a fiscal dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model for policy simulation and scenario analysis purposes tailored to Latvia, a small open economy in a monetary union. The fiscal sector elements comprise government investment, government consumption, government transfers that are asymmetrically directed to both optimizing and hand-to-mouth households, cyclical unemployment benefits, foreign ownership of government debt, import content in public consumption and investment, and fiscal rules for each fiscal instrument. The model features a search-and-matching labour market friction with pro-cyclical labour costs, a financial accelerator mechanism, and import content in final goods. We estimate the model using Latvian data, study the new channels in the model, and provide a comprehensive analysis on the macroeconomic effects of the fiscal elements. A particular finding is that having foreign ownership of government debt generally breaks the Ricardian equivalence paradigm.

JEL codes: E0, E2, E3, F4, H2, H3, H6

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

In this paper, we adopt a dual micro-and-macro simulation strategy to assess the impact of introducing (or changing) the LTV limit. Due to the nature of borrower-based macroprudential measures, to assess this impact we need to use borrower-level micro data. Tightening (or loosening) the LTV limit increases the share of borrowers constrained by the policy measure in question; thus, the overall impact depends on initial market conditions. We find that the introduction of an LTV limit of 85 % in 2011 had a modest short-term impact on economic activity because the new regulatory limit was non-binding for most borrowers at the time. We estimate that if the LTV limit would not have been introduced, the household loan portfolio would have grown on average 1.5 percentage points faster per year (over 2012-2014). This would have led to a 0.5 percentage point higher housing price growth and a 0.2 percentage point higher real GDP growth. When the macroprudential LTV limit is binding for a significant portion of borrowers, lowering the LTV limit at current market conditions has a much more pronounced effect. We show that if the LTV limit had been implemented at the end of 2004, it would have substantially helped in tempering the credit and housing boom, albeit at the cost of lowering economic growth.

Keywords: Financial stability, Macroprudential policy, Borrower-based macroprudential policy instruments, LTV limit.

JEL Codes: C32, C53, E58, G28.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

We explore new dimensions of the ECB’s monetary communications using the Euro Area Monetary Policy Event-Study Database (EA-MPD) built by Altavilla et al. (2019). We find that three new factors are needed to capture an excess sensitivity of long-term sovereign yields around monetary announcements. "Duration" surprises cause variations in real long-term rates and are mainly transmitted by term premiums. The "Sovereign spread" and "Save the Euro" surprises greatly influence the long-term yields of the periphery countries. These effects are difficult to reconcile with classic monetary policy shocks. We therefore study their underlying nature and discover that they have the characteristics of "Information", or what we label "Perception" shocks.

Keywords: Monetary surprises, Event-study, Excess sensitivity, Perception shocks, High-frequency Identification.

JEL Codes: E43, E44, E52, E58, G12.

Using the universe of mortgage applications data and detailed credit performance data, we document that since the early 1990s there was a significant decline in the share of mortgages with co-borrowers. Although the decline was an almost universal phenomenon across different regions of the US, the rate of the decline showed significant spatial heterogeneity and in turn had implications for regional differences in economic activity. We show that the presence of a co-borrower reduces the mortgage default probability by more than 50 percent for both prime and subprime loans and those regions that had a lower co-borrower share prior to the crisis experienced higher mortgage default rates over the period 2007-2010. Higher default rates created spillovers on economic activity during the Great Recession: a lower co-borrower share at the regional level was also related to persistently lower house price growth, refinancing growth and mortgage credit growth. These results imply that the decrease in the share of mortgages with co-borrowers made the US mortgage market more vulnerable to the financial crisis and contributed to the divergence in economic outcomes across different regions.

JEL Codes: G21, G51, R21. 

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

The impact of creditor and debtor rights following firm insolvency are studied in a firm dynamics model where defaulting firms choose between restructuring or exit. The model accounts for differing effects of productivity shocks across economies that differ in the credit/debtor rights. Following a negative shock labour productivity falls sharply in a creditor-friendly regime such as the UK while in a debtor-friendly regime such as the US, there is a larger employment response. This paper suggests a possible explanation for the different employment and labour productivity response in the UK and US since the financial crisis.  

JEL Codes: D21, E22, G33.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This paper studies the impact of severance pay generosity on workers' voluntary mobility decisions. The identification strategy exploits a major labor market reform in Spain in February 2012 together with the exposure of some workers to a layoff shock. I rely on rich administrative data to estimate a discrete time duration model with dynamic treatment effects. The results show that a decrease in mobility costs induced by a reduction in severance pay made workers who expected to be displaced in the near future more likely to voluntarily leave their employers. The results indicate that policies targeting employers may also affect workers' behavior. They further reveal the relevance of taking into account interactions between employment protection and unemployment insurance.

JEL Codes: J62, J63, J65.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

In this paper, we make use of the results from Structural Bayesian VARs taken from several studies for the euro area, which apply the idea of a shock-dependent Exchange Rate Pass-Through, drawing a comparison across models and also with respect to available DSGEs. On impact, the results are similar across Structural Bayesian VARs. At longer horizons, the magnitude in DSGEs increases because of the endogenous response of monetary policy and other variables. In BVARs particularly, shocks contribute relatively little to observed changes in the exchange rate and in HICP. This points to a key role of systematic factors, which are not captured by the historical shock decomposition. However, in the APP announcement period, we do see demand and exogenous exchange rate shocks countribute significantly to variations in exchange rates. Nonetheless, it is difficult to find a robust characterization across models. Moreover, the modelling challenges increase when looking at individual countries, because exchange rate and monetary policy shocks (also taken relative to the US) are common to the whole euro area. Hence, we provide a local projection exercise with common euro area shocks, identified in euro area-specific Structural Bayesian VARs and in DSGE, extrapolated and used as regressors. For common exchange rate shocks, the impact on consumer prices is the largest in some new member states, but there are a wide range of estimates across models. For core consumer prices, the coefficients are smaller. Regarding common relative monetary policy shocks, the impact is larger than for exchange rate shocks in any case. Generally, euro area monetary policy plays a big role for consumer prices, and this is especially so for new member states and the euro area periphery.

JEL Codes: E31, F31, F45.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

Also published in the Oesterreichische Nationalbank Working Paper Series, no. 229/2020.

Relying on a rich panel regression framework, we study the role of different “fundamental” credit determinants in Central, Eastern and Southeastern European (CESEE) EU Member States and compare actual private sector credit-to-GDP ratios to the derived fundamental levels. It turns out that countries featuring positive credit gaps at the start of the global financial crisis (GFC) have managed to adjust their credit ratios downward toward levels justified by fundamentals, but the adjustment is apparently not yet complete in all countries. In addition, negative credit gaps have emerged or widened in most countries that had seen credit levels close to or below the fundamental levels of credit at the start of the GFC. The estimated speed of adjustment implies that at the end of the review period, there was still a rather long way to go for countries with very large credit gaps.

JEL Codes: C33, E44, E51, G01, G21, O16.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This paper explores the impact of banking regulation on a competitive credit market with ex-ante asymmetric information and aggregate uncertainty. I construct a model where the government to impose a regulatory constraint that limits the losses banks make in the event of their default. I show that the addition of banking regulation results in three deviations from the standard theory. First, collateral is demanded of both high and low risk firms, even in the absence of asymmetric information. Second, if banking regulation is sufficiently strict, there may not exist an adverse selection problem. Third, a pooling Nash equilibrium can exist.

JEL Codes: D86, G21, G28.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

We estimate effective and optimal net income tax schedules and compare them to estimated statutory rates for the case of Lithuania in the period 2014-2015. Values of effective net tax rates are estimated from the survey of EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions, the statutory net tax rates are estimated with the European tax-benefit simulator Euromod, while optimal net taxes are calculated via Saez (2002) methodology. We find that the three net tax schedules are similar for employees in the middle of the income distribution. At the bottom of the income distribution, optimal net tax schedules suggest higher in-work benefits. The net tax schedules diverge substantially for the self-employed. At the top of the income distribution, where the majority of self-employed are concentrated, the self-employed are required to pay 15 cents less net taxes per euro than employees - and they effectively pay 29 cents less.

JEL Codes: H2, H21.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

We model the household disposable income distribution in Lithuania and explore the drivers of the increase in income inequality between 2007 and 2015. We quantify the contributions of four factors to changes in the disposable income distribution: (i) demographics; (ii) labour market structure; (ii) returns and prices; and (iv) tax-benefit system. Results show that the effects of the factors were substantial and reflected heterogeneous developments over two sub-periods: changes in the tax and benefit system successfully accommodated a rapid rise in market income inequality due to the global financial crisis during 2007-2011, but failed to do so during the subsequent years of economic expansion, when rising returns in the labour and capital markets significantly increased disposable income inequality. We also find that declining marriage rates contributed to the increase of income inequality in Lithuania.

JEL Codes: D31, H23, J21, J31, I38.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

During the past thirty years, euro area countries have undergone significant changes and experienced diverse shocks. We aim to investigate which variables have consistently supported growth in this tumultuous period. The paper unfolds in three parts. First, we assemble a set of 35 real, financial, monetary and institutional variables for all euro area countries covering the period between 1990Q1 and 2016Q4. Second, using the Weighted-Average Least Squares (WALS) method, as well as other techniques, we gather clues about which variables to select. Third, we quantify the impact of various determinants of growth in the short and long runs. Our main finding is the positive and robust role of institutional reforms on long-term growth for all countries in the sample. An improvement in competitiveness matters for growth in the overall euro area in the long run as well as a decline in sovereign and systemic stress. The debt over GDP negatively influences growth for the periphery, but only in the short run. Property and equity prices have a significant impact only in the short run, whereas the loans to NFCs positively affect the core euro area. An increase in global GDP also supports growth.

JEL Codes: C23, E40, F33, F43.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

The objective of increased regulation of mortgage origination activities after the Great Recession was to prevent another foreclosure crisis in the future. However, the literature is not conclusive about the actual effect of these policy changes. By using the 2007-09 panel and subsequent waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), we predict foreclosure risk based on individual borrower characteristics. We show that the median mortgage foreclosure probability kept decreasing after 2010, but in 2016 it was still higher relative to the year 2007. The median foreclosure probability has remained high among both non-bank borrowers and bank borrowers. The regulatory changes started in 2010, so we also compare predicted foreclosure probabilities to the levels in 2010 and find that, despite the fact that banks were affected by this regulation more than non-banks, predicted foreclosure probabilities for bank mortgages declined slower than for non-bank mortgages. Our findings offer support for a thorough analysis of the regulatory effects because they might have been weaker than expected or worked in an unexpected way.

JEL Codes: C53, G21, G23.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This paper compares worker-owned firms and mainstream capital-owned enterprises over the business cycle. Specifically, I study whether conventional employees in worker-owned firms enjoy greater employment stability than similar workers in traditional enterprises over the business cycle, and investigate whether this stability is associated with greater volatility of working-time or wages. Unlike the literature that has compared partners of cooperatives to wage-earners of mainstream firms, I compare wage-earners across both type of organizations along the three margins of adjustment. To perform the econometric analysis, I rely on rich Spanish administrative data and panel data methods to account for composition differences between the two types of organizations. The results show that worker-owned firms offer higher job security because they do not adjust employment levels over the business cycle as much as mainstream enterprises. Wages and working-time, instead, are equally responsive across the two types of firms. The findings can be rationalized by the presence of similar labor regulations and differences in the objectives of the two type of organizations. Namely, both types of firms are constrained by regulations, such as the national Labor Code and collective bargaining, on the adjustments they can impose on wages and working-time. However, the social nature of worker-owned firms mitigates employment volatility in these organizations.

JEL Codes: J21, J31, J54.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

The empirical and theoretical evidence on the inflation impact of population aging is mixed, and there is no evidence regarding the volatility of inflation. Based on advanced economies’ data and a DSGE-OLG model - a multi-period general equilibrium framework with overlapping generations, - we find that aging leads to downward pressure on inflation and higher inflation volatility. Our paper is also the first to discuss, using this framework, how aging affects the short-term cyclical behavior of the economy and the transmission channels of monetary policy. Further, we are also the first to examine the interplay between aging and optimal central bank policies. As aging redistributes wealth among generations, generations behave differently, and the labor force becomes more scarce with aging, our model suggests that aging makes monetary policy less effective, and aggregate demand less elastic to changes in the interest rate. Moreover, in more gray societies central banks should react more strongly to nominal variables, and in a very old society the nominal GDP targeting rule might become the most effective monetary policy rule to compensate for higher inflation volatility. 

JEL Codes: E31, E52, J11.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

Do labor market reforms initiated in periods of loose monetary policy yield different outcomes from those that were introduced in periods when monetary tightening prevailed? Since economic theory usually pays attention to the steady state change and ignores business cycle interactions of structural reforms, we connect local projection methodology with the Mallow’s C_p averaging criterion to arrive at an inference that does not require knowledge of the exact functional form, is robust to mis-specification, admits non-linearities, and cross-sectional dependence and addresses uncertainty regarding interactions between labor reforms and macroeconomy. We also develop a test to check the importance of monetary policy for any horizon and the entire impulse response function, taking the multiple testing problem into account. We document that replacement rates deliver substantially different outcomes on real GDP, inflation and real effective exchange rate, whereas labor activation schemes bear different effects on unemployment in low- and high-interest rate environments. There is also evidence of monetary policy trend playing an important role as well as increasing synchronized monetary and labor market policies across European countries.

JEL Codes: C33, C54, E52, E62, J08, J38.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This study investigates the direct and intersectoral network effects of idiosyncratic TFP shocks on sectors’ growth in the context of US manufacturing industries. To deal with the potential endogeneity of TFP, we propose a novel set of instruments for contemporaneous regressors. These instruments are technology shocks identified via sign restriction from sectoral SVAR models. Using US input-output tables and industry-level data, we quantify direct and network-based effects of the shocks. Our results show that idiosyncratic technology shocks propagate mostly downstream the network. In addition, we capture strong contemporaneous direct effects of the shocks.

JEL Codes: C36, C67, D24, E32.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

We use loan-level data and a novel identification setting – closures of banks – to study how forced break-ups of lending relationships affect firms’ borrowing costs. We find that after a financially distressed bank closed and its best borrowers were exogenously forced to switch, their borrowing costs dropped steeply and converged to the market’s average. We document no such effect when a healthy bank closed. This suggests that distressed banks can use informational monopoly power to hold up and exploit their best borrowers. Apparently, closures of such banks can release the best-quality firms from the hold-up and allow borrowing cheaper elsewhere.

JEL Codes: D82, E51, G20, G21, G30, G33, L14.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This study investigates the role of intersectoral networks in the transmission of aggregate technology shocks to sectors’ growth. First, we develop a theoretical model to obtain insights into the propagation of shocks through input-output linkages, which suggests that the network effect arises via sectoral downstream linkages. We then quantitatively assess this theoretical implication with US manufacturing industries, where the aggregate technology shocks are derived from a dynamic factor model. We find that aggregate technology shocks lead to an increase in the output growth of the sector, both directly and indirectly via its intersectoral linkages. More interestingly, we document a crucial role of the intersectoral network channel, which contributes about 50 percent of the total effect. In addition, the network-based effect comes mostly from downstream linkages of sectors, which is broadly consistent with theory. 

JEL Codes: E32, C67, C33, L16, D24.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This paper investigates the role of international trade in the increase in the employment share of non-tradable sectors (services and construction). Borrowing insights from the vast theoretical literature on the determinants of structural change, we build an empirical model allowing to distinguish between long-run and short-run effects. We use this model to investigate the relative importance of the main traditional demand-side and supply-side channels of structural change, assessing, in this context, the role of trade variables. To this end, we use an unbalanced panel of countries for the period 1960-2011 from the EU-KLEMS and the GGDC 10-sector databases. Our preliminary results suggest that both Engelian income effects, i.e. the so-called demand-side drivers, and relative productivity, i.e. the supply-side channel, are relevant drivers of structural change. We show that the import and export shares are positively and negatively related, respectively, with the employment shifts to non-tradable sectors in the long run, in particular, for mature and transition economies. In the short run, a positive and significant relationship between the import share and structural shifts towards tradable sectors emerges. 

JEL Codes: F1, F4, O1, O4.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This paper examines how monetary policy affects income inequality in 10 euro area countries over the period 1999–2014. We distinguish macroeconomic and financial channels through which monetary policy may have distributional effects. The macroeconomic channel is captured by wages and employment, while the financial channel by asset prices and returns. We find that expansionary monetary policy in the euro area reduces income inequality, especially in the periphery countries. The macroeconomic channel leads to these equalizing effects: monetary easing reduces income inequality by raising wages and employment. However, there is some indication that the financial channel may weaken the equalizing effect of expansionary monetary policy. 

JEL Codes: D63, E50, E52.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

In this paper, we analyze the relationship between various risk factors and euro area government bond yield spreads, focusing particularly on the monetary policy stance. Our results show that credit and common risk factors are consistently priced in government bond yield spreads, while liquidity differentials are relevant especially during periods of stressed market conditions. We demonstrate that the liquidity component has been more prominent during periods of declining interest rates and increasing reserves, while it has diminished on announcement days of monetary policy decisions related to PSPP. Overall, the liquidity component has been statistically insignificant since the announcement of accommodative non-standard monetary policy measures.

JEL Codes: C23, E62, H50.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

The power of Granger non-causality tests in panel data depends on the type of the alternative hypothesis: feedback from other variables might be homogeneous, homogeneous within groups or heterogeneous across different panel units. Existing tests have power against only one of these alternatives and may fail to reject the null hypothesis if the specified type of alternative is incorrect. This paper proposes a new Union-Intersections (UI) test which has correct size and good power against any type of alternative. The UI test is based on an existing test which is powerful against heterogeneous alternatives and a new Wald-type test which is powerful against homogeneous alternatives. The Wald test is designed to have good size and power properties for moderate to large time series dimensions and is based on a bias-corrected split panel jackknife-type estimator. Evidence from simulations confirm the new UI tests provide power against any direction of the alternative.

JEL Codes: C13, C33.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

Online appendix (204.3 KB download icon)

The Great Recession has strongly influenced employment patterns across skill and gender groups. This paper analyzes how the resulting changes in non-employment have affected selection into jobs and hence gender wage gaps. Using data for the European Union, we show that male selection into the labour market, traditionally disregarded, has become positive. This is particularly so in Southern Europe, where dramatic drops in male unskilled employment have taken place during the crisis. As regards female selection, traditionally positive, we document two distinct effects. An added-worker effect has increased female labour force participation and hence reduced selection in some countries. In others, selection has become even more positive as a result of adverse labour demand shifts in industries which are intensive in temporary work, a type of contract in which women are over-represented. Overall, our results indicate that selection has become more important among men and less so among women, thus changing traditional gender patterns and calling for a systematic consideration of male non-employment when studying gender wage gaps.

JEL Codes: J31.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This study develops a symmetric two-country New-Keynesian general equilibrium model with endogenous growth, Calvo-style price and wage rigidities, and international trade of final consumption goods and intermediate goods. The equilibrium implications of two financial market structures are compared: financial autarky and complete markets. In the case of financial autarky, no international bond is traded. In the case of complete markets, the households have access to a full set of international nominal state-contingent bonds. We find that assuming complete markets instead of financial autarky leads to higher co-movement of most macroeconomic growth rates across countries, higher co-movement of inflation rates across countries, lower uncovered interest rate parity regression coefficients, and a lower correlation between exchange rate growth and consumption growth differentials. These results are mostly in line with US and UK data from 1950-2015, which are split into two samples, 1950-1970 and 1971-2015, in order to be compared to the model with financial autarky and the model with complete markets, respectively.

JEL Codes: E30, E44, F44, G12, O30.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

In this paper we model five Lithuanian HICP subcomponents in a medium scale Bayesian VAR framework. We deal with the parameter proliferation problem by setting the appropriate amount of shrinkage determined in the out-of-sample forecasting exercise. The main body of the paper consists of displaying the model’s performance in two applications: forecasting and analysis of inflation determinants. We find the model’s forecasts to be competitive against the univariate statistical models, particularly in the cases of predicting processed food and energy goods inflation. What is more, exercises based on conditional forecasting show that these two indices make the best use of accurate conditional information in terms of improving predicting accuracy. In the decomposition of the drivers of HICP components, we demonstrate that both, domestic and foreign factors can be prevalent inflation determinants in certain time periods. We also find some evidence on employees’ bargaining power playing a role in determining the Lithuanian consumer price inflation.

JEL Codes: C32, C53, E37.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

We develop a consumption-savings model that distinguishes households’ perceived income uncertainty from income uncertainty as measured by an econometrician. Households receive signals on their future disposable income that can drive a gap between the two uncertainties. With an uncertainty gap that is consistent with direct estimates stemming from subjective income expectations, the model jointly explains three consumption inequality and insurance measures in US micro data that are not captured without the difference: (i) the cross-sectional variance of households’ consumption, (ii) the covariance of current consumption and income growth and (iii) the income-conditional mean of household consumption.

JEL Codes: E21, D31, D52.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania. 

Using the March Current Population Survey, I show that over the last two decades, married households in the United States received increasingly more public insurance against labor income risk, whereas the opposite was true for single households. To evaluate the welfare consequences of this trend, I perform a quantitative analysis. As a novel contribution, I expand the standard incomplete markets model à la Aiyagari (1994) to include two groups of households: married and single. The model allows for changes in the marital status of households and accounts for transition dynamics between steady states. I show that the divergent trends in public insurance have a significant detrimental effect on the welfare of both married and single households.

JEL Codes: D52, D60, E21, E62, H31.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania. 

This paper studies bank misconduct using a novel dataset on malpractice that resulted in conduct costs in a sample of 30 financial institutions during 2000-2016. It shows that misconduct has been prevalent over the sample period and that its intensity varies over the business cycle. Furthermore, the initiation of misconduct is related to bank remuneration schemes, increasing with CEO bonuses in periods of high economic growth and when bank leverage is high. To provide a possible explanation for the observed dynamics, the paper builds a theoretical model in which misconduct is linked to bank risk-taking. There, the implementation of profitable but risky projects requires more aggressive pay structures, in turn increasing managers’ incentives to engage in other activities that boost short-term returns. The findings have implications for regulation aimed at preventing malpractice in financial institutions.

JEL Codes: G21, G28.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania. 

From the bookkeeping perspective, the flipside of bank loan issuance is a simultaneous creation of a deposit in the borrower’s account. By the act of lending banks do not simply intermediate pre-accumulated real resources but rather create new financial resources (money in the form of deposits) and new purchasing power. Being a major driver behind money growth, bank credit directly fuels domestic demand and inflationary pressures and thus needs to be modelled as a monetary phenomenon rather than as a mere reallocation of real resources. To this end, we develop a simple DSGE model and show that the basic DSGE framework, representing an open flexible-price economy with savers and borrowers and a simple bank with an explicit balance sheet, can indeed capture the essence of a bank as a monetary institution. The theoretical model confirms that the financial system is highly elastic in a sense that banks can extend loans at will largely irrespective of pre-accumulated resources and without needing to raise nominal deposit rates or increase financing from abroad. Moreover, in our model, changes in bank credit do have an immediate impact on nominal incomes, domestic demand and real economic activity. Model results are highly relevant from the policy perspective because they explain the fundamental relationship between financial (credit) cycle and the business cycle (e.g. observed income growth can be a consequence of a credit boom) and also suggest that sound domestic banks can stimulate domestic demand and can effectively reduce the developing economy’s reliance on foreign financing. Notably, the model focuses on a small open economy – a member of a monetary union – which thus has no independent monetary policy. We calibrate the model to the Lithuanian data and perform a number of policy-relevant shock experiments.

JEL Codes: E30, E44, E51, G21.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania. 

The co-movement of US sovereign rates suggests a long-run common stochastic trend. Traditional cointegrated systems need to assume that interest rates are unit roots and thus imply non-stationary and non-mean-reverting dynamics. Based on recent econometric developments, we postulate and estimate a fractional cointegrated model (FCVAR) which allows for a mean-reverting stochastic trend. Our results point to the presence of such mean-reverting fractional cointegration among sovereign rates. The implied term premium is less volatile than the classic I(0) stationary and I(1) unit root models. Our analysis highlights the role of real factors (but not inflation) in shaping term premium dynamics. We further identify the dynamic effects of quantitative easing policies on our identified term premium. In contrast to the stationary-implied term premium, we find a significant term premium decline following these large-scale asset purchase programs.

JEL Codes: C2, C3, E4, G1.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

Currency unions are often modeled as homogeneous economies, although they are fundamentally different. The expectations that impact macroeconomic behavior in any given country are not the expectations of variables at the currency-union level but at the country level. We model these expectations with a behavioral reinforcement learning model. In our model, economic integration is of particular importance in determining whether economic behavior in a currency union is stable. Monetary policy alone is insufficient to guarantee stable economic behavior, as the central bank cannot conduct different monetary policies in different countries. These results are easily overlooked when modeling expectations as rational.

JEL Codes: E03, F45, E52, D84.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

Recent evidence suggests that credit booms and asset price bubbles may undermine economic growth even as they occur, regardless of whether a crisis follows, by crowding out investment in more productive, R&D-intensive industries. This paper incorporates Schumpeterian endogenous growth into a DSGE model with credit-constrained entrepreneurs to show how shocks affecting firms' access to credit can generate boom-bust cycles featuring large fluctuations in land prices, consumption, and investment. During the expansion, rising land prices tend to crowd out capital and (especially) R&D investment: in the long run, this results in lower productivity levels, which in turn implies lower levels of aggregate output and consumption. Moreover, higher initial loan-to-value ratios tend to be associated with larger macroeconomic fluctuations. A counter-cyclical LTV ratio targeting credit growth has relevant stabilization effects but brings about small gains in terms of long-run consumption levels, and thus of welfare.

JEL Codes: E22, E32, E44, O30, O40.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

The international diffusion of technology plays a key role in stimulating global growth and explaining co-movements of international equity returns. Existing empirical evidence suggests that countries are heterogeneous in their attitude toward innovation: Some countries rely more on technology adoption while other countries rely more on internal technology production. European countries that rely more on adoption are also typically characterized by lower fiscal policy flexibility and higher labor market rigidity. We develop a two-country model, in which both countries rely on R&D and adoption, to study the shortand long-run effects of aggregate technology and adoption probability shocks on economic growth in the presence of the aforementioned asymmetries. Our framework suggests that an increase in the ability to adopt technology from abroad stimulates future economic growth in the country that benefits from higher adoption rates but the beneficial effects also spread to the foreign country. Moreover, it helps to explain the differences in macro quantities and equity returns observed in the international data.

JEL Codes: E3, F3, F4, G12.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This paper studies the optimal long-run rate of inflation in a two-sector model of the Lithuanian economy with informal production and price rigidity in the regular sector. The government issues no debt and is committed to follow a balanced budget rule. The informal sector is unregulated and untaxed and its existence limits the government’s ability to collect revenues through fiscal policy. Such environment provides therefore the basis for quantifying the possible existence of a public finance motive for inflation. The main results can be summarized as follows: First, there is a strong heterogeneity in the optimal inflation rate which depends on the tax rate that is endogenously adjusted to keep the budget balanced. Inflation can be as high as 6.77% when the capital tax rate is endogenous, but when labor income taxes are adjusted optimal policy calls for a rate of deflation such that the nominal interest rate hits the zero lower bound. Second, the optimal inflation rate is a non-decreasing function of the size of the informal economy and, in most cases, there is a positive relationship between the two. Finally, substantial deviations from zero inflation are observed even in presence of a plausible degree of price rigidity.

JEL Codes: E26, E52, H26.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

We employ the recent Jordà et al. (2016) and Knoll et al. (2017) datasets to investigate the long-run relationship between house prices and credit volume, allowing for interest rate, real exchange rate and real gross domestic product (GDP). We refine the analysis using more recent data at the quarterly-level to define relevant co-integrating relationships across a number of European economies. Housing, GDP and credit cross-sectional averages are included in the analysis to detect potential spill-over effects. Empirical results indicate cross-country heterogeneities and an uneven feedback mechanism between credit and housing – the full loop is established only for several countries in the dataset. Important results relate to the statistical properties of the housing time series. Grouping countries for panel-like econometric exercises may lead to spurious regression results, poor inference and misleading policy implications. Short-run dynamics, compared to the long-run may often lead to contradicting policy advice if the order of integration of the house price series is not properly accounted for. Accounting for spatial patterns of house prices which cannot be attributed to global output shocks may provide useful insights into policy making.

JEL Codes: C21, E51, O18, R31.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This paper explores the spillover effects from increasing personal bankruptcy protection. Innovatively, the paper shows that the spillover effects can be influenced by the bank portfolio choice. Since a low level of personal bankruptcy protection keeps an insolvent individual liable until her debt is repaid in full, lender’s returns on mortgages are less uncertain than returns on other assets ceteris paribus. Risk-averse banks would prefer mortgages over other types of assets such as corporate loans. Corporate lending and thus equilibrium output would fall. In contrary to the popular view that creditor protection smooths credit provision and makes the allocation of resources more efficient, I show that in some cases a low level of personal bankruptcy protection can lead to aggregate consumption losses. Also I show that macroprudential policies (LTV ratios) can successfully complement higher personal bankruptcy protection in ensuring even higher welfare.

JEL Codes: E44, G11, G21, K35, R21.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

We study the general equilibrium implications of different fiscal policies on macroeconomic quantities, asset prices, and welfare by utilizing two endogenous growth models. The expanding variety model features only homogeneous innovations by entrants. The Schumpeterian growth model features heterogeneous innovations: “incremental” innovations by incumbents and “radical” innovations by entrants. The government levies taxes on labor income and corporate profits and supplies subsidies to consumption, capital investment, and investments in research and development by entrants and, if applicable, incumbents. With these models at hand, we provide new insights on the interplay of innovation dynamics and fiscal policy.

JEL Codes: E22, G12, H20, I30, O30.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

Expectations play a crucial role in modern macroeconomic models. We consider a New Keynesian framework under rational expectations and under a behavioral model of expectation formation. We show how the economy behaves in the alternative scenarios with a focus on inflation volatility. Contrary to the rational model, the behavioral model predicts that inflation volatility can be lowered if the central bank reacts to the output gap in addition to inflation. We test the opposing theoretical predictions in a learning-to-forecast experiment. The results support the behavioral model and the claim that output stabilization can lead to less volatile inflation.

JEL Codes: C90, E03, E52, D84.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This paper considers a variety of reaction functions in the context of real time data to analyse U.K. monetary policy under inflation targeting adopted in 1992. In order to deal with lack of current and future data in real time, we construct the forecasts of expected variables in the first step and use the constructed data for the estimations of contemporaneous- and forward-looking rules. Moreover, we employ the impulse-indicator saturation method to deal with the issue of outliers and therefore obtain robust estimates of policy parameters. Our results show that the robust characteristics of monetary policy during the inflation targeting regime are forward-looking and raising the interest rate by more than one-to-one to movements in inflation, thereby satisfying the Taylor principle.

JEL Codes: C22, C52, C53, E52, E58.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

Also published in the ECB Working Paper Series

We investigate the interactions across current account misalignments, Real Effective Exchange Rate misalignments and financial (or output) gaps within EU countries. We apply panel techniques, including a Bayesian panel VAR, to 27 EU members over the period 1994-2012. We find that, for the euro area, the reaction of current account misalignments to a shock in the Real Effective Exchange Rate misalignments is the largest and the financial gap can influence the current account misalignments more than the output gap. In non-euro area countries and euro periphery an increase in current account misalignments leads to a temporary increase in the Real Effective Exchange Rate misalignments, lowering competitiveness and thus amplifying current account fluctuations. For the core, a raise in the rate or an expansion of the financial gap may help in rebalancing the current account. In the CEE members, an increase in the Real Effective Exchange Rate misalignments may bring larger current account deficits in the medium-long run.

JEL Codes: F32, F31, C33.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

Space is important. In this paper we use the global financial crisis as an exogenous shock to the German labor market to elucidate the spatial nexus between crime and unemployment. Our contribution is twofold: first, we lay down a parsimonious spatial labor market model with search frictions, criminal opportunities, and, unlike earlier analyses, productivity shocks which link criminal engagement with employment status. Second, we seek empirical support using data on the 402 German regions and years 2009 - 2010, in a setting that not only allows for crime spatial multipliers but also circumvents reverse causality by exploiting exogenous changes in unemployment due to the crisis. As predicted by our theory, the destruction of the lowest productivity matches, measured by increases in unemployment rates, has a significant impact on pure property crime (housing burglary and theft of/from motor vehicles) and street crime. The analysis offers important implications for local government policy.

JEL Codes: C31, J64, K42, R10.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

Also published in the ECB Working Paper Series

In this paper we analyse the exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) in the euro area as a whole and for four euro area members - Germany, France, Italy and Spain. For that purpose we use Bayesian VARs with identification based on a combination of zero and sign restrictions. Our results emphasize that pass-through in the euro area is not constant over time - it may depend on a composition of economic shocks governing the exchange rate. Regarding the relative importance of individual shocks, it seems that pass-through is the strongest when the exchange rate movement is triggered by (relative) monetary policy shocks and the exchange rate shocks. Our shock-dependent measure of ERPT points to a large but volatile pass-through to import prices and overall very small pass-through to consumer inflation in the euro area.

JEL Codes: E31, F3, F41.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

Online appendix (727.1 KB download icon)

Motivated by the rise in capital flows to low-income countries (LICs), we examine the nature of these flows and the factors affecting foreign investors’ decision. Recognizing the presence of fixed investment costs, we analyze capital flows at both intensive and extensive margins. To fix ideas, we resort to the gravity literature for the estimating relationships which we embed into a two-tier econometric framework with cross-sectional dependence. Our main finding is that market entry costs are statistically and economically very detrimental to LICs. We also obtain the gravity-type relationship for the destination income unconditionally but not after conditioning on relevant variables, as well as establish labor productivity as a robust attractor of capital inflows.

JEL Codes: C33, C34, F21, F62, O16.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This paper proposes and tests a new source of time variation in real investment opportunities, namely long-run shocks to the productivity of the investment sector, to explain the joint behavior of macroeconomic quantities and asset prices. A two-sector general equilibrium model with long-run investment shocks and wage rigidities produces both positive co-movement among key macroeconomic variables and a sizable return volatility differential between the investment and consumption sector. Moreover, positive long-run investment shocks are associated with low marginal utility and thus command a positive risk premium. We test our model using data on sectoral TFP and find evidence in support of our theoretical predictions.

JEL Codes: E32, G12.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

Non-technical summary (23.7 KB download icon)

This empirical study considers the pass-through of key nominal exchange rates and commodity prices to consumer prices in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), taking into account the effect of idiosyncratic and common factors influencing prices. In order to do that, given the relatively short window of available quarterly observations (1999–2014), we choose heterogeneous panel frameworks and control for cross-sectional dependence. The exchange rate pass-through is found to be relatively high and rapid for CIS countries in the case of the nominal effective exchange rate, but not significant for the bilateral rate with the US dollar. We also show that global factors in combination with financial gaps and commodity prices are important. In the case of large rate swings, the exchange rate pass-through of the bilateral rate with the US dollar becomes significant and similar to that of the nominal effective exchange rate.

JEL Codes: C38, E31, F31.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

Non-technical summary (26.5 KB download icon)

In this paper, we develop a two-country monetary union new Keynesian general equilibrium model with housing and collateral constraints, to be calibrated for Lithuania and the rest of the euro area. Within this setting, and following the recent entrance of Lithuania in the EMU, the aim of this paper is twofold. First, we study how shocks are transmitted differently in the two regions, considering the recent common monetary policy. Then, we analyze how macroprudential policies should be conducted in Lithuania, in the context of the EMU. As a macroprudential tool, we propose a decentralized Taylortype rule for the LTV which responds to national deviations in output and house prices. We find that, given the housing market features in Lithuania, common shocks are transmitted more strongly in this country than in the rest of the euro area. In terms of macroprudential policies, results show that the optimal policy in Lithuania with respect to the euro area may have a different intensity and that it delivers substantial benefits in terms of financial stability.

JEL Codes: E32, E44, F36.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This paper builds a theoretical model that introduces frictional unemployment in a two-sector multi-worker heterogeneous firms model with a dynamic matching process. In doing so, we have a rich environment that combines product, labour, and international markets. A change in labour market policies (unemployment benefits and employment contingent subsidies) transforms the share of exporters and affects average productivity. Empirical evidence confirms a robust positive effect of employment subsidies on openness, little, if any, impact of subsidies and a positive effect of replacement rate on unemployment. Closure of equilibrium plays an important role to explain data facts about employment subsidies: using sectoral arbitrage condition, subsidies cease affecting unemployment and make openness grow, consistently with the empirical evidence. Unemployment benefits, on the other hand, make unemployment and openness rise, independently of sectoral reallocations. In addition, we find that unemployment benefits bear different policy implications with regards to international coordination than employment subsidies.

JEL Codes: E24, F12, F16.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

Southern Europe is currently experiencing a double-whammy: high levels of government debt coupled with a rapidly aging population. Thus, the consolidation of (pension) budgets seems inevitable. In this paper we examine the short- and long-run macroeconomic effects of public old-age pension reforms and other fiscal policies under conditions of population aging. To do so, we calibrate OGRE, a New Keynesian model with overlapping generations, unemployment and an underground sector to match annual data on Portugal and Spain. Our main finding is that a retirement-age increase is the least harmful policy with respect to long-run output. However, we raise some doubts about the feasibility of implementing this policy.

JEL Codes: E24, E26, H55, J11, J46.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

In this paper we present the structure of OGRE, a dynamic general equilib-rium model with overlapping generations, unemployment and a shadow economy. Based on a parametrized version of the model, we examine the impacts of aging and calculate multipliers of public pension and other fiscal policies. Also, we contrast macroeconomic reactions with pay-as-you-go and fully funded pension plans. Lastly, we highlight the role of unemployment and that of the underground sector in the framework.

JEL Codes: E24, E26, H55, J11, J46.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

The experimental literature on asset markets has provided many useful insights on the efficiency of market mechanisms. It is unclear whether these results carry over to bonds markets, however. An important feature of bond markets is the relationship between initial public offering (IPO) prices and the probability that the bond issuer will default. First, this probability affects the value of the bond and, therefore, the bond prices. Second, prices paid for the bonds in the IPO determine the bond issuer’s financing costs and, therefore, affect the probability that the bond issuer defaults. We develop a flexible bond market model that accounts for this two-way interaction and that is easily implemented in the laboratory. We examine how subjects price bonds in this setting and find that subjects learn to price bonds rather well after only a few repetitions (both during the IPO and while trading in the secondary market afterward). Bubbles in bond prices are only observed among inexperienced traders. The overall high degree of market efficiency that we find occurs in environments with both increasing and decreasing (equilibrium) fundamental values for bonds.

JEL Codes: C92, C90, D47, G12.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

Also published in the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Volume 78, Pages 118–148

This paper studies a two-country production economy with complete and frictionless financial markets and international trade in which competition in R&D leads to endogenous new firm creation and economic growth. Current monopolists (“incumbents”) and potential new firms (“entrants”) compete in developing patents domestically. These innovative firms use both consumption goods in their R&D technologies to capture international technological spillovers. In the model specifi- cations with technology spillover one obtains that (i) the cross-country correlation of consumption growth is lower than the one of output growth; (ii) net exports are negatively correlated with output; (iii) the model matches the high co-movement of stock returns across countries. Furthermore, heterogeneity in the R&D technology bundle home bias parameters for incumbents and entrants enables the model to replicate the empirically rather moderate correlation between the R&D innovation probabilities of incumbents and entrants within a country. Moreover, the model produces a positive value premium. Finally, the exchange rate volatility is decreasing in the amount of technology spillovers.

JEL Codes: E22, F31, G12, O30, O41.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This paper studies the link between demographic factors and labour shares as well as tries to answer the question whether population ageing is responsible for the global decline in labour shares. We found that the link depends on the elasticity of substitution between labour and capital as production factors. Given the empirical estimates of this parameter, we conclude that population ageing is not responsible for the global decline in labour shares. On the contrary, it reduces the speed of this decline.

JEL Codes: E25, C51, J14.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

Non-technical summary (6.1 KB download icon)

This paper presents an account of the monetary policy stance for euro area countries from 1999 to the beginning of the crisis in 2008. The analysis starts with the derivation of a synthetic index measuring the average tightness of monetary policy across euro area members. The index is constructed using pseudo-Taylor residuals, obtained from an estimated monetary policy rule for the whole euro area and country specific fundamentals. This measure is then decomposed to disentangle the role of inflation and fundamental economic dynamics. Results suggest that there were significant differences in monetary policy stance across euro area members over the period considered. Such differences are primarily driven by wedges in price dynamics, most of which are disconnected from real economic activity.

JEL Codes: E52, E58, E61.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

In this article we study the impact of real effective exchange rate misalignments, based on determinants, including different types of foreign capital inflows, on GDP growth in the EU. This can provide a useful contribution to understanding the causal link between inflows, real effective exchange rate disequilibria and GDP growth during both the boom and the crisis period. For this analysis, we use a panel of 27 EU countries for the period 1994–2012, with annual frequency.
We find that the core countries have been mostly undervalued from the crisis onwards, while the periphery (excluding Ireland) were overvalued starting from 2003–2004, as expected. Concerning the new Member States, these are persistently overvalued for the entire time span. The results seem to be generally driven by the inflows of banking loans more than by FDIs or portfolio investments.
In the second stage, we study the influence of exchange rate misalignments and volatilities on growth. We argue that the real effective exchange rate misalignments associated with the inflows have been a further cause for decline in GDP, in a long-run perspective, while they do not play a role in the short run. The exchange rate volatilities and the undervaluation dummy are not robust in affecting GDP growth, while spillovers and global factors seem to matter in all the specifications both in the short and long run.

JEL Codes: F31, F43, C23.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

The term ‘financialization’ describes the phenomenon that commodity contracts are traded for purely financial reasons and not for motives rooted in the real economy. Recently, financialization has been made responsible for causing adverse welfare effects especially for low-income and low-wealth agents, who have to spend a large share of their income for commodity consumption and cannot participate in financial markets. In this paper we study the effect of fi- nancial speculation on commodity prices in a heterogeneous agent production economy with an agricultural and an industrial producer, a financial speculator, and a commodity consumer. While access to financial markets is always beneficial for the participating agents, since it allows them to reduce their consumption volatility, it has a decisive effect with respect to overall welfare effects who can trade with whom (but not so much what types of instruments can be traded).

JEL Codes: E23, G12, G13, Q11, I30.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

In this paper we study the effect of a (standard) monetary policy shock in the euro area on the Lithuanian economy. For this purpose we employ a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model incorporating variables from both, the euro area and Lithuania. We identify the system using short-term zero restrictions. The model exhibits a block exogenous structure to account for the fact that Lithuania is a small economy and Lithuanian macro variables do not have a significant effect on the euro area variables. In general, we find that a monetary policy shock in the euro area has a stronger effect on the Lithuanian economy than it does on the euro area economy, though the effects are not significant, preventing firm conclusions. We further broaden our analysis employing a panel VAR model for the three Baltic states. This allows us to not only explore the time variation of the euro area monetary policy transmission in the Baltics, but also helps to verify our initial results. The effects are stronger when estimated using the panel VAR model.

JEL Codes: C32, C33, E52.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This paper provides an explanation as to why population ageing is associated with deflationary processes. For this reason we create an overlapping-generations model (OLG) with money created by credits (inside money) and intergenerational trade. In other words, we combine a neoclassical OLG model with post-Keynesian monetary theory. The model links demographic factors such as fertility rates and longevity to prices. We show that lower fertility rates lead to smaller demand for credits, and lower money creation, which in turn causes a decline in prices. Changes in longevity affect prices through real savings and the capital market. Furthermore, a few links between interest rates and inflation are addressed; they arise in the general equilibrium and are not thoroughly discussed in literature. Long-run results are derived analytically; short-run dynamics are simulated numerically.

JEL Codes: E12, E31, E41, J10.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

Based on survey data covering 6,429 firms in 10 Central and Eastern European countries we examine the impact of the banking sector environment, as well as the institutional and regulatory environment, on credit constrained firms. We find that small and foreign-owned firms are less likely to demand credit compared to audited and innovative firms. On the other hand, small, medium, publicly listed, sole proprietorship and foreign-owned firms had a higher probability of being credit constrained in 2008-2009 than in 2012-2014. The banking sector's environment analysis reveals that firms operating in more concentrated banking markets are less likely to be credit constrained. However, higher capital requirements, increased levels of loan loss reserves and a higher presence of foreign banks have a negative impact on the availability of bank credit. The evaluation of the institutional and regulatory environment in which firms operate shows that credit information sharing is negatively correlated with access to credit. Furthermore, we show that banking sector contestability can mitigate this negative effect. Finally, we find that in a better credit information sharing environment, foreign banks are more likely to provide credit.

JEL Codes: E51, G21, F34, L10.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

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Recent turbulent times have once again demonstrated how important flexible product and labour markets are to dampen the effects of adverse economic shocks. A number of labour market reforms have been implemented to enhance economic resilience and flexibility. However, accounting for the efficacy of policy interventions requires going beyond national boundaries and evaluating international interactions and global interdependencies, which may strengthen or weaken economic responses. Concentrating on open European economies, this paper deals with labour market institutions and structural reforms in a general equilibrium framework, which allows to analyse the intricate connections between labour policy choices and international trade (openness), paying special attention to labour market policy shocks. Amid discussions about a fiscal union in Europe, we empirically demonstrate that labour market policies can have positive and negative spillovers to trading partners, thereby calling for coordinated policies within a trading bloc. We answer three types of questions: what would have happened had all economies implemented structural labour market reforms simultaneously? How heterogeneous are responses in a single economy to shocks conducted in every other country? Relatedly, how heterogeneous are responses by all economies to a reform in one given economy?

JEL Codes: C32, C33, E24, F12, F16.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

Following the IMF CGER methodology, we conduct an assessment of the current account and price competitiveness of the Central Eastern European Countries, CEECs, which joined the EU between 2004 and 2014. We present results for a method called the “Macroeconomic Balance (MB) approach” which provides a measure of current account equilibrium based on its determinants together with misalignments in the real effective exchange rates. We believe that a more refined analysis of the misalignments may be of some use for the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure (MIP). This is especially useful for these countries which went through a transition phase and boom/bust periods since their independence. This can have influenced their performances and a judgement based on their own characteristics may be needed.
We use a panel setup of 11 EU new member states (Croatia is included) over the period 1994-2012 in static and dynamic frameworks, also controlling for the presence of cross-sectional dependence, checking specifically for the role of exchange rate regimes, capital flows and global factors.
We find that the estimated coefficients for the determinants are in line with the expectations. Moreover, the foreign capital flows, the oil balance and relative output growth seem to play a crucial role in explaining the current account. Some global factors like shocks in oil prices or supply might have played a role in worsening, the current account balance of the CEECs. Having a pegged exchange rate regime (or being part of the euro zone) affects the current account positively. The real effective exchange rates behave in line with the current account gaps, which experience a clear cyclical behaviour. The CAs and REERs are getting close to equilibria in 2012 in most of the countries. The rebalancing is completed for some countries less misaligned in the past like Poland and Czech Republic, but also in the case of Lithuania. When the Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) are introduced as a determinant for these countries, the misalignments are larger in the boom periods (positive misalignments); while the negative misalignments are smaller in magnitude.

JEL Codes: F31, F32, C23.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

The trade-off between bank competition and financial stability has always been a widely and controversial issue, both among policymakers and academics. This paper empirically re-investigates the relationship between competition and bank risk across a sample of 54 European listed banks over the period 2004-2013. However, in contrast to most extant literature, we consider both individual and systemic dimension of risk. Bank-individual risk is measured by the Z-score and the distance-to-default, while we consider the SRISK as a proxy for bank systemic risk. Using the Lerner index as an inverse measure of competition and after controlling for a variety of bank-specific and macroeconomic factors, our results suggest that competition encourages bank risk-taking and then increases individual bank fragility. This result is in line with the traditional “competition-fragility” view. Our most important findings concern the relationship between competition and systemic risk. Indeed, contrary to our previous results, we find that competition enhances financial stability by decreasing systemic risk. This result can be explained by the fact that weak competition tends to increase the correlation in the risk-taking behavior of banks.

JEL Codes: G21, G28, G32, L51.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

Exchange rate assessment is becoming increasingly relevant for economic surveillance in the European Union (EU). The persistence of different wage, price and productivity dynamics among the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) countries or EU members with a fixed exchange regime with the euro, coupled with the impossibility of correcting competitiveness differentials via the adjustment of nominal rates, have resulted in divergent dynamics in Real Effective Exchange Rates. This paper explores the role of economic fundamentals, included in the transfer effect theory, in explaining medium/long-run movements in the Real Effective Exchange Rates in the EU over the period 1994–2012 by using heterogeneous, co-integrated panel frameworks in static and dynamic terms. In addition, the paper provides an analysis of the misalignments of the rate for each member state based on the “equilibrium” measure calculated from the permanent component of the fundamentals (the so-called Behavioural Effective Exchange Rate).
We find that the coefficients of the determinants are extremely different across groups in magnitude and sometimes in sign as well and the transfer theory does not hold for periphery and the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs). The relative importance of the transfer variable and the Balassa-Samuelson measure are crucial for the asymmetries. The resulting misalignments in EU28 are huge and the patterns diverge significantly across groups. The core countries have been undervalued for almost the whole period, which entails from an important increase in competitiveness for those countries. Instead the periphery has experienced high rates, especially in Portugal. In addition, the behaviour of CEECs is also driven, as expected, by the catching-up process and the criteria to the accession to the EU. The misalignments in this case are still extremely wide and reflect these phenomena.

JEL Codes: F31, C23.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

The paper presents a short-term Lithuanian inflation forecasting model for predicting monthly inflation of 5 main HICP subgroups. We model inflation employing a set of univariate equations, which are mainly based on firms’ mark-up pricing. We make use of disaggregate HICP data, consisting of 92 price series, which naturally evokes discussion of potential pros and cons of forecasting disaggregate series vs. forecasting an aggregate. Besides exploring potential gains of using disaggregate data, we are also interested in the international commodity prices transmission mechanism, which we implement employing a distributed lag model. To examine the performance of model’s forecasts, we employ a recursive pseudo real-time out-of–sample forecasting exercise, generating inflation forecasts up to 15 months ahead. We find that our suggested set of univariate equations produce more accurate forecasts than the competing factor model, VARX model and various benchmark models for all 5 HICP subgroups.

JEL Codes: C52, C53, E37.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

In this paper, we analyze how borrower characteristics influence the choice between the short-term fixed-rate mortgage (STFRM) and the long-term fixed-rate mortgage (LTFRM) types in an emerging market. We use the national Survey of Households with Housing Loans conducted by the Bank of Lithuania between 2009 and 2012. This paper is the first to empirically test the findings of Campbell and Cocco in an emerging market. Following the model of Campbell and Cocco (2003), our analysis focuses on the interaction of demand and supply. We focus on the contract outcome; we do not specify who initiated such outcome – the household or the mortgage provider. We supplement the findings of previous literature by testing the model among financially constrained households in a different economic and institutional setting; that is, in Lithuania.
We define financial constraints of a household in multiple ways: high mortgage payment-toincome ratio, low residual income, high loan-to-value ratio, absence of savings, existence of other obligations, a single breadwinner in the household, and the existence of dependants in the household. Estimates based on these measures indicate that constrained households are more likely to choose a safer, but more expensive, long-term interest rate mortgage. Our results are in line with Campbell and Cocco’s (2003) suggestion that, when borrowing constraints are binding, financially constrained households should choose a long-term interest rate mortgage. Our results contradict the empirical evidence of Coulibaly and Li (2009), of Damen and Buyst (2013), of Ehrmann and Ziegelmeyer (2013), and of Hullgren and Söderberg (2013) that financially constrained households prefer short-term interest rate mortgages. We argue that the difference arises because of institutional features.
Our study adds to existing literature by showing that, in the world where borrowing constraints are binding, financially constrained households have the safer mortgage type that reduces consumption shock and liquidity risks. 

This paper presents a simple condition for optimal asymmetric labour (capital) taxation/subsidization in a two-sector model with logarithmic utilities and Cobb-Douglas production functions, linked to demographic factors: fertility rate and longevity. The paper shows that depending on parameter values, it may be optimal to tax or subsidize labour in the sectors. If it is optimal to tax the investment-goods sector, a Pareto-improving tax reform is possible. Larger output elasticities of capital in the sectors reduce the possibilities of a Pareto-improving reform, while population ageing in terms of higher longevity enhances the possibilities of welfare improvement for all generations. Fertility rates do not affect optimal taxation.

JEL Codes: E62, H21, J10.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

The paper provides estimates for the New Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC) in Lithuania. The paper considers the baseline and hybrid NKPC, the latter accounting for inflation inertia, under the closed and open economy frameworks. The estimates highlight the importance of expected and lagged inflation in the inflation formation process. The role of real marginal cost is found to be limited in shaping the dynamics of inflation. The study yields estimates for the underlying characteristics of pricing behaviour in Lithuania. The estimates show that the price duration stands at around 2.2–2.8 quarters, while the fraction of firms that adjust prices in a backward looking way amounts to around one third.

JEL Codes: D40, E30.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This paper focuses on short-term Lithuanian GDP forecasting using a large monthly dataset. The forecasting accuracy of various factor model specifications is assessed using the out-of-sample forecasting exercise. It is argued that factor extraction by using a simple principal components method might lead to a loss of important information related GDP forecasting, therefore, other methods should be also considered. Performance of several factor models, which relate the factor extraction step to GDP forecasting, was tested. The effect of using weighted principal components model, with weights depending on variables’ absolute correlation with GDP, was explored in greater detail. Although factor models performed better than naive benchmark forecast for GDP nowcasting and 1 quarter ahead forecasting, we were unable to set up the ranking among different factor model specifications. We also find that a small scale factor model with 5 variables (which could be regarded as the most important monthly variables for GDP nowcasting) is able to nowcast GDP better than models with a full data set of 52 variables, which might indicate that for the case of the Lithuanian economy, a smaller scale factor models may be more suitable.

JEL Codes: C22, E37.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This paper explores the behavior of profits in the four largest euro area countries (Germany, France, Italy and Spain) and the euro area as a whole, while at the same time considering three main sectors (manufacturing, construction and services) in each economy over the period 1988–2010. The paper presents stylized facts about profit developments and, applying a vector autoregressive modeling framework, discusses the sensitivity of profits to four distinctive structural shocks (a demand shock, an employment shock, a wage and price mark-up shocks). In addition, it provides the shock decomposition of historical developments in profits across countries and sectors.

JEL Codes: C32, E23, E25.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

The paper examines price setting in Lithuania based on ad hoc survey of the Bank of Lithuania “On Price and Wage Setting”. The study extends the survey data analysis presented in Virbickas (2009). The paper points to the incidence of both the time-dependent and the state-dependent price reviewing policies used by the investigated firms, though the price reviewing practices appear to be somewhat tilted to the state-dependent pricing. Analysis provides evidence on the reasons for upward and downward stickiness of prices. Delayed price adjustment is found to be mostly related to the price adjustment stage rather than the price reviewing stage. The most momentous explanations for not adjusting prices upwards or downwards rest on the cost-based pricing and the explicit contracts. The study finds an asymmetric influence of some of the price factors. In particular, the cost factors are found to be decisive in invoking the price increase rather than the price decrease.

JEL Codes: D40, E30.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

In this paper we analyse determinants of the recent boom-and-bust cycle of the Lithuanian economy with the help of a medium-sized macroeconometric model that incorporates a functional financial block. Special emphasis is put on the role of credit market conditions during the overheating episode. We quantitatively estimate the impact of credit conditions and externally funded bank lending on macroeconomic developments. There is evidence that easy credit conditions and active credit expansion contributed moderately to real economic growth but significantly added to overheating pressures by pushing up real estate prices, encouraging concentration of labour and capital into procyclical sectors and increasing private sector’s debt burden. During the boom episode buoyant external environment provided strong background for export-led growth, which was later strongly affected by temporary foreign trade collapse at the outset of the economic crisis. Model results also suggest that government’s discretionary fiscal policies may have contributed to economic overheating and severity of the ensuing crisis by not adopting sufficiently prudent fiscal stance during the boom episode. The model confirms that more favourable interest rate environment and accommodating fiscal policies are important for providing a temporary relief for the crisis-stricken economy but deep structural transformation of the economy is needed for the sustainable recovery to take hold.

JEL Codes: E10, E17, E37, E51.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

In view of the increasing use of Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models in the macroeconomic projections and the policy process, this paper examines, both conceptually and empirically, alternative notions of potential output within DSGE models. Furthermore, it provides historical estimates of potential output/output gaps on the basis of selected DSGE models developed by the European System of Central Banks’ staff. These estimates are compared to the corresponding estimates obtained applying more traditional methods. Finally, the paper assesses the usefulness of the DSGE model-based output gaps for gauging inflationary pressures.

JEL Codes: E32, E37, E52.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

The new generation of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models seems particularly suited for conducting scenario analysis. These models formalise the behaviour of economic agents on the basis of explicit micro-foundations. As a result, they appear less prone to the Lucas critique than traditional macroeconometric models. DSGE models provide researchers with powerful tools, which allow for the designing of a broad range of scenarios and tackling a large range of issues, offering at the same time an appealing structural interpretation of the scenario specification and simulation results. The paper provides illustrations on some of the modelling issues that often arise when implementing scenarios using DSGE models in the context of projection exercises or policy analysis. These issues reflect the sensitivity of DSGE model-based analysis to scenario assumptions, which in more traditional models are apparently less critical, such as, for example, scenario event anticipation and duration, treatment of monetary and fiscal policy rules.

JEL Codes: E32, E52, E62, E37.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This paper investigates the wage and price setting behaviour of Lithuanian firms on the basis of an ad hoc survey “On Price and Wage Setting” undertaken by the Bank of Lithuania. The paper provides survey evidence on the frequency of wage and price changes. The frequency of wage changes turns out to be higher in firms that apply collective pay agreements, while the frequency of price changes appears to be positively affected by the market competition. Labour cost share is not found to be significant in making the impact on the frequency of price changes. This paper also investigates the role of certain technological, institutional and other factors in shaping firms’ responses to a negative demand shock, an intermediate input cost shock and a wage shock. A higher labour cost share is found to increase the likelihood of a price increase following a wage shock. Flexible wage components mitigate firms’ responses to a slowdown in demand and an intermediate input cost increase. The behaviour of firms following the investigated shocks is also affected by the level of competition. The role of collective pay agreements appears to be rather limited in shaping responses of firms to the shocks.

JEL Codes: D40, J30.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

In this paper we propose an artificial stock market model based on interaction of heterogeneous agents whose forward-looking behaviour is driven by the reinforcement learning algorithm combined with some evolutionary selection mechanism. We use the model for the analysis of market self-regulation abilities, market efficiency and determinants of emergent properties of the financial market. Distinctive and novel features of the model include strong emphasis on the economic content of individual decision making, application of the Q-learning algorithm for driving individual behaviour, and rich market setup.

JEL Codes: G10, G11, G14.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This paper presents preliminary estimates of the euro area flexible-price output gap using the estimated version of the New Area-Wide Model (NAWM) – a large-scale DSGE model of the euro area developed and maintained by ECB staff. Following a definition of the flexible-price output gap frequently used in the literature, we show that the NAWM-based measure may at times differ quite considerably from more traditional output gap measures and may display fluctuations of larger amplitude. The dynamics of flexible-price output is mainly driven by shocks to technology, whereas fluctuations in the output gap can be attributed equally to supply and demand shocks. We analyse how robust this output gap estimate is with respect to new incoming data and compare it’s inflation forecast performance with alternative measures.

JEL Codes: C11, C32, E31, E32.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

The goal of this paper is to examine the dynamic effects of fiscal instruments in Lithuania on the economy and welfare. In the analysis, a calibrated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model for Lithuania is employed. The calculation implies that 9-16 percent of tax cuts are self-financing in the long run. It suggests that the slope of Laffer curve in Lithuanian economy is rather flat. The analysis of effects of different tax cuts shows that the impact of 1 percentage point permanent decrease in statutory tax rate on gross domestic product is very small (within the range of –0.15 through 0.15 percent in all cases). The estimated government expenditure multiplier has a different sign in the long run when various financing sources are used to balance the government budget.

JEL Codes: E62, H24, H25.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

In this paper we provide a brief introduction to the literature on agent-based financial modelling and, more specifically, artificial stock market modelling. In the selective literature review two broad categories of artificial stock market models are discussed: models based on hard-wired rules and models with learning and systemic adaptation. The paper discusses pros and cons of agent-based financial modelling as opposed to the standard representative-agent approach. We advocate the need for the proper account of market complexity, agent heterogeneity, bounded rationality and adaptive (though not simplistic) expectations in financial modelling. We also argue that intelligent adaptation in highly uncertain environment is key to understanding actual financial market behaviour and we resort to a specific area of artificial intelligence theory, namely reinforcement learning, as one plausible and economically appealing algorithm of adaptation and learning.

JEL Codes: G10, G11, G14, Y20.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

In this paper, the economic impact of the 2006–2008 personal income tax (PIT) reform in Lithuania is analyzed applying model-based simulations. We find that the undertaken PIT reform is unsustainable as it leads to permanent government budget deficits and ever increasing public debt. This result holds even allowing for endogenous reduction in tax evasion. After introducing permanent compensatory fiscal measures ensuring long-term sustainability of the PIT reduction, we demonstrate that the lower PIT produces higher output and lower prices in the long run. Higher domestic spending is supported by higher employment and after-tax wages. Moreover, following a reduction in the marginal production costs, producer prices fall enhancing economy’s international competitiveness and boosting domestic exports. Pre-announcement of the tax reform implies early macroeconomic reaction, and thus in most cases smoother adjustment of the economy to the tax change.

JEL Codes: E62, H24, H25, H26.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.

This paper evaluates different models for the short-term forecasting of real GDP growth in ten selected European countries and the euro area as a whole. Purely quarterly models are compared with models designed to exploit early releases of monthly indicators for the nowcast and forecast of quarterly GDP growth. Amongst the latter, we consider small bridge equations and forecast equations in which the bridging between monthly and quarterly data is achieved through a regression on factors extracted from large monthly datasets. The forecasting exercise is performed in a simulated real-time context, which takes account of publication lags in the individual series. In general, we find that models that exploit monthly information outperform models that use purely quarterly data and, amongst the former, factor models perform best. 

JEL Codes: E37, C53. 

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Bank of Lithuania.