Publications

Recently, there has been a surge of interest in policies that target climate change. This paper begins by discussing why policymakers, and central banks in particular, should be concerned about climate change, and goes on to argue why carbon pricing is an appropriate political instrument to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The paper details two categories of carbon pricing, namely carbon taxation and the introduction of Emission Trading Systems (ETSs), illustrating why a carbon tax is the more efficient instrument. Popular models for optimal carbon taxation and implications of carbon taxation are discussed. The paper concludes with recommendations to policymakers, which include advocacy of differentiated rather than uniform carbon taxation, phased-in carbon taxation instead of a blanket approach, introduction of the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), and Green Quantitative Easing (QE).

Keywords: carbon taxation, climate change, green QE.

JEL Codes: Q54, Q58, H23, E51, E62

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

This paper studies the drivers of wage growth in Lithuania over the period 2008-2020. Using administrative data as well as aggregate measures reflecting the state of the economy, we estimate an extended version of a wage Phillips curve. Our reducedform estimates indicate that nominal wage growth was tightly linked to labor market fluctuation over this period. Labor productivity, changes in the minimum wage, and the composition of employment also contributed to wage dynamics. However, we find little evidence that past inflation has been a push factor. To understand the underlying economic primitives behind our findings, we estimate a structural Bayesian autoregressive model. Our structural analysis reveals a significant contribution from aggregate supply shocks, reflecting a stronger relationship between productivity and wages than implied by our reduced-form estimates. Moreover, the historical decomposition reveals that since 2013, wages grew over and above productivity due to rising aggregate demand and labor market disturbances.

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.

In carrying out, within its competence, risk-based supervision of FMPs, the Bank of Lithuania notes that FMPs do not always pay appropriate attention to the implementation of international sanctions and restrictive measures and that FMPs face difficulties in the implementation of international sanctions and restrictive measures in practice. In this Review of the Implementation of International Sanctions in Financial Institutions (hereinafter – the Review), the Bank of Lithuania provides key insights into the measures taken by FMPs to implement international sanctions and restrictive measures.

The Review is based on the provisions of legal acts and good practices of the EU and the Republic of Lithuania, Analysis of the International Sanctions Screening Systems conducted by the Bank of Lithuania over 20 FMPs (banks, electronic money institutions, payment institutions) in December 2021–May 2022 (hereinafter – the Analysis), contains examples of good practice identified during the Analysis and cases where the measures applied to implement international sanctions need to be improved.

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.