https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3679-2962
This issue of Eastern European Economics continues to deliver the papers from the third international conference “Economic Turmoil in Contemporary Europe” organized by the Department of Econometrics at Lazarski University in Warsaw. The selection of papers concerns monetary policy and business cycle transmission mechanisms in the Euro Area and Eastern Europe.
Jakub Janus from the Cracow University of Economics investigates volatility spillovers resulting from European Central Bank interventions on monetary and financial conditions in Poland in his paper entitled “Is ECB Rocking the Boat? Unconventional Monetary Policy in the EMU and Volatility Spillovers to Poland.” He first applies a GARCH model with dynamic conditional correlations to the monetary time series of Poland and then performs an event study analysis using actions and policy announcements of the European Central Bank over the 2008–2018 period. The author reports that there is very little evidence of volatility spillovers to Poland with the exception of long-run interest rates after the European Central Bank decreased the interest rate in 2008, as well as from the negative interest rate policy of 2014.
Krzysztof Beck from Lazarski University in Warsaw analyzes the strength of business cycle transmission mechanisms in the European Union in his paper entitled “Decoupling after the Crisis: Western and Eastern Business Cycles in the European Union.” The author applies Bayesian Dynamic Latent Factor models for time series of real GDP growth and inflation for the sample of the Euro area and Eastern European countries over the 2000–2018 period. Variance decomposition is performed in order to assess the relative importance of the European, regional and country factors. The results show two distinct business cycles in Eastern and Western Europe. Moreover, the author shows that business cycles of Eastern European countries have been steadily converging, while eurozone countries experienced decoupling.
On behalf of the Organizing Committee, I would like to express my gratitude to all the participants of the conference, submitting authors, reviewers, the staff of the Department of Econometric at Lazarski University in Warsaw, and especially to Iana Okhrimenko. Last but not least, I would like to give my special thanks to Professor Josef C. Brada for all the help with preparing this issue.