VAR-ing Monetary Policy in Poland

Abstract

The paper makes an attempt to estimate the effects of monetary policy shocks on the economy. We estimate four variables VAR system with industrial production, CPI, money market rate and exchange rate. Two policy indicators: money market interest rate and exchange rate are assumed to be contemporaneously influenced by monetary policy shocks. The identification of the shocks is obtained by assigning weights to these two variables in the short run monetary condition index. The response functions generated by the small VAR system have reasonable shapes and economic interpretations: monetary policy shock seems to affect inflation and output relatively quickly. Granger causality tests reveals that although money market rate has limited predictive power in forecasting industrial production and CPI, the predictive power of exchange rate is very significant for the CPI. Decomposition of variance of the forecasted variables is consistent with these results: monetary policy shocks have significant contribution to the forecast variance of CPI.