The goal of this paper is to identify and compare the most important changes in the structure of the Czech economy, as a small open economy with independent monetary policy, the Slovak economy, as a small open economy that entered monetary union, and the economy of the euro area, which has a common monetary policy, during the turbulent period of the Great Recession, the subsequent anaemic recovery and recent disinflationary period. Structural changes are identified with the help of nonlinear dynamic stochastic models of general equilibrium with time-varying parameters. The model parameters are estimated using Bayesian methods and a nonlinear particle filter. The results confirm the similarity of the Czech and Slovak economies and show that in certain respects the structure of the Czech economy might be closer to that of the euro area than that of Slovakia. The time-varying estimates reveal many similarities between the parameter changes in the Czech economy and those in the euro area. In Slovakia, the situation during the Great Recession was dominated by the country’s adoption of the euro, which caused large deviations in its Calvo parameters.

In order to determine which specification provides better fit of the data, this paper presents several specifications of a closed economy DSGE model with nominal rigidities. The goal of this paper is to find out whether some characteristics widely used in New Keynesian DSGE models, such as habit formation in consumption, price indexation and wage indexation, provide better fit of the macroeconomic data. Model specifications are estimated on the data of the US economy and Euro Area 12 economy, using Bayesian techniques, particularly the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm (using Dynare toolbox for Matlab). The data fit measure is a Bayes factor calculated from marginal likelihoods, acquired from Bayesian estimation. Results suggest that including habit formation in consumption significantly improves the empirical data fit of the model, whereas including partial price indexation and partial wage indexation does not improve the empirical data fit of the model. Variants with full price indexation and full wage indexation were the worst ones concerning their data fit.

Central bank independence (CBI) has long been considered a key aspect of effective monetary policy, as it allows central banks to make decisions free from political interference. However, the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 and recent events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and armed conflict in Ukraine have threatened CBI. This article aims to examine the impact of these events on CBI in OECD member countries, both on a de jure and de facto level, using a variety of indicators. The results suggest that CBI has largely remained unchanged in most countries, but there is disturbing evidence of political interference in CBI in the Republic of Türkiye.

(JEL C13, C32, El2, E17)

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