There is a traditional view that central banks should hold enough gold in their reserves to be considered financially secure and keep low inflation. However, after the fall of the Bretton-Woods system, many central banks have been decreasing its gold reserves by converting gold into other assets and still they do not experience high inflation. This thesis aims to answer the question if gold reserves of central banks indeed positively affect price stability. We use the panel data for 110 countries for the period from 2000 to 2016. We find that there is a significant negative effect of central banks' gold reserves on inflation but only if we control the proxy variables for the financial strength of central banks. Furthermore, the significance holds only for the inflation-targeting countries, there are no significant effects for the whole data sample. JEL Classification: E31, E52, E58, F41, G11, G21 Keywords: Gold reserves, Central Banks, Inflation rate, Price Stability Author's e-mail: 73099909@fsv.cuni.cz Supervisor's e-mail: tomas.havranek@fsv.cuni.cz

This thesis deals with the realization of inflation targeting in the Slovak and the Czech Republic, and compares successfulness in fulfilling of inflation target. It is divided into three chapters. The first chapter characterizes monetary policy in general and two transmission mechanisms used in both countries. The next chapter is concerned with the practical application of monetary transmission mechanism after the monetary separation. Problems connected with the realization of this monetary policy regime that led to the change in the transmission mechanism in both central banks are also mentioned. In the last chapter there is the comparison of conditions in Slovakia and the Czech Republic during the implementation and application inflation targeting. We also compare trend in the actual and target inflation rate, and describe changes in the key interest rates of both national banks as a result of it.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how wealth inequality alters when macroeconomic factors such as housing price index, inflation rate, and minimum wage change. In the theoretical part, the potential connection between some macroeconomic factors and wealth inequality is described through the link of the Lorenz Curve and Pareto distribution. In the empirical part, we analyze the development of wealth inequality in 21 countries from the European Union from 2004 to 2015. The study presents significant evidence that the housing price index is negatively correlated with wealth inequality while similar conclusions cannot be made regarding inflation rate and minimum wage. In this paper, the Gini index is used as a proxy for wealth inequality.

Magister Commercii - MCom (Economics) / Described by Mohr (2008:1) as "one of the most hotly debated economic issues in South Africa", the inflation rate is underpinned by its impact on the average South African. A rapid increase in the cost of goods and services could have devastating consequences on the both the growth and development of the country, making it an imperative to effectively manage a change in general prices. The SARB applies an Inflation Targeting (IT) framework to manage the inflation rate and the thesis will interrogate the applicability of this framework within a low growth environment. More specifically, the thesis will ask whether it is prudent to increase the interest rate in a low growth environment. The thesis will employ a mixed research method, namely, a qualitative and quantitative method. However, the qualitative method will be the primary research method and the conclusions derived thereof will be tested within a qualitative model. The qualitative method will take the form of historical narrative which is designed to investigate the behaviour of the inflation rate at a micro level. The choice of this qualitative historical narrative derives from the inconclusive nature of the existing empirical quantitative studies and the resulting lack of a consensus on the effectiveness of the IT framework. This lack of consensus necessitated the use of a different approach to interrogate the IT framework hence the application of the qualitative historical narrative. The narrative will be primarily derived from the economic reports and data of the main authority on South Africa's monetary policy, the South Africa Reserve Bank (SARB). The narrative will also utilise the economic reports and data from reputable sources such as Statistics South Africa, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the European Central Bank (ECB), the US Federal Reserve System, and the People's Bank of China (PBC).

This dissertation includes two chapters in the field of international finances about foreign exchange rate predictability and testing purchase power parity. In each chapter, we build the theory, methodology, and the empirical results to present the paper¡¦s construction. The first chapter, we studies whether the pure price inflation rate which is extracted from stock return can help us to test the relative of purchasing power parity in where Asian countries include Malaysia, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Singapore against the United States. The paper of Chowdhry et al. (2005) argue that relative PPP may not hold for the official price inflation rates which is constructed from consumer price indices, since relative price changes and other frictions cause price to be sticky. Thus, they use the Fisher equation and Fama-French three factors elaborately to build up a model on the nominal return of real risk-free asset to extract the pure price inflation rates. Their argument is supported in the case of Japan, Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom. We are interested in the case of some Asian countries. So, this chapter, we extend the model and methodology of Chowdhry et al. (2005) to test the relative PPP for Asian countries. If our empirical evidence is firmly supported, it will be a strongly reconfirmed the elaborated idea of Chowdhry et al. (2005). In our study, the PPP rule is not supported for Asian countries since joint null hypothesis of a=0 and b=1 are rejected at all horizons except Taiwan at monthly horizon. The testing results by constrained seeming unrelated regression (SUR) and system equation in pooled data are similar to the tests of country-by-country. Therefore, we apply the methods of panel unite root from Im et al. (2003), Maddala and Wu (1999), and Pesaran (2007) to test the PPP doctrine, and it is strongly supported PPP for Asian countries. The second chapter, we extract the estimated data of pure price inflation by Chowdhry et al. (2005), and use the data to build up a nonlinear STR (smooth transition autoregressive) model by Granger and Teräsvirta (1993), then compare the performance of linear or nonlinear model of exchange rate predictability with random walk model in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Germany. This study has presented evidences that the extracted inflation rates offer a good predictability on the prediction of exchange rate for the United Kingdom and Germany. Those extracted data in which are calculated from the industry portfolio returns of stock market. The issue of series correlation in regression error does matter the estimated coefficients £]k, thus we estimate the simulation of Gaussian bootstrap distribution for testing variables with Newey West standard deviation in regression estimate. The empirical evidences show that the PPP doctrine affects the predictability performance of exchange rate change by the extracted inflation rates.

This thesis analyzed and estimated the impact of the March 1, 2018 loan to income amortization requirement on residential real estate prices in Sweden. A four variables vector autoregressive model (VAR) was used to study the relationships between residential real estate prices, GDP, real mortgage rate and consumer price index over a time period from 2005 to 2017. First, a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model was used to test how a structural innovation in the error term for real mortgage rate affected residential real estate prices. Secondly, an unconditional forecast from our reduced VAR was produced to estimate post 2017 price growth of the Swedish housing market. The impulse response function results stand in contradiction to economic intuition i.e. the price puzzle problem. The unconditional forecast indicates that the housing market will enter a period with slower price growth post 2017, which are in line with previous research. This thesis vector autoregressive model can give meaningful results with regard to trend forecasts but with regard to precise statements as anticipating drastic price depreciation, it falls short. We recommend the use of reduced VAR forecasting with regard to the Swedish housing market.

Unemployment amongst Swedish citizens is higher within the group which falls under the designation foreign-born. The aim of this thesis is to examine which municipal factors that can explain the differences in unemployment amongst foreign-born relative to native born.The empirical models are examined with both cross-sectional data for the year of 2010 and panel data for the years of 2002-2012. The examination is implemented through a linear regression analysis of the type Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Fixed Effect regressions. A theory section will be presented where the theory on Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate (NAIRU), theories on discrimination and country-specific human capital are illustrated. The result from the cross-sectional data shows that the amount of foreign-born, the level of foreign-born immigrated from Nordic countries have a significant negative effect on unemployment amongst foreign-born. The general unemployment shows a significant positive effect on the unemployment amongst foreign-born. The result from the panel data however shows that the acceptance rate in Swedish for immigrants (SFI) and the highest level for tertiary education also have a significant negative effect on unemployment amongst foreign born. According to the theory of country-specific human capital, an increase in languageskills and education will increase the individual’s human capital and productivity, hencedecrease unemployment amongst foreign-born. This theory also indicates that an increase in the level of foreign-born immigrated from Nordic countries has a lower “cultural distance”,hence easier to integrate into the Swedish labor market. Previous research indicates that an increase of the amount of foreign-born can decrease the unemployment amongst this group through an expansion of social network and employer contacts. According to the theory of NAIRU, the level of equilibrium unemployment is affected by changes in the composition ofthe workforce, hence should affect the unemployment amongst foreign-born in the corresponding direction. This indicates that the integration policy is of importance to bring down the level of NAIRU. / Arbetslöshet är ett omtalat fenomen inom den svenska samhällsdebatten. Arbetslösheten bland Sveriges invånare är högre bland den grupp människor som faller under beteckningen utrikes födda. Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka vilka kommunala faktorer som kan förklara skillnaden i arbetslöshet mellan utrikes- och inrikes födda. De empiriska modellerna testas både med tvärsnittsdata för år 2010 samt paneldata för år 2002-2012. Undersökningen genomförs med en linjär regressionsanalys av typen Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) samt Fixed Effect regressioner. Datamaterialet är av sekundär data från Statistiska centralbyrån(SCB). Ett teoriavsnitt kommer att presenteras där teorin om Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment (NAIRU) samt teorier om diskriminering och land-specifikt humankapital belyses. Resultatet av tvärsnittsdata visar att andelen utrikes födda, andelen invandrade från Norden har en signifikant negativ effekt på arbetslöshet bland utrikes födda samt att den allmänna arbetslösheten har en signifikant positiv effekt på arbetslöshet bland utrikes födda. Resultatet av paneldata visar att även andelen godkända i svenska för i invandrare samt högstaeftergymnasiala utbildningsnivå har en signifikant negativ effekt på arbetslöshet bland utrikesfödda. Enligt teorin om land-specifikt humankapital ökar språkkunskaper samt utbildning individens humankapital och således produktivitet vilket minskar arbetslösheten bland utrikesfödda. Denna teori belyser även att andelen invandrade från Norden har ett lägre ”kulturavstånd” och bör således ha lättare att integrera sig på den svenska marknaden. Detta medför att arbetslöshet bland utrikes födda reduceras. Tidigare forskning tyder på att ökad andel utrikes födda kan minska arbetslöshet bland denna grupp genom ökat socialt nätverkoch arbetsgivarkontakter. Enligt teorin om NAIRU, påverkas jämviktsarbetslösheten av förändringar i arbetskraftens sammansättningar vilket bör medföra en påverkan på arbetslöshet bland utrikes födda i motsvarande riktning. Detta indikerar att integrationspolitiken är av betydelse för att få ner nivån på NAIRU.

The understanding of central banking has evolved several times in the history. Different economic and political conditions shaped the structure of monetary policy and the stance of central banks. The Central Bank of Republic of Turkey (CBRT) also has experienced several reactionary policy shifts throughout its history. Nowadays, majority of central banks have started to follow financial stability programs after the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-09. The CBRT was one of the followers of financial stability targeting and has started to implement a new monetary policy structure after the Global Financial Crisis. The new monetary policy of the CBRT in which the financial stability was put nearby price stability came up with new challenges. Therefore in this thesis, we elaborate on the challenges of the CBRT and propose policy suggestions for the possible deficiencies of the new structure of the CBRT. We argue that the experiences of the CBRT in the inflation targeting period and the macroeconomic conditions of both during and post crisis period have shaped the new structure of the monetary policy, and the new policy mix of the CBRT may not be successful in all its targets at the same time because of the existence of &ldquo / macroeconomic quadrilemma&rdquo / tradeoffs as well as because of the ineffectiveness of the tool portfolio of the CBRT.

The focus of this paper is to evaluate if forecast produced by the Central Bank of Sweden (Riksbanken) for the 12 month change in the consumer price index is unbiased? Results shows that for shorter horizons (h < 12) the mean forecast error is unbiased but for longer horizons its negatively biased when inference is done by Maximum entropy bootstrap technique. Can the unbiasedness be improved by strict ap- pliance to econometric methodology? Forecasting with a linear univariate model (seasonal ARIMA) and a multivariate model Vector Error Correction model (VECM) shows that when controlling for the presence of structural breaks VECM outperforms both prediction produced Riksbanken and ARIMA. However Riksbanken had the best precision in their forecast, estimated as MSFE

Variations in macroeconomic indicators affect the performance of the stock markets. In Ghana, although the performance of the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) has been affected by macroeconomic variables from January 2000 to December 2013, the mechanisms of these relationships have not been studied. The purpose of this research was to examine the relationships between selected macroeconomic variables and their effect on the stock market returns on the Ghana stock market. The research questions addressed whether macroeconomic variables had significant effect on stock market returns in Ghana within the specified period. The target sample was all 36 listed firms on the Ghana stock market. Data were obtained from the Bank of Ghana bulletins, the Ghana Statistical Service website, and the GSE website. Time-series data analysis was used to determine whether there was a statistically significant relationship between stock market returns and inflation rate, exchange rate, interest rate, and money supply. The findings revealed that interest rates and money supply had a significant negative effect on stock market returns; however, exchange rates had a significant positive effect on stock market returns. Moreover, inflation rate did not significantly affect stock market returns in Ghana. The implications for positive social change include improved knowledge about the effects of macroeconomic variables on stock returns that could guide policy makers and household agents to improve investment decisions, thus increasing the net worth of these economic agents.