Since the 1970s, the international economic system has become prone to the volatility and undue effects associated with booms and busts. This forty year period spanning the present has exhibited restrained growth and repressive economic development. Critical changes to the system are presented by the transition from "Fordism" to the post 1970s neoliberal regime and the globalization of world markets. Underpinning this transformation is an ideological shift towards free market capitalism and the adoption of "reduced form" market models. These "reduced form" models appear to hinder economic sustainability as their grounding in economics fails to account for real economic activity. This thesis aims to provide a more holistic perception of sustainability, one that provides a sound basis on which to develop sustainable economic policy. The Regulationist Approach presents the requisite understanding of economic sustainability required within this research. The inclusion of economic, historical and socio-political fields of research proposes a wider understanding of the political economy and sustainability. The application of the Regulation Approach to the South African economy illustrates many problem areas that require attention. The examination found that firstly, aggregate demand in the South African economy was unsustainable due to the debt driven nature of demand under the asset price bubble of the mid to late 2000s. Secondly, aggregate supply also proved unsustainable as government is failing to provide any substantive growth within important sectors of the economy such as education and the provision of general services. Furthermore, the adoption of inflation targeting in South Africa poses a barrier to sustained economic growth as it focuses singularly on price inflation. The "reduced form" model of inflation targeting fails to account for market failures and a number of vital indicators of sustainability most notably, debt levels and asset prices. The inclusion of these indicators, and financial stability more generally, are found to provide a more holistic and sustainable approach to macroeconomic policymaking.

Following many other central banks around the world, the South African Reserve Bank has adopted inflation targeting as its monetary policy framework. The aim of this is to achieve low levels of inflation in order to attain price stability thereby promoting growth. In South Africa, the chosen band to target is 3%–6%. This has been criticised by many trade unions who are calling for the abandonment of inflation targeting. Despite targeting 3%–6%, it is not known whether this is the optimal inflation range for South Africa. Therefore, the aim of this study is to determine the inflation threshold level for South Africa using quarterly data for the period 1983 to 2010. The first section determines whether or not there is a long-run relationship between inflation and growth using the Johansen cointegration method. Exogeneity tests determine the causality between these variables. Vector error correction models are estimated if cointegration is found. The second part determines the threshold level of inflation using the method of conditional least squares. The inflation level that maximises the R-squared value and minimises the residual sum of squares gives an indication of the threshold level. The third part of the study determines whether or not inflation volatility has a significant impact on growth. The first part established that there is long-run comovement between inflation and growth.The causality is bidirectional with both variables being endogenous.Findings regarding the threshold level show that the current inflation targeting band of 3%–6% may be extended up to 9.5%. In addition, the range of inflation from 5.5% to 6.5% promotes economic growth in South Africa. Finally, the evidence suggests that inflation volatility does not have a significant impact on economic growth and the focus of policy should be directed towards the level of inflation as has been the case.

This thesis estimates the treatment effect of inflation targeting adoption on inflation, inflation variability, output, and output variability for 25 explicit inflation targeting countries. I implement the propensity score matching methodology that takes into account the problems of non-experimental nature, such as selection bias or selection on observable, and allows me to effectively mimic properties of randomized experiment and compute unbiased treatment effect estimates. I introduce a variety of propensity score matching methods that were recently developed in the treatment effect literature, including Nearest Neighbor, Radius matching, Kernel matching, and Inverse Probability Weighting. The results indicate that both industrial and developing inflation targeting countries exhibit lower inflation levels and at the same time higher output growth than non-targeting countries. The estimates are however in most cases statistically insignificant. Moreover, it appears that both industrial and developing countries achieve combination of lower inflation variability and output variability compared to non-targeting countries. Nonetheless, majority of the estimates are again statistically insignificant. The results are to a small extent sensitive to the choice of propensity score matching method. Radius matching with tight calipers (r=0.005, r=0.001) tends to provide the most reliable estimates. Balancing properties of the models are reasonable and compared to the previous research the standardised biases are quantitatively better.

This thesis deals with the use of foreign-exchange interventions as an unconventional tool of monetary policy in inflation targeting regime. It is primary focused on monetary policy of the Czech National Bank and foreign-exchange interventions that have been executed since November 2013. Further, it is devoted to interventions executed by the Swiss National Bank and the Bank of Israel. The main aim is to analyse the experience of previously mentioned central banks with foreign-exchange interventions, to describe main reasons and goals, and especially impacts of interventions on economies of related countries while focusing on inflation, GDP and unemployment. The last part provides the evaluation of referred intervention regimes and their comparison.

The thesis discusses some issues on the topic of money velocity. Its goal is to summarise theroretical contributions in this area, which are followed by a practical application through the monetary analysis of the Slovak Republic from 1993 to 2000. The theoretical part involves the first approaches to money velocity, explanation of the quantity theory of money and monetarism and their critique. It also describes the monerary transmission mechanism. The practical application part evaluates the impact of the stability of money velocity on the decision of the National Bank of Slovakia to abandon monetary targeting. It also focuses on the other variables that influenced monetary policy execution. The last chapter is devoted to the importance of money velocity if the central bank uses inflation targeting as its policy.

The diploma thesis focuses on inflation targeting in central Europe. It describes experience of three central European countries (Czech republic, Poland, Hungary) with inflation targeting. First part of thesis deals with theoretical aspects of inflation targeting. Next part brings closer look at application of inflation targeting in above - mentioned countries. Last part of thesis analyzes efficiency of inflation targeting.

In the third millennium CNB took over a Policy of Inflation Targeting. Czech Republic was one of the first countries which adopted that policy. This diploma is connected with bachelor thesis, entitled "Instruments of Monetary Policy in Czech Republic since 2000" written in 2009 and deals with explanations of tools and principles of monetary policy in terms of the political course of inflation targeting.

This thesis aims at currency interventions executed by Czech and Suisse central bank and their following comparison. Currency interventions became lately monetary instrument that both central banks adopted. Effect of intervention on real economic situation in both countries will be content of this thesis. Because of the scale off the interventions, this issue is still current and it is still publicly debated. First part of this thesis introduces systems of exchange rate arrangements and describes the role of central bank. Second part of this thesis deals with currency interventions in Czech Republic and focuses on intervention impacts on real economics. Third part is devoted to Suisse currency intervention.

The current monetary policy has been a widely discussed topic. The main focus has been given to the inflation targeting and whether it is suitable in situations with low inflation and low interests rates. The present study is addressing the monetary policy regimes and evolution of targeting aggregates under inflation targeting. The goal of my thesis is to verify whether the interests rates close to technical zero don t cause systematically larger deviations of forecasts of inflation from reality. Having compared most monetary regimes, their advantages and disadvantages in the current situation, I have come to the conclusion that although inflation targeting is not absolutely perfect, the shortcomings and the pitfalls of other regimes are considerably less favourable. Although the inflation deviation is increasing, this is most likely attributable to the error of model and the overtly optimistic forecast of the Czech National Bank than to the possibility that the errors directly relate to the level of interests rates.

Price Level Targeting with Imperfect Rationality: A Heuristic Approach Vojtěch Molnár Abstract The thesis compares price level targeting and inflation targeting regimes in a New Keynesian model without rational expectations hypothesis. Economic agents instead form their expectations using heuristics-they choose between a few simple rules based on their past forecasting performance. Two main specifications of the price level targeting model are examined-the agents form expectations either about price level or about inflation, which is ex ante not equivalent because of sequential nature of the model. In addition, several formulations of the forecasting rules are considered. According to the results, price level targeting is preferred in the case with expectations created about price level under the baseline calibration; but it is sensitive to some model parameters. Furthermore, when expectations are created about inflation, price level targeting over time loses credibility and leads to divergence of the economy. On the other hand, inflation targeting model functions stably. Therefore, while potential benefits of price level targeting have been confirmed under certain assumptions, the results suggest that inflation targeting constitutes significantly more robust choice for monetary policy.