E31 - Price Level; Inflation; DeflationReturn

The paper provides an introduction to the special issue. It shows a sense in which Visegrád and Balkan EU countries are correlated in macroeconomic performance and integrated with the global business cycles. Using inflation rate levels as a starting point to characterize when these countries began their transitions, it shows that after 1996 both real GDP growth and real interest rates move together to a significant degree both with each other and with the US. This provides a background from which to view the paths since the collapse of the Soviet Union that these transition economies have taken. In addition, comparison is made to US money and banking policy, to provide an outline of how this may impact progress in the transition region. A subsequent summary of the other articles in the issue shows an inter-relation in their themes about how Central, Eastern, and Southeast Europe have progressed since 1991, and how these paths may be affected by Western economic policy.
Implications for Central European audience: The paper shows that transition regions can be impacted by international financial integration, including to possible detriment when capital markets are regulated by policy that pushes real interest rates below their natural levels. Negative real interest rate policy since the 2008-2009 financial crisis and again during the Covid crisis may hasten the rise of autocratic democracy and limit social, political, and economic freedom.

This article analyses the impact of the changes in hard commodity prices in the world commodity exchanges on the variation of countries’ general price level. In other words, this article aims to determine the impact of hard commodity prices changes on inflation. In this paper, all countries of the European Union (EU) are included in the research, and case analysis is done accordingly. The methodology applied is the following: a study of the recent scientific literature, processing and systemization of statistical data, correlation analysis and Granger causality test. The results of the research show that price changes of selected commodities in world commodity exchanges have no absolute dependence on the variation of the general price level in EU countries in the long period. Natural gas should be distinguished, whose price fluctuations in the commodity exchange market show a positive correlation with 14 EU countries’ CPI changes. In addition, the research shows that Lithuania’s inflation has been affected by all five selected commodities’ prices fluctuations. UK and Romanian inflation relate to four of five selected commodities’ prices fluctuations.