Modeling Monetary Policy Transmission in Acceding Countries: Vector Autoregression Versus Structural Vector Autoregression

Using the vector autoregressive methodology, we present estimates of monetary transmission for five new EU member countries in Central and Eastern Europe with more or less flexible exchange rates. We select sample periods to estimate over the longest possible period that can be considered as a single monetary policy regime. To identify the vector autoregression (VAR), structural restrictions and the widely used Cholesky ordering are employed. We conclude that the structural VAR yields much better results. Fewer countries suffer from a price puzzle (i.e., an increase in prices following a monetary contraction). Our results also indicate that there are substantial differences in monetary transmission across the countries in our sample.