monetary policy

Earlier this week, we from the EKIP were officially quoted by one of the largest newspapers in Germany – Die Welt. As part of Die Welt’s coverage of Bulgaria’s application for eurozone membership, our team was recently interviewed about our expert opinion on the topic. In their article Die …

We at EKIP are honored to publish a fundamental critical analysis by economist Georgi Ganev of the acclaimed "Plan B in the Currency Board Discussion" by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ivan Kostov. In this "plan", Kostov practically proposes that the currency board in Bulgaria be dismantled, even though it was created precisely at the beginning of its own …

Recently, Bulgaria's possible entry into the EU's monetary union, the so-called Eurozone, has become a hot topic. Over the past week, a number of experts, led by the former economic team of the NMSV and Ivan Kostov, took turns explaining in various media why Bulgaria should abolish the currency board as soon as possible and …

On December 14, the chair of the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States, officially announced the increase in the institution's key interest rate by 25 basis points, from 0.25% to 0.50%. This is the first interest rate increase by the Fed since December 2015, although Yellen initially said that we would see three to four increases ...

As it became clear last week, the banking sector in Italy is in a serious financial crisis and many of the country's largest banks are facing bankruptcy, which is why they need an urgent injection of capital. In the midst of the dispute between Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and statesmen in Berlin and Brussels ...

The banknotes and coins in circulation are what most people think of money as. In fact, they represent a very small fraction of all the money in the economy, depending on how you define it. Most of your money isn't in the family safe or hidden under the mattress. …

On March 9, the European Central Bank (ECB) launched its expanded asset purchase program, which was officially announced at the end of January at the central bank’s first board meeting of the year. With the expansion of the program’s scope and volume, the ECB will aim to buy 44 …

Several years after the start of the financial crisis and the subsequent launch of the quantitative easing program, politicians and central bankers reported a positive change in the values of some economic indicators, reading this as a signal of an improvement in the general situation of the economy and the labor market. In order to achieve some of the desired …

In early January, Eurostat data was released showing the first annual deflationary episode in the Eurozone since 2009 – the overall price level fell by 0.2% between December 2013 and the same month in 2014. This sent the European Central Bank and a large number of Keynesian economists into a panic. From …

Since the currency board was introduced in Bulgaria 17 years ago, every now and then some political pundit appears in the Bulgarian press to tell us that it is harmful to the Bulgarian economy. Now, I might agree with the statement in principle, considering that any …