Revisiting the pass-through of exchange rate in the transition economies: New evidence from new EU member states

Abstract

This paper revisits the exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) for a set of transition economies, namely for 10 new EU Member States (NMS), over the period 1996–2015. As the transition process has entailed a deep transformation in their economies and institutions, the extent of pass-through is expected to be regime-dependent on this changing macroeconomic environment. We propose to implement a nonlinear panel smooth transition regression (PSTR) approach, where transitional factors related to EU accession are captured properly from the data. Our empirical results suggest that the inflation regime is the main macroeconomic driver of the extent of ERPT. When inflation levels exceed the threshold of 4.56%, i.e., within a high-inflation environment, the degree of pass-through is higher and reaches a full ERPT. However, with the shift towards a stable and low-inflation regime, i.e., when inflation levels are below a threshold of 4.56%, the extent of pass-through significantly declines in the NMS group. Our findings shed further light on how the credibility gained through the commitment to euro area membership is beneficial and would ensure better control of inflation.