Does automation or discretion drive money supply in Bulgaria?

Abstract

The options for monetary discretion under the Bulgarian currency board arrangement (CBA) were analysed. A vector autoregression (VAR) was employed to identify the determinants of money supply in Bulgaria for the period 1998-2018. The results of the study imply that the movements of money supply in Bulgaria do not automatically follow the dynamics of the balance of payments but are affected in a discretionary way by the changes in the government deposit in the Issue Department of the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB). It may be inferred that money supply in Bulgaria under a CBA is more discretion-driven than automatically determined.

Keywords

• bulgaria
• currency board arrangement
• money supply
• automation
• discretion