Aggregate Demand Disturbances in the Visegrad Group and the Eurozone

Abstract

The main goal of the paper is to evaluate, in a comparative manner, the degree of similarities in aggregated demand disturbances in the Visegrad Group (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, collectively: V4) and the Eurozone economies from 1995 to 2013. The underlying demand disturbances are extracted using the structural vector auto-regression (SVAR) model with the long-run restrictions. The identification scheme is based on the theoretical aggregate supplyaggregate demand (AS-AD) model. The obtained approximations of unobservable demand shocks are then used to infer on their correlation structures. This comparative empirical study brings evidence on the similarities in aggregate demand shocks within the V4 and EMU countries.