IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/beo/journl/v58y2013i199p39-56.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Restoring International Competitiveness In Croatia: The Role Of Fiscal And Monetary Policy

Author

Listed:
  • Tomislav Ćorić
  • Hrvoje Šimović
  • Milan Deskar-Škrbić

Abstract

Croatia has joined the European Union as a country with several substantial structural problems, of which the most important is weak competitiveness. Although competitiveness can be viewed from the ‘institutional’ perspective, which includes World Development Indicators (WDI) and Doing Business reports, in this paper the authors focus on the more standard view of competitiveness based on unit labour costs (ULC) and real effective exchange rate (REER). As a small, open and highly dollarized/euroised economy that has to coordinate its economic policy with the EU policy framework, Croatia has limited space for increasing international competitiveness using monetary policy measures aimed at (nominal) devaluation of the national currency. Therefore economic policy stakeholders should focus on decreasing unit labour costs and real effective exchange rate mainly through the process of internal devaluation, which is based on adequate fiscal policy measures. In this paper the authors analyse the role of monetary and fiscal policy in the deteriorating real effective exchange rate and unit labour costs since 2000, and their current capabilities and restrictions in restoring international competitiveness. The Structural VAR model (SVAR) is used to estimate the effects of foreign (banking) capital, credit growth, and current public expenditure on REER and ULC. The preliminary hypothesis of the paper is that monetary policy should continue to support bank lending activities and the role of fiscal policy is to achieve an internal devaluation, which will increase the competitiveness of the Croatian economy. Restoring international competitiveness is necessary due to its impact on net exports and consequently the economic recovery of the national economy, which has faced recession conditions for five years in a row. Also, restoring competitiveness is one of the most important preconditions for the success of a small country joining the single European market.

Suggested Citation

  • Tomislav Ćorić & Hrvoje Šimović & Milan Deskar-Škrbić, 2013. "Restoring International Competitiveness In Croatia: The Role Of Fiscal And Monetary Policy," Economic Annals, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Belgrade, vol. 58(199), pages 39-56, October -.
    • Handle: RePEc:beo:journl:v:58:y:2013:i:199:p:39-56
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ea.ekof.bg.ac.rs/pdf/199/286.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ivo Krznar & Davor Kunovac, 2010. "Impact of External Shocks on Domestic Inflation and GDP," Working Papers 26, The Croatian National Bank, Croatia.
    2. Miss Catriona Purfield & Mr. Christoph B. Rosenberg, 2010. "Adjustment Under a Currency Peg: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania During the Global Financial Crisis 2008-09," IMF Working Papers 2010/213, International Monetary Fund.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jović Dragan & Jakupović Sanel & Čanković Vanja Šušnjar, 2018. "Index of Monetary Conditions in Bosnia and Herzegovina," Economic Themes, Sciendo, vol. 56(2), pages 161-178, June.
    2. Fruzsina Siger, 2018. "Four years in the club - from external to internal Europeanization in Croatia," IWE Working Papers 239, Institute for World Economics - Centre for Economic and Regional Studies.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jakšić Saša, 2022. "Modelling Determinants of Inflation in CESEE Countries: Global Vector Autoregressive Approach," Review of Economic Perspectives, Sciendo, vol. 22(1), pages 137-169, June.
    2. Vladimir Arčabić, 2020. "Koronakriza i što Hrvatska može naučiti iz dosadašnjih recesija," Tradicionalni skup Hrvatskog društva ekonomista u Opatiji - objavljena poglavlja, in: Josip Tica & Katarina Bačić (ed.), Ekonomska politika u 2021. godini - Hrvatska poslije pandemije, volume 28, chapter 1, pages 21-58, Hrvatsko društvo ekonomista (Croatian Society of Economists).
    3. Mathilde Maurel & Gunther Schnabl, 2012. "Keynesian and Austrian Perspectives on Crisis, Shock Adjustment, Exchange Rate Regime and (Long-Term) Growth," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 23(5), pages 847-868, November.
    4. Feldkircher, Martin, 2015. "A global macro model for emerging Europe," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 706-726.
    5. Dorota Zuchowska, 2015. "Accession To The Eurozone As Lithuania’S Exit Strategy From The Currency Board System," Equilibrium. Quarterly Journal of Economics and Economic Policy, Institute of Economic Research, vol. 10(3), pages 27-43, September.
    6. Konstantīns Beņkovskis, 2012. "Competitiveness of Latvia's exporters," Baltic Journal of Economics, Baltic International Centre for Economic Policy Studies, vol. 12(2), pages 17-45, December.
    7. Stefan Kawalec & Ernest Pytlarczyk, 2012. "Controlled Dismantlement of the Euro Area in Order to Preserve the European Union and Single European Market," CASE Network Studies and Analyses 441, CASE-Center for Social and Economic Research.
    8. Sandrine LEVASSEUR, 2012. "Labour market adjustments in Estonia during the 2008/2011 crisis," Eastern Journal of European Studies, Centre for European Studies, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, vol. 3, pages 123-143, June.
    9. Olivier Blanchard & Mark Griffiths & Bertrand Gruss, 2013. "Boom, Bust, Recovery: Forensics of the Latvia Crisis," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 44(2 (Fall)), pages 325-388.
    10. Anton Vaskovskyi, . "Analysis of the Status Quo Behavioural Concept During the Global Economic Crisis," Prague Economic Papers, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 0.
    11. Hasan Cömert & Esra Nur Uğurlu, 2015. "The Impacts of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis on Developing Countries: The Case of the 15 Most Affected Countries," ERC Working Papers 1509, ERC - Economic Research Center, Middle East Technical University, revised Oct 2015.
    12. Mirna Dumičić & Ivo Krznar, 2013. "Financial Conditions and Economic Activity," Working Papers 37, The Croatian National Bank, Croatia.
    13. Sandrine Levasseur, 2011. "Labour market adjustments in Estonia during the global crisis," Sciences Po publications 2011-25, Sciences Po.
    14. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/eu4vqp9ompqllr09iak4591pm is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Boris Blagov, 2018. "Financial crises and time-varying risk premia in a small open economy: a Markov-switching DSGE model for Estonia," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 54(3), pages 1017-1060, May.
    16. Feng, Shu & Fu, Liang & Ho, Chun-Yu & Alex Ho, Wai-Yip, 2023. "Political stability and credibility of currency board," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    17. Petrevski, Goran & Exterkate, Peter & Tevdovski, Dragan & Bogoev, Jane, 2015. "The transmission of foreign shocks to South Eastern European economies: A Bayesian VAR approach," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 632-643.
    18. Olivier Blanchard & Mark Griffiths & Bertrand Gruss, 2013. "Boom, Bust, Recovery Forensics of the Latvia Crisis," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 47(2 (Fall)), pages 325-388.
    19. Syed Al-Helal Uddin, 2016. "Value-added Trade, Exchange Rate Pass-Through and Trade Elasticity: Revisiting the Trade Competitiveness," 2016 Papers pud11, Job Market Papers.
    20. Anton Vaskovskyi, 2021. "Analysis of the Status Quo Behavioural Concept During the Global Economic Crisis," Prague Economic Papers, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2021(2), pages 133-155.
    21. Titus Ayobami Ojeyinka & Dauda Olalekan Yinusa, 2023. "External Shocks and Their Transmission Channels in Nigeria: A Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Approach," Global Journal of Emerging Market Economies, Emerging Markets Forum, vol. 15(1), pages 132-153, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ECONOMIC POLICY; CAPITAL FLOWS; COMPETITIVENESS; SVAR; CROATIA;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • E62 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Fiscal Policy; Modern Monetary Theory

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:beo:journl:v:58:y:2013:i:199:p:39-56. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Goran Petrić (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/efbeoyu.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.