Monetary policy shocks from the European Central Bank and their impact on goods exports from the non-Eurozone member states

This thesis analyzes the effect a change in the European Central Bank’s main refinancing rate has on the export sectors of four Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European member states within the European Union (CESEEU), but who have not yet adopted the euro as their currency. Specifically, the vector autoregression analysis (VAR) econometric technique is employed to elucidate the intensity and time it takes for such a monetary policy shock to be transmitted into these economies, and through which channel: financial or trading. The results, which are interpreted against the Mundell-Fleming framework, show that transmission in Bulgaria and Lithuania works through the finance channel, while the trade channel is responsible for transmission in Poland and the Czech Republic. Transmission speed is fastest in the trade-channel countries, but is most intense in the finance-channel countries. This paper attempts to fill the gap in research explaining how the real economies, specifically the export sectors, of the CESEEU member states are affected by exogenous monetary policy changes undertaken at the ECB level