Dynamics and Balance of Savings, Investments, and Credits in Business Cycle: The Case of the Czech Republic

The goal of the article is a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the relationship among savings, investments and credits in a business cycle in the Czech Republic. The presented analysis brings specific recommendations on the interaction between monetary policy and macroprudential regulation. The article starts with a critical analysis of the Austrian Economic School and its monetary theory of business cycle, which provides a methodological base for further empirical analysis in the paper. Based on the data of the Czech economy, the authors empirically test a hypothesis whether credits create a financial bubble when a credit growth exceeds a real GDP growth. The financial cycle had a significantly higher volatility comparing to real business cycle volatility in the Czech Republic in the period 1997-2013. The existence of the credit bubble was confirmed by statistically significant model parameters, when using the differences in relative year on year changes of banking client credits as a depended variable and relative year on year changes of real GDP as an independent variable. Currently valid European regulation doesn't allow using the same tools to host regulator and supervisor towards the bank subsidiaries and branches in a need to react to the different phases of financial cycle. If a host supervisor needs to influence and safeguard the financial stability, it has only the following tools applying to both forms of banking operations in the host countries: counter cyclical capital buffer, capital regulation of real estate exposures, and setting the loan to value (income) limits.

Keywords: monetary and macroprudential policy, credit cycle theory, Austrian school