IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/ifwkdp/174.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Polish transition programme at mid-1991: Stabilisation under threat

Author

Listed:
  • Winiecki, Jan

Abstract

Monetary restraint in Poland does not operate in the expected manner under the conditions of predominant state ownership of both banks and industrial enterprises. With effective owners' control being prohibitively costly in the state-owned firms, "nobody's" banks continue their old lending pattern to large state-owned enterprises regardless of the latters' creditworthiness and profitability. "Nobody's" enterprises accustomed to soft budget constraint are not deterred by high interest rate levels. Under these circumstances macroeconomic restraint does not select the best enterprises but in fact does the reverse: Least efficient large enterprises survive, while smaller but more efficient ones starved of credits are threatened with bankruptcy. Inability to cope effectively with the legacy of the Soviet-type economy is compounded by autonomous policy errors. Apart from too nervous reactions to monthly changes in the inflation rate, the major mistake has been the timing and scale of tightening monetary policy. The sharp increases in the interest rate were effected almost weeks before the major demand reduction for Polish products resulting from the expected changes in trade with the Soviet Union. As a result the economy received a strong recessionary blow from monetary policy that preceded another major blow from the fall in foreign demand. Inevitably the economy went into a recession that did not end by June 1991 while inflation continued.

Suggested Citation

  • Winiecki, Jan, 1991. "The Polish transition programme at mid-1991: Stabilisation under threat," Kiel Discussion Papers 174, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:ifwkdp:174
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/47957/1/256508747.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rudiger Dornbusch & Mario Henrique Simonsen, 1987. "Inflation Stabilization with Incomes Policy Support: A Review of the Experience in Argentina, Brazil and Israel," NBER Working Papers 2153, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Alex Cukierman, 1986. "Central bank behavior and credibility: some recent theoretical developments," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue May, pages 5-17.
    3. Barro, Robert J & Gordon, David B, 1983. "A Positive Theory of Monetary Policy in a Natural Rate Model," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(4), pages 589-610, August.
    4. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    5. Cukierman, Alex & Meltzer, Allan H, 1986. "A Theory of Ambiguity, Credibility, and Inflation under Discretion and Asymmetric Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(5), pages 1099-1128, September.
    6. Winiecki, J., 1989. "Large Industrial Enteprises In Soviet-Type Economies - Ruling Stratum'S Main Rent-Seeking Area," Papers 440, Stockholm - International Economic Studies.
    7. Furubotn, Eirik G & Pejovich, Svetozar, 1972. "Property Rights and Economic Theory: A Survey of Recent Literature," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 1137-1162, December.
    8. Kydland, Finn E & Prescott, Edward C, 1977. "Rules Rather Than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 85(3), pages 473-491, June.
    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. Langhammer, Rolf J., 1992. "Die Assoziierungsabkommen mit der CSFR, Polen und Ungarn: wegweisend oder abweisend?," Kiel Discussion Papers 182, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    2. Heinrich, Ralph P., 1993. "Microeconomic adjustment in Hungary: Results from a survey of enterprises," Kiel Working Papers 599, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).

    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. Akhand Akhtar Hossain, 2009. "Central Banking and Monetary Policy in the Asia-Pacific," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 12777.
    2. Kenneth N. Kuttner & Adam S. Posen, 2010. "Do Markets Care Who Chairs the Central Bank?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(2‐3), pages 347-371, March.
    3. Donato Masciandaro, 1995. "Designing a central bank: Social player, monetary agent, or banking agent?," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 6(4), pages 399-410, October.
    4. Boschen, John F. & Weise, Charles L., 2004. "Does the dynamic time consistency model of inflation explain cross-country differences in inflations dynamics?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 23(5), pages 735-759, September.
    5. Faust, Jon & Svensson, Lars E O, 2002. "The Equilibrium Degree of Transparency and Control in Monetary Policy," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 34(2), pages 520-539, May.
    6. Berthold Herrendorf & Manfred J.M. Neumann, 2003. "The Political Economy of Inflation, Labour Market Distortions and Central Bank Independence," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(484), pages 43-64, January.
    7. Mihov, Ilian & Sibert, Anne, 2006. "Credibility and Flexibility with Independent Monetary Policy Committees," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 38(1), pages 23-46, February.
    8. Sorge, Marco M., 2013. "Robust delegation with uncertain monetary policy preferences," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 73-78.
    9. Dixit, Avinash & Lambertini, Luisa, 2003. "Symbiosis of monetary and fiscal policies in a monetary union," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 235-247, August.
    10. Michael D. Bordo & Edward S. Prescott, 2019. "Federal Reserve Structure, Economic Ideas, and Monetary and Financial Policy," NBER Working Papers 26098, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Sibert, Anne & Mihov, Ilian, 2002. "Credibility and Flexibility with Monetary Policy Committees," CEPR Discussion Papers 3278, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Marco Hoeberichts, 2002. "The Credibility of Central Bank Announcements," Working Papers 0221, Banco de España.
    13. Levy Yeyati, Eduardo & Sturzenegger, Federico, 2010. "Monetary and Exchange Rate Policies," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Dani Rodrik & Mark Rosenzweig (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 4215-4281, Elsevier.
    14. Volker Hahn, 2007. "Information Acquisition by Price-Setters and Monetary Policy," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 07/73, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    15. Faust, Jon & Svensson, Lars E O, 2001. "Transparency and Credibility: Monetary Policy with Unobservable Goals," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 42(2), pages 369-397, May.
    16. Elmar Mertens, 2016. "Managing Beliefs about Monetary Policy under Discretion," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 48(4), pages 661-698, June.
    17. Jyotsana Kala & Naveen Srinivasan, 2020. "Institutional Design and Credibility," Working Papers 2020-193, Madras School of Economics,Chennai,India.
    18. Kuttner, Kenneth N. & Posen, Adam S., 1999. "Does talk matter after all? Inflation targeting and central bank behavior," CFS Working Paper Series 1999/04, Center for Financial Studies (CFS).
    19. van Lelyveld, Iman, 1999. "Inflation or unemployment? Who cares?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 463-484, September.
    20. Gómez-Cram, Roberto & Grotteria, Marco, 2022. "Real-time price discovery via verbal communication: Method and application to Fedspeak," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(3), pages 993-1025.

    More about this item

    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:zbw:ifwkdp:174. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iwkiede.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.