Testing the purchasing power parity: evidence from the new EU countries

This article examines the validity of the purchasing power parity (PPP) between each of the 12 new EU countries vis-a-vis the Eurozone. Using the Johansen cointegration methodology for a period that begins from the mid-1990s and allowing for a structural break for the countries that joined the EU on May 2004, it is found that there is a long-run equilibrium relationship among the nominal exchange rate, the domestic prices and the foreign prices, for all the new EU countries. The evidence also suggests that the PPP vector enters the cointegration space for Bulgaria, Cyprus, Romania and Slovenia, which means that only for these countries the long-run PPP vis-a-vis the Eurozone is verified. For the rest of the new EU countries the long-run PPP is violated, may due to the fact that the currencies of these countries have been pegged to the euro and cannot reflect the inflation differences vis-a-vis the Eurozone.