The role of exchange rate dynamics in Bulgaria and Romania in the process of economic transition

Our contribution focuses on the role of the exchange rate changes in Bulgaria and Romania during the transition process toward a market economy. We are interested in the degree of exchange rate pass-through to the domestic inflation in these countries. Both of the countries suffered from a high level of inflation and tried to fix their exchange rates in some of the periods. But they were forced to abandon it consequently and it was often followed by sharp depreciation. The goal of our contribution is to evaluate shock absorbing role of the exchange rate changes. We try to verify a traditional hypothesis that exchange rate adjustments are able to accommodate the shocks hitting the economy and to dampen their influence on the other macroeconomic variables. On the other hand, exogenous shocks in the foreign countries may affect exchange rate and lead to additional volatility of the main economic indicators in the domestic economy. This shock generating role of the exchange rate will be evaluated as well. We will use structural vector autoregression models identified by Cholesky decomposition.