MACROECONOMIC FACTORS AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON THE VISEGRAD GROUP EXCHANGE RATES

Abstract

The paper analyzes the effects of macroeconomic development on exchange rates and aims to point out indicators with a significant impact on the Visegrad Group's domestic currencies. Steep changes causing the Visegrad Group’s currencies to either appreciate or depreciate against the US dollar may result in higher risks for investors and even deteriorate the competitiveness of the particular country. The paper presents several macroeconomic indicators and their influence on four currencies, namely the Czech crown, Hungarian forint, Polish zloty and the Euro. As the Slovak Republic introduced the Euro as its official currency, the paper also analyzes it's impact on the common currency of the Eurozone. To emphasize international competitiveness, the research apart from traditional economic indicators, serving as a focal point in theories for exchange rate determination, incorporated economic complexity and corruption score as well. The findings indicate that during the period between 2000 to 2017, the two common indicators i.e. total reserves and corruption played the key role in determining the year-end spot exchange rates of the Czech crown, Hungarian forint and the Polish zloty. Besides corruption score, economic complexity serves as another significant indicator merely influencing the direction of the Euro's and the Zloty’s Dollar exchange rate movement. The last section compares the results of the OLS analyses for each country and verifies their accuracy through robust regressions. Overall, the model for the Czech crown represents the highest accuracy, regarding its predictive ability.