The March 2024 issue of the Financial and Economic Review is now published

The Our Vision column in the March issue of our scientific journal reviews the development of financial culture. The published studies are about communication by central banks, central bank digital currencies, developments in monetary liquidity, and one of the effects of the energy crisis on real estate prices. An essay presents the research of the Nobel Laureate Claudia Goldin. The feature articles examine the role of artificial intelligence in the financial sector and the Irish economic miracle.

The development of financial culture is essential for the population to be able to connect to the online world of finance and to understand the functioning and inherent risks of the financial system. The essay by Eszter Hergár, Levente Kovács and Erzsébet Németh provides an overview of the status and development of financial culture in Hungary and the changes that have taken place at government, institutional and civil level. The strategy to develop financial awareness and the first accredited financial culture textbook have been published and Pénz7 (Money Week) has been launched. The number of programmes aimed at developing financial culture and the number of participants have increased threefold. International surveys indicate an improvement in financial knowledge, but further progress is needed in the area of financial attitudes and the application of knowledge.

Emerging market central banks have made remarkable progress in the past two decades and may have outperformed their US and euro-area counterparts in critical areas. They have adopted the principles of advanced country central banking both in their monetary policy frameworks and communication but with appropriate modifications that reflect their specific circumstances. This has served them well in addressing post-Covid inflation pressures early on and in avoiding banking stress even when advanced country central banks eventually tightened their policies. The study by Piroska Nagy Mohácsi, Tatiana Evdokimova, Olga Ponomarenko and Elina Ribakova examines this “Great Catchup” phenomenon.

Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are currently one of the most vital issues in monetary policy worldwide. In their paper, Jörg J. Dötsch and Tamás Ginter analyse monetary innovations by focusing on the impact of digitalisation on currency competition. They present the phenomenon that with the emergence of CBDCs, technology can become a new and important functional parameter born by CBDC itself. The paper concludes by arguing that although technological competition potentially constitutes an additional element of currency competition, monetary stability still remains its most decisive factor.

Developments in monetary policy and the changes in the central bank’s instruments have a significant impact on the functioning of the Hungarian banking system and, as a part of that, on payment service developments. In his study, Adrián Kollár examines how these changes affected payment service developments from the beginning of 2020 to the end of 2023 H1, a period full of changes in the central bank’s instruments, how certain changes affected payment liquidity in the short term, and to what extent the measures taken by the Magyar Nemzeti Bank were used by the participants of the Real-Time Gross Settlement System and the Interbank Clearing System.

It has been demonstrated in many countries that a better energy rating is reflected in the market value of real estates. The study by Dalma Eszter Fekete and Eszter Baranyai examines how the changed utility tariff regulation, which came into force in August 2022 in the context of energy market tensions, affected the real estate market value of energy certificates. The authors find that the gap between the value of energy-wasting properties and the value of properties with an average rating has widened further; the difference has increased by another 9 percentage points when controlling for other effects. Therefore, modernising the energy efficiency of real estate is an increasingly important issue.

American economist Claudia Goldin was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2023 for her analysis of the role of women in the labour market. In their essay, Judit Edit Futó and Anna Lovász review Goldin’s work, particularly the causes of changes in female employment and the gender wage gap in the US over the past 200 years. Based on Goldin’s research, the reasons to be highlighted are the increase in time spent in education, the change in female identity and expectations, and the evolution of the economic and legal environment.

In their feature article, Péter Sajtos and Anna Domokos point out that with the rise of artificial intelligence, it is necessary to identify both the potential benefits and the emerging risks, even because of its impact on the entire financial sector, in which the development of a sector-specific regulatory framework could play a major role.

The processes underlying Ireland’s explosive economic growth in the 1990s divide even members of the economic community. Regardless of this, one of the poorest countries in Europe in the 19th century became one of the most productive economies in the world after the turn of the millennium. The feature article by Bence Horák provides a brief economic history overview of the ”decade of the Irish economic miracle“, as well as of the government’s political actions and changes in economic policy that took place during the previous period.

In addition to the above, the March issue of the Financial and Economic Review includes a book review and three conference reports.

The publication can be viewed on the website of our Journal:

https://en-hitelintezetiszemle.mnb.hu/

We wish you a very pleasant reading.

Editorial staff of the Financial and Economic Review