Czy strefa euro zmierza w kierunku pułapki niskiej inflacji?
Does the Euro Area Move Towards a Low Inflation Trap?

Summary/Abstract: The euro area is one of the slowest-growing areas of the global economy. Developmental problems of the euro area are in contradiction with the main objectives of the economic and monetary union, formulated in the Maastricht Treaty, and call into question the benefits of further deepening of European integration. The challenge for the effectiveness of economic policy conducted by the European institutions, especially the European Central Bank, was a crisis of 2007–2008 and the period after the crisis. They showed that the countries of the euro area as a whole can not reconcile the low inflation priority with maintaining conditions for the economic recovery; on the contrary, due to the low effectiveness of anti-crisis actions, these conditions seem to be getting worse. As a result, the euro area economy may be in a “low inflation trap”, carrying the risk of long-run stagnation, combined with deflationary tendencies. In order to justify the above mentioned hypothesis, it was estimated the structural parameters of the models using Vector Autoregression method (VAR). Studies have shown that an increase in the basic interest rate of the ECB and the real interest rate leads to a more than proportional increase in the output gap in the in the euro zone. Thus, if the ECB conducts monetary policy directly oriented in advance on realization of restrictive inflation target, then it negatively affects economic growth. If this situation persists for a long period of time, the euro area economy is threatened by the rise and maintenance deflation expectations among market participants. Then the pursuit of economic recovery in the euro zone becomes a very difficult task.

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