Specyfika dywergencji stóp procentowych w Unii Europejskiej

Abstract

The global economic crisis, together with the related crisis of the euro area, influenced significantly many of economic processes in the world. One of the dimensions, which was strongly affected by the recession tensions in the global and European economy, is the level of interest rates’ convergence. Their value is in fact highly correlated with condition of public finance and with business cycle, and crisis phenomena could be observed in these two areas with particular intensity. Therefore, the issues connected with still occurring, and in recent years even deepening, divergence in interest rates in EU member states, constitutes an important research area. The objective of this paper is to try to indicate key trends in this context, both in terms of long- and short-term interest rate. Ten-year bonds’ yields and three-month money market interest rate were adopted respectively as their measures. The nature of the connection between these rates and the exchange rate was also indicated, because it may be important to explain the trends. As a basic research method, the statistical analysis was used and the data collected and published by the Eurostat were the source material. To some extent, the literature analysis was also performed.