Vývoj míry inflace v zemích Visegrádské skupiny

The bachelor‘s thesis aims to compare the Visegrad Four countries in terms of inflation rate developments between 2000 and 2024. The main focus of the work is to identify the causes of price fluctuations and to evaluate the contributions of individual consumer basket categories to total inflation in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary. The methodological approach to the comparison is a comparative analysis based on the decomposition of the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP), trend analysis, and a synthesis of findings from central bank inflation reports. In conclusion, it was found that the countries largely share a similar nature of external shocks, particularly in the area of energy and food prices, but the intensity of inflation varied depending on the chosen monetary regime and the structure of consumer baskets. The comparison showed that Slovakia and Hungary exhibit higher sensitivity to commodity prices, while profit-led inflation played a significant role in the Czech Republic. The results suggest that administrative price interventions in Hungary were less effective than the restrictive monetary policy in the Czech Republic, which led to the fastest return of inflation to the target in 2024.