Central bank’s balance sheet and its relationship to monetary policy effectiveness

The diploma thesis deals with the issue of financial performance of central banks. Central banking is generally considered as a profitable part of financial system. However, this paper focuses on the loss-making central banks and emphasizes the examples of central banks with large accumulated financial losses. Relationship between the quality of balance sheet assets and financial performance of central banks is closely examined in the thesis. Alongside, it analyses the impact of negative financial performance on the main objectives of central bank, in the role of monetary authority. Effectiveness of monetary policy is conditioned by many factors, among them are independence of central bank, the level of development of financial markets - central bank operates in, analytical skills of employees and etc. However, the case, where financial performance of central bank is discussed in connection with monetary policy performance, is extremely rare. The primary goal of this diploma thesis is to reveal and describe the main ways in which financial performance of the central bank influences monetary policy decisions. It also tries to find out whether there is hidden threat of a damaging impact on the decisions in case the central bank accumulates the negative financial results.