Changes in the size and the age structure of a population have a great impact on an economy, especially on national savings and capital flows. Poland’s population, although still relatively young when compared to other developed countries, is expected to experience accelerated ageing and decline in forthcoming decades. In this paper, we assess the effects of these processes for Polish economy. Using an open-economy OLG model with demographic shocks and a variable retirement age, we simulate dynamics of real interest rates, main macro aggregates as well as net foreign assets to GDP. We show that rapid ageing will reduce the interest rate gap between Poland and the developed countries by 1.3-2 p.p. We also document a strong positive relationship between interest rates and the retirement age and find that the decline in the interest rate in Poland is primarily driven by the surviving probability shock

In this paper a semi-structural econometric model is implemented in order to estimate the natural rates of interest in two large economies of the Euro Area: Germany an Italy. The estimates suggest that after the financial crisis of 2007–2008 a decrease of the growth rate of potential output and the corresponding natural rate of interest was greater in Italy than in Germany which could have had important implications for the effectiveness of a common monetary policy. Unlike in other studies, it is found that the monetary policy stance was less expansionary in Italy as compared to Germany for the whole after-crisis period.

The paper considers a private ownership economy in which economic agents could realize their aims at given prices, Walras Law is satisfied but agents’ optimal plans of action do not lead to an equilibrium in the economy. It means that the market clearing condition is not satisfied for agents’ optimal plans of action. In this context, the paper puts forward three specific adjustment processes resulting in equilibrium in a transformation of the initial economy. Specifically, it is shown, by the use of strict mathematical reasoning, that if there is no equilibrium in a private ownership economy at given prices, then, under some natural economic assumptions, after a mild evolution of the production sector, equilibrium at unchanged prices can be achieved.