This Paper reviews the pros and cons of an early EU enlargement towards Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs hereafter). First, the Maastricht criteria, which cannot be literally assessed during the catching up process, but that nevertheless mirror the huge efforts undertaken in order...

The persistence of widespread poverty in the Kyrgyz Republic seems to be due to the presence of a large pool of jobless and discouraged workers, as well as to the low level of formal job creation. This has prevented informal jobholders from moving from a situation of mere survival into a better...

Pegging the CEECs exchange rates to the Euro can be assessed by using the criteria for entering the EMU (European Monetary Union). This approach is explicitly taking into account the process of enlargement started in June 1993 in Copenhagen, where a subset of CEECs was selected for admission...

This paper tries to assess how costly it would be for the CEECs to peg their exchange rates to the Euro. We use three types of criteria: institutional (the Maastricht criteria); some measure of real convergence; and the Optimal Currency Area criteria. The institutional criteria seem to be an...

This paper tries to assess whether it would be optimal for the CEECs to form a monetary union with either Germany or the EU. This cannot be done without discussing first the Maastricht criteria, which are the condition « sine qua non » for a country to be eligible. Yet, they are often...

Economists often seek to estimate unobserved variables, representing “equilibrium” or “expected” values of economic variables, as benchmarks against which observed, realised values of these variables may be evaluated. Such comparisons are often used as economic policy indicators, for...