This paper assesses the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and their impact on the economic performance of small- and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) of three East African countries: Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Findings of the paper suggest that the diffusion of ICT among...

The currency crisis of 1999 in Brazil and the current debt crisis in Argentina has put economic integration in MERCOSUR under stress. Fears of disintegration seem to be more prevalent than optimism on a further deepening of economic and eventually monetary integration in MERCOSUR. The...

Potential costs and benefits of a monetary union for the four MERCOSUR countries Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay are compared. Particular emphasis was put on the traditional and new approaches to optimum currency area theory which were reviewed and analyzed with respect to their validity...

We use a spatial competition based model in a two-stage game setup to assess whether equilibrium in exchange rates among the leading currencies is attainable. We show that a stable equilibrium can be reached in the case of two leading currencies, but not in the case of three. In our model,...

Now that four years have passed since the introduction of the euro as a commercial currency, it has become possible to assess many arguments made in the abstract during the 1990s about the implications of monetary union. This contribution does precisely that. In brief, the euro zone still falls...

This paper examines the trade-off between exchange rate stability and monetary autonomy for a target zone. Using the guilder-mark target zone in the pre-EMU period as a case study, we empirically estimate how much policy discretion the Dutch central bank still enjoyed and how much had been ceded...

This paper explores the conflict of real and monetary convergence during the EMU run-up of the Central and Eastern European new EU member states. Based on a Balassa-Samuelson model of productivity driven inflation, it finds a high probability of higher inflation in the new member states. It...

We analyse the costs of a monetary union in West Africa by means of asymmetric aggregate demand and aggregate supply shocks. Previous studies have estimated the shocks with the VAR model.We discuss the limits of this approach and apply a new technique based on the dynamic factor model.The...

The paper presents a structural model framework for a small open economy. The model, based on optimising households and firms, has been calibrated on Czech macroeconomic data in order to develop an analytic framework suitable for analysing key policy questions related to the Czech Republic’s...

The recent economic literature shows a new interest in the links between politics and economics. In this paper, we join Hibbs’ partisanship theory with the literature of fiscal policies international co- ordination. Furthermore, by considering a monetary union context, we also open a new angle...