When nontraded goods prices are accounted for consistently and genuine stock data on bilateral foreign asset holdings is employed, a modified sticky-price exchange rate model by far outperforms the benchmark random walk-model in empirically forecasting the D-mark/dollar parity out of sample....

The effectiveness of NATO conditionality for institutional reforms is highly controversial. Some papers argue that any effect this conditionality might have had may be due to endogeneity effects, i.e. NATO may have picked the winners. We argue that this is not the case. First, NATO-Mazedonia...

Processes of regional economic integration have been shaping the economic relations between countries significantly during the last decades. In addition, an increasing integration of the national economies into the global economy has affected these economic relations, too. In an effort to...

International activities of commercial banks are a potential source for the transmission of shocks across countries. In Europe, bank finance plays a relatively important role, and efforts have been made at creating a level playing field for financial institutions. This paper reviews the stylized...

Germany has about the same proportion of foreigners in its population as the United States, it is an immigration country. In a way, Germany has let immigration happen, but it did not really have an explicit immigration policy in the past. Now it has to make up its mind on its immigration policy...

This paper examines the FDI flows towards two regions in the periphery of Europe: the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) and the countries of Southern Europe. We investigate whether evidence exists for FDI diversion from Southern Europe to the CEECs. A cursory observation of recent...

The member states of the European Union have given up sovereignty in quite a number of policy areas and subjected themselves to joint decisionmaking at the European level. Policy instruments are no longer available nationally in many policy areas, including monetary policy, trade policy, the...

With twelve new members the decision making in the European Union via intergovernmental cooperation will become ineffective. In order to avoid a Stagno-Europe the EU has a choice: Either it looks for the very essentials in the common institutional frame or the member states agree in ceding...

This paper examines the transition process within Eastern Europe and the integration process with the EU and shows that the requirements for the transition towards a market economy overlap with the requirements for EU accession. Furthermore, the economic situation of the candidate countries is...

The process of European integration has gained considerable momentum during the past couple of years. This paper provides an assessment of the degree of integration of both the accession states of central and eastern Europe and of the pre-ins for monetary union with respect to Germany. Using...