The 1997 collapse of the Albanian economy caused by the collapse of economy-widePonzi schemes contrasts sharply to itssuccess status as a post-socialist transition country in the years 1992-1996. Inthis paper, an attempt is made to explain this'Albanian Paradox'. The specific Albanian conditions...

This paper evaluates the strength of social and economic forces that affect the pressure to emigrate 'out of Africa' for four distinctly different African countries (Morocco, Egypt, Senegal and Ghana). In general, great expectations about attaining a higher living standard and expected low job...

This paper studies the connection between trade and growth in the context of a partial and inconsistent liberalization process in a specific Eastern European country in transition towards market economy, namely, the Republic of Belarus. The analysis of the country trade patterns during the USSR...

Total Factor Productivity (TFP)is often used on the macro-economic level as an indicator of changes in efficiency of a country. In many transition economies TFP is seen to have been negative the last decade of the plan economy and starts increasing and become positive after a (quite a) few years...

Here the author empirically estimates if the different monetary and exchange rate frameworks observed in the Accession Countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltics do yield different outcomes in terms of level and variance of a set of nominal and real variables. The author follows and...

Identification of the entrepreneur's economic function has engaged economistsfor more than 200 years. In this paper we address the issue of entrepreneurship intwo distinct ways: a) as it has historically developed within the field of economicsand b) as it develops in the transitional context. In...

In this paper we derive a market value for Guaranteed Annuity Optionusing martingale modeling techniques. Furthermore, we show how to construct a static replicating portfolio of vanillainterest rate swaptions that replicates the Guaranteed Annuity Option. Finally, we illustrate with historical...

We model and measure simultaneous large losses of the market value of insurers to understand the impact of shocks on the insurance sector. The downside risk of insurers is explicitly modelled by common and idiosyncratic risk factors. Since reinsurance is important for the capacity of insurers,...

This discussion paper has led to a publication in <A href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001429211200044X">'European Economic Review'</A>, 56(4), 669-90.<P>We investigate the presence of moral hazard and advantageous or adverse selection in a market for supplementary health insurance. For this we specify and estimate dynamic models for health insurance...</p></a>

We study the dependence between the downside risk of European banks and insurers. Since the downside risk of banks and insurers differs, an interesting question from a supervisory point of view is the risk reduction that derives from diversification within large banks and financial...