The process of European Union (EU) integration proceeds from economic to political integration. The economic integration itself proceeds from trade to financial to complete market integration. The sustainability of the process depends on some causal relation existing between economic and...

The objective of this paper is to assess how the level of unionisation and the rigidity of the exchange rate affects wages and monetary policy in South-East Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, with a particular focus on the recent economic crisis. Towards that end, a New Keynesian...

Higher global grain output but still fairly high food prices (by Zdenek Lukas; pp. 1-4) Keywords agricultural production, demand for food, food prices, biofuels Countries covered Wider Europe Topics Sectoral studies The speed of catch-up depends on human capital (by Roman Stöllinger; pp. 5-9)...

Summary Despite near stagnation in the euro area and the negative impact of the Ukraine crisis, in most of the NMS economies and some of the Western Balkan countries growth prospects are viewed as positive. While the NMS economies will preserve their positive growth differential vis-à-vis the...

The report analyses recent economic developments and short- and medium-term development prospects, covering the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Southeast Europe including Turkey, together with Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and China. Separate chapters present an overview of...

After a period of exceptionally high growth in the whole region of Central, East and Southeast Europe in the past two years, there has been some slowdown in GDP growth. Nevertheless growth remains largely robust. In particular the new member states of the EU (NMS) appear to be largely decoupled...

Summary · Grouping the regions of the EU-15 and the new member states (NMS, including Bulgaria and Romania) into five clusters according to the relative importance of broad sectors of activity reveals marked differences in the regional economic structure and development. · In capital cities...

Under favourable external conditions, the economies of the New EU Member States (NMS) fared even better in the first quarter of 2006 than in 2005. Investment accelerated sharply and industry is proving buoyant. Labour productivity has registered strong gains, unit labour costs declined. This is...

In an international comparison, CEECs show a relatively strong economic growth performance coming close to that of the first and second tier of Asian Tiger countries over the past decade, which emerge as the best growth performers (setting aside China). In recent years the CEECs' dynamic growth...

In its new special issue on the economies of Central, East and Southeast Europe, The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (wiiw) analyses the current economic situation in the region as well as development prospects for 2005 and 2006, presenting revised forecasts based on results...