We analyze business cycle convergence in the EU by focusing on the decoupling vs. convergence hypothesis for central, eastern and south eastern Europe (CESEE). In a nutshell, we fnd that business cycles in CESEE have decoupled considerably from the euro area (EA) during the financial crisis in...

Using the IMF CGER methodology, we make an assessment of the current account and price competitiveness of the Central Eastern European Countries (CEEC) that joined the EU between 2004 and 2014. We present results for the “Macroeconomic Balance (MB)” approach, which provides a measure of...

Our objective is to examine empirically the behavior of foreign banks regarding real loan growth during a financial crisis for a set of countries in which these banks dominate the banking sectors due primarily to having taken over large existing former state-owned banks. The eight countries are...

We assess the correlation of supply and demand shocks between current countries in the euro area and EU accession candidates from 1993/1995 to 2002.Supply and demand shocks are recovered from estimated structural VAR models of output growth and inflation. Notably, the economic slowdown between...

The aim of paper is to analyse the vulnerability of the Central and Eastern European accession countries to the EU as well as that of Turkey and Russia to a financial crisis. Our methodology is an extension of the signals approach. We develop a composite indicator to measure the evolutin of of...

​The dynamic banking reforms of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) following the collapse of the Soviet Union provide an ideal research setting for examining the causal effect of institutional development on financial reporting. Using five earnings quality measures, we consistently find that...

Using a novel way to identify relationship and transaction banks, we study how banks' lending techniques affect funding to SMEs over the business cycle. For 21 countries we link the lending techniques that banks use in the direct vicinity of firms to these firms' credit constraints at two...

This paper makes an empirical examination of the relationship between fiscal balance and structural reforms using panel data from 25 transition economies. The results indicate that price liberalisation has a positive impact on fiscal performance, while privatisation and restructuring, via...

An integrated stochastic macroeconomic model of transition economy at the early stage of reforms with optimising representative risk averse agents is constructed. The equilibrium growth rate of the economy, real asset returns, domestic money demand, and expected inflation rate are determined as...

This paper reviews issues associated with quasi-fiscal operations (QFO) of central banks in a sample of countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The concern is the problem of transparency in fiscal and monetary accounts when the central bank undertakes quasi-fiscal...