This paper discusses the eastward enlargement process of the EU in the framework of a simple war of attrition bargaining game. Both players - the existing EU members and the applicants - benefit from enlargement, yet for the applicants reform to the acquis is costly, while the EU prefers...

Soft budget constraints (SBCs) are a persistent feature of transition economies and have been blamed for i.a. a lack of fiscal consolidation and sluggish growth. EU eastward enlargement has - among other things - been conditioned on tackling SBCs. This paper analyzes such outside conditionality...

This paper studies a particular aspect of the choice of exchange rate regime by EU candidate countries in the run-up to membership of European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The fact that these countries have adopted various exchange rate systems reflects a divergence of opinion on the...

Im vorliegenden Papier wird der Frage nachgegangen, welche Anpassungsprozesse sich in einem Zielzonensystem – wie etwa dem WKM II – ergeben, wenn der reale Wechselkurs der Inlandswährung unter Aufwertungsdruck gerät. Die modelltheoretische Grundlage bildet das Krugman’sche Grundmodell...

The paper scrutinizes the role of wages and capital flows for competitiveness in the new EU member states in the context of real convergence. For this purpose it extends the seminal Balassa-Samuelson model by international capital markets. The augmented Balassa-Samuelson model is linked to the...