The unemployment rate in Estonia rose sharply in 2010 to one of the highest levels in the EU, after the country entered a severe recession in 2008. While the rate declined relatively rapidly in 2011, it remained high especially for the less educated. In 2009, the Employment Contract Law relaxed...

Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia face challenges competing on the global markets, as shown by their relatively low and stagnant export shares. The limited export competitiveness has hampered external demand, growth and employment. Applying, for the first time to North Africa, the stock-flow approach...

This paper develops a model of costly firm creation in an economy with weak institutions, costly business environment as well as skill gaps where one of the equilibrium outcomes is a low-productivity trap. The paper tests the implications of the model using a cross-sectional dataset including...

The validity of the Balassa-Samuelson effect seems to be something of a stylized fact for transition countries. This article addresses the question as to whether the productivity bias hypothesis holds for the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia between 1991 and 2000. In so...

The enlargement of the European Union raises a series of questions related to new member states' entry to the EU's exchange rate mechanism II (ERM II) and their subsequent adoption of the euro. This paper considers how to determine the best initial central parity for new EU member states from...