Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) has transformed Europe and has created an integrated pan-European economy. Much research has focused on understanding this integration process and what benefits and costs it entails. This paper identifies a political economy channel of EMU as the monetary union...

We argue that the existence of large amounts of specific human capital makes costly and slows down the adjustment in the labor market after large reallocation shocks. To illustrate this point we build a theoretical framework in which young agents' career is heavily determined by initial...

In this paper we look at business cycles similarities between CEE countries and the euro area. Particularly, we uncover GDP-inflation cycles by adopting a trend-cycle decomposition model which allows the trend to be either stochastic or deterministic i.e. of the non-linear type. Once cyclical...

In this paper we argue that, for a group of converging economies of the European Union, participation in the euro area has been associated with easier access to financing by domestic economic agents. Easier access to financing was a significant impulse leading to a sharp increase in households'...

The monetary integration of the acceding countries will proceed in several distinct steps, starting with membership in the European Union (EU), followed by participation in the so-called Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) II and ultimately entry into the euro area. This paper addresses the question...

Is inflation persistence in the new EU Member States (NMS) comparable to that in the euro area countries? We argue that persistence may not be as different between the two country groups as one might expect. We confirm that one should work carefully with the usual estimation methods when...

We analytically derive optimal central bank portfolios in a minimum variance framework with two assets and quot;transaction demandsquot; caused by sudden stops in capital inflows. In this model, the transaction demands become less important relative to traditional portfolio objectives as debt to...

In this paper, we highlight the role of global value chains in the synchronization of economic activity between countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the euro area. We start off by demonstrating that the degree of synchronization of the business cycles of CEE countries and their main...

The EMU accession countries are obliged to fulfill the Maastricht convergence criteria prior to entering the EMU. This paper uses a DSGE model of a two-sector small open economy, to address the following question: how do the Maastricht convergence criteria modify optimal monetary policy in an...

What determines a country's ability to compete in international markets? What fosters the global competitiveness of its firms? And in the European context, have key elements of the EU strategy such as EMU and enlargement helped or hindered domestic firms' competitiveness in local and global...