Two or three decades from now, economic historians will note that a hallmark of successful transformation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) was the speed in which it became a non-issue for the body politic. A corollary of this is the expectation that, as formerly centrally planned economies...

This paper argues that Central Europe should draw the lessons from the Asian and Mexican crises: hard money and sound credit are essential in a world where capital is intensely mobile, contagion pervasive and the economic and social costs of crises nothing short of formidable. We argue that...

After the communist regimes collapsed throughout Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, they were replaced (at least initially) by relatively wide-ranging democracy. Measured by the indices of political freedom and civil liberties published by the Freedom House (see the Technical Annex for...

This paper investigates the appropriate exchange rate regimes, both prior to and following European Union accession, for those former centrally planned Central and Eastern European countries that are currently candidates for full membership in the European Union (1). The exchange rate regime is...

From the single-tiered banking system of the late 1980s, still ruled by the communist party, Eastern Europe's financial system has evolved towards one which EU countries have long been accustomed to. Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) are now on the brink of EU membership, and...

A healthy and developing financial sector is a key support to balanced and sustainable economic growth. And as the countries of central Europe - the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia - approach EU membership and ultimately adoption of the euro, the litmus test for financial...

Planned economies produced many goods and services - such as cars, electricity, and machinery - that did not differ fundamentally from those available in market economies. Certainly, the quality and variety of these goods and services did not reach Western standards and there was an almost...

Capital markets are - by definition - a fairly new phenomenon for countries that started embracing capitalism a little more than ten years ago. More specifically, the first securities exchanges in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) opened at the beginning of the 1990s and the last had been set up...

Recognising three main channels of economic integration (labour migration, trade flows, and FDI), this paper focuses on the employment effects of FDI in Europe, addressing, in particular, concerns that EU firms will relocate jobs to low-wage countries in Central and Eastern Europe at the expense...

Focussing on Europe, this paper starts with reviewing the main determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI); a key observation is that economic policies and non-policy factors contribute equally to the direction of FDI flows. The paper then examines the growth-FDI nexus: while a strong...