The purpose of his paper is to evaluate the empirical relevance of real convergence on the process of nominal convergence for the new EU Member States. We discuss two of the main channels through which real convergence could affect relative prices with respect to the euro area productivity...

An important stylized fact to emerge from the VAR estimates is that exogenous monetary policy shocks (also labelled unsystematic monetary policy) have a delayed, persistent, hump shaped effect on in.ation. I argue that this empirical pattern is fragile. In particular it disappears when one...