The integration of the central and eastern European countries into the international capital markets has been and will be determined by the process of European Union (EU) integration. Our analysis shows that southern and eastern European countries already appear to be surprisingly similar...

The main points of this paper are that the case for transitional import barriers for the EMEs is very weak; neither a discriminatory regional payments union nor a uniform import tariff nor a differentiated tariff schedule designed in accordance with the presumed adjustment difficulties are...

The standard literature lists three ways in which the Western industrialised countries could support the transformation process in Europe's emerging market economies (EMEs): technical assistance, financial aid and trade access (see i.a. World Bank 1991, p. iv) . Important as such support would...

This paper discusses the possible nature of a transformation crisis. The major point is that the institutional void which the collapse of socialism has left behind is a major cause of the slump. The wealth of developed economies, be they socialist or capitalist, springs from a complicated...

In developed market economies, banks and other financial institutions perform a variety of vital tasks: they mobilise savings and allocate funds to the optimal uses, they pool investment risks, they exploit scale economies in the evaluation and monitoring of borrowers, and they match the...

This paper surveys the theoretical and empirical evidence on capital account convertibility and assesses its relevance for the reform states of Central and Eastern Europe. Its major findings are that domestic investment conditions matter and that domestic policies can reduce the risk of an...

This paper applies the arguments of institutional economics to the issue of banking system reform. Institutional reforms are of particular importance in the financial sphere because banking operations were heavily restricted under central planning and, at the same time, banks are assigned a...

The development of financial markets in the emerging market economies of Eastern Europe is considered one of the crucial elements of the overall reform process. Under central planning, banks used to be passive recipients of orders from the planners; they did not engage in any credit screening...

The Eastern enlargement of the European Union (EU) is likely to give a further boost to trade and capital flows, yet empirical evidence on the possible magnitudes is still scarce. This paper uses four different datasets to estimate the determinants of international asset holdings and trade...