The paper considers the state of the ENP policy in the framework of the present institutional impasse of the EU. Even if the Lisbon Treaty enters in force, an acceptable functioning of the EU with 27 members can hardly be compatible with the permanence of the unanimity vote for the most...

This article presents Turkey-Europe relations starting with the 19th century up to the present day with a view to understanding the developments that shaped current EU policies toward Turkey. It also pays special attention to the Turkey-EU Customs Union Decision. After making an overall...

The European Union has not defined its limits in geographical terms. Each enlargement has led and will lead to a decrease of the European Union’s per capita GDP. After the collapse of the Soviet Union the transition countries went through a long and deep recession. However, they have reached a...

The project’s aim is to look beyond the journalistic flash stories and the repetitive high pathos analysis of EU's Balkan Enlargement and explore in depth the geopolitical implications of such an important development. In other words, this thesis looks at two major questions, and namely, what...

We analyze the effects of political business cycles and fiscal autonomy on the expenditure categories of Polish municipalities. Using System GMM technique, we find convincing evidence for strong political business cycles in almost all expenditure categories, and in particular for the categories...

The hybrid New Keynesian Phillips curve has been criticized for lacking a micro-foundation. In this paper, an alternative purely forward-looking model of the Phillips curve is constructed on the basis of a micro-foundation of trend inflation. In addition, another source of output gaps other than...

Through an investigation of selected jurisdictions, this paper aims to contribute to the extant literature in investigating the relationship between central bank independence and price stability, as well as how such a relationship varies between different jurisdictions – even though it is...

On the basis of an overview of theoretical and empirical studies on central banks’ independence, the paper assesses the independence of the central banks of the former USSR republics including the RF, as well as those of East European countries. An analysis of the potential existence of a...

Employing data from 13 Latin American countries, we find that greater central bank independence is associated with lesser intervention in the foreign exchange market, and also with leaning-against-the-wind intervention. We also find that the structural reforms that occurred in Latin America...

We reconsider Svensson’s inflation-targeting proposal in a model where the need to raise seigniorage revenues determines the socially optimal inflation rate and distortionary taxes cause the inflation bias. Interpreting the targets as contracts, we show that the interaction between fiscal and...