The Maastricht criteria for accession to the euro area can be difficult for any economy to achieve, not least because of the challenges posed by the “impossible trinity”, which suggests that it is not possible to target both a stable exchange rate and stable inflation at the same time as...

After nearly fifteen years of transition, the countries of Central Europe have entered the European Union on 1 May 2004. For the four countries that are members of the OECD (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovak Republic), accession follows multiyear efforts of economic stabilisation and...

In January 2009, the Slovak Republic will adopt the euro and become the 16th member of the euro area. This paper investigates the implications of euro adoption in the Slovak Republic for inflation and interest rates with an attempt to quantify their likely size as well as their consequences for...