The paper examines the inflation targeting regime in the context of transition economies. Recent years have witnessed an increasing number of central banks in these countries moving towards the implementation of inflation targeting regimes. However, the success of such a regime depends largely...

What are the prospects for New Member States to join the euro-zone in the not too distant future? They seem to be in a catch-22 situation Because of the current financial crisis some Maastricht criteria would be more difficult to fulfil in the short and medium term, which would make it hard for...

In the late eighties, many developing countries followed the example of the most advanced countries and opened their capital account (K.A.) in an attempt to reap new gains from increased integration with the world economy. By 2000, after the wave of financial and currency crises that hurt the...

Romania's overall economic performance during the first ten years of transition can be termed so far as disappointing: the country has not been able to deliver steady growth, low unemployment and low inflation. This paper focuses on the effectiveness of monetary mechanisms and policies during...

Disinflation has been pursued successfully in Romania in recent years. Inflation came down from over 40 per cent in 2001 to 14 per cent in 2003 and is expected to be cca 9.5 per cent in 2004. By 2007 it should come down to around 3%. The benefits of a lowinflation environment are unquestionable,...

This paper develops two stylised models of the transitional economy that challenge to some extent, the conventional approach to policy-reforms. In the first model, the absence of market-oriented institutions is responsible for the occurrence of a non-cooperative equilibrium, where the amount of...

The paper interprets the dynamics of the underground economy in a transforming environment by highlighting the role of institutions in enforcing the rules of the game and the phenomenon of strain. A basic idea is that the underground economy emerges as a means for the system to diffuse its...

This study considers strain to be the main source of arrears; strain can be linked with the structure of the economy and the size of resource misallocation. The focus here is on the real side of the economy in explaining the growth of arrears and on exploring avenues for their reduction. Arrears...

A fundamental tenet in economic theory - which was confirmed by reality - is that a command system allocates resources poorly because of the impossibility of economic calculation'. Therefore, once prices are freed and start to operate at quasi-equilibrium (market-clearing) levels, the hidden...