This paper offers empirical evidence that real exchange rate volatility can have a signi.cant impact on the long-term rate of productivity growth, but the effect depends critically on a country's level of financial development. For countries with relatively low levels of financial development,...

Despite the large output declines suffered by emerging Europe in 2008-09, a major currency and banking crisis was avoided. This paper argues that European economic and political integration was a mitigating factor in this. Cross-border banking groups, in particular, seem to have forestalled a...

This paper analyses the long term growth experiences of the eastern European accession countries and the effect of various tailored growth policies. We find that there are two overarching growth-enhancing policies that can substantially increase long-term growth: competition and the quality of...

Using industry-level data, this paper shows that the European transition region benefited much more strongly from financial integration in terms of economic growth than other developing countries in the years preceding the current crisis. We analyse several factors that may explain this finding:...

This paper presents a general equilibrium currency crisis model of the "third generation", in which the possibility of currency crises is driven by the interplay between private firms' credit-constraints and nominal price rigidities. Despite our emphasis on microfoundations, the model remains...

This paper presents a simple model of currency crises which is driven by the interplay between the credit constraints of private domestic firms and the existence of nominal price rigidities. The possibility of multiple equilibria, including a "currency crisis" equilibrium with low output and a...