Banking reform has proved to be one of the most problematic elements of economic transition in central and Eastern Europe. Therefore the paper considers the development of the Estonian banking sector and derives individual banks' fragility scores during transition. To this end we use...

This paper adds to the literature on wealth effects on consumption by disentangling house price effects on consumption for mainland China. In a stochastic modelling framework, the riskiness, rate of increase and persistence of house price movements have different implications for the...

This paper presents a theoretical framework analysing the signalling channel of exchange rate interventions as an informational trigger. We develop an implicit target zone framework with learning in order to model the signalling channel. The theoretical premise of the model is that interventions...

In this paper we analyse the impact of policy uncertainty on foreign direct investment strategies. The paper follows the real options approach, which allows to investigate the value to a firm of waiting to invest and/or disinvest, when payoffs are stochastic due to political uncertainty and...

The role of product market reforms in achieving the objective of higher employment and growth has recently received much attention amongst academics. The aim of this paper is to analyse some of the channels through which cross-market effects come about and to assess their policy relevance. The...

Labour costs in various European countries have reached a record high in recent years. The topic of non-wage labour costs is therefore increasingly being discussed among and between the political parties because non-wage labour costs are likely to have major negative effects on employment. We...

A common argument against monetary union is that it precludes stabilization of economies through monetary and exchange rate policy. The authors address this point by calculating the relative empirical importance of industry-specific, country-specific, and aggregate disturbances using a...

Labour costs in various European countries have reached a record high in recent years. The topic of non-wage labour costs is therefore increasingly being discussed among and between the political parties because non-wage labour costs are likely to have major negative effects on employment. We...