During the transition from central planning to market economies now under way in Eastern Europe, output levels first collapsed by 40 to 50 percent in most countries, then staged a modest recovery in the last two years. Longer-term revival of growth requires a resumption of investment and thus,...

The authors assess the presence and extent of involuntary savings by comparing the predicted savings rates of market economies with those of the pre-transition economies. On balance, predicted savings rates fell short of actual savings rates, especially for the former Soviet Union and the...

Export firms are often assumed to stabilize destination market prices in the face of nominal exchange rate changes in order to protect market share. We show that standard tests of such pricing to market fail to discriminate against the alternative hypothesis of menu costs. As a case study, we...

We explore household savings decision in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Poland during the transition from plan to market, finding four main results. First, except for the age profile, the effects of standard determinants on savings are comparable for transition and market economies. Second, we do not...

The paper examines the effects of terms of trade movements and productivity differentials across sectors on the behavior of the real exchange rate. We develop a simple model of a small open economy producing exportable and nontradable goods and consuming importable and nontradable goods and...

The transition economies of Eastern Europe almost uniformly experienced a precipitous plunge in savings rates - from levels above 30 percent of GDP to levels about half that - early in the transition, before rebounding slightly. Did savings collapse because involuntary savings were eliminated...

In Bulgaria, Hungary, and Poland, the higher the relative household income is, the higher the savings rate is. But, surprisingly, savings rates appear to be unaffected by either sector of employment (public or private) or form of employment. Savings rates are significantly higher for households...

A large body of literature finds that exporters do not pass nominal exchange rate movements fully through to destination market prices over short time horizons. This imperfect passthrough has been widely attributed to strategic quot;pricing-to-marketquot;, whereby exporters deliberately accept...

Recent moves towards greater monetary integration in Western Europe - and disintegration in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union - have rekindled interest in the theoretical and empirical aspects of optimal currency area (OCA). In this paper, we examine the marginal benefit of increasing...

Real exchange rate variability tends to be higher under flexible than under fixed exchange rates. The neokeynesian view attributes the higher variability to the combination of volatile nominal exchange rates with sticky prices. The neoclassical approach regards an increased incidence of real...