Central and East European countries (CEEC) differ significantly with regards to their economic performance despite the fact that external policy prescriptions are very similar in all these countries. Extreme diversity and fragility in the performance of the main economic variables such as GDP...

The coming enlargement of the European Union is an opportunity and a challenge for taking decisions on a substantial reform of its institutional framework. After the negative experience of the past Intergovernmental Conferences leading to the Treaties of Amsterdam and Nice, the preparation of...

On 1 May 2004 the EU will enlarge to 25 member states. Member states are uncertain what they will gain or lose from enlargement and they are concerned about the implications for the functioning of the EU. Talk is even of enlargement as a u0093leap in the darku0094. The reports in this study deal...

Within a two-step GARCH framework we explore the linkages between equity returns of ten sectors in the euro area, the United States and Japan, respectively. Our estimation framework allows a distinction to be made between spillover effects originating from one of the three currency areas and...

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, for West Germany, France, Italy and US, we econometrically select within a SVAR model some fiscal policy regimes, i.e. a u0094set of rulesu0094 for the implementation of fiscal policies. Second, we identify the fiscal policy shocks related to different...

There has been much discussion of the differences in macroeconomic performance and prospects between the US, Japan and the euro area. Using Markov-switching techniques, in this paper we identify and compare specifically their major business-cycle features and examine the case for a common...

This paper offers an alternative explanation for the behavior of postwar US inflation by measuring a novel source of monetary policy time-inconsistency due to Cukierman (2002). In the presence of asymmetric preferences, the monetary authorities end up generating a systematic inflation bias...