This study examines the key drivers of sovereign default risk in five euro area periphery countries and three euro-candidates that are currently pursuing independent monetary policies. We argue that the recent proliferation of sovereign risk premiums stems from both domestic and international...

This paper analyses capacity building and institutional development in the banking and capital market sectors of formerly planned economies in Central and Eastern Europe. While the existing literature mostly addresses the specific situation of banks and capital markets in a particular country or...

This study examines the impact of various monetary policy regimes on the ability to lower inflation and exchange rate risk premiums in the EU accession countries as they undergo monetary convergence to the eurozone. It proposes a monetary policy framework of flexible targeting of relative...

We advocate a dynamic approach to monetary convergence to a common currency that is based on the analysis of financial system stability. Accordingly, we test empirically volatility dynamics of the ten-year sovereign bond yields of the 2004 EU accession countries in relation to the eurozone...

This study proposes an extension to the inflation targeting framework for Poland that takes into consideration the exchange rate stability constraints imposed by the obligatory participation in the ERM2 on the path to the euro. The modified policy framework is based on targeting the differential...

A monetary policy framework based on targeting a relative inflation-forecast is proposed for the economies converging to the euro. Such strategy aims at containing the differentials between the domestic and the implicit monetary union inflation-forecasts. Hence, these differentials become a...

This paper quantifies transparency of monetary policy in the three EU New Member States that have adopted direct inflation targeting strategy. Two measures of transparency are applied. The institutional measure reflects the extent to which a central bank discloses information that is related to...