This paper investigates the speed of institutional development induced by European integration. The hypotheses are the following. The prospect for European countries to join the EU disposes them to strengthen their institutions, so that the speed of institutional development is high....

In this paper we analyze how the mutual interdependence of private sector expectations influences the stability offixed exchange rate regimes in different countries. When countries trade with one another, the crisis probabilities are interdependent because monetary policy in each country affects...

This paper examines the fiscal challenges that the new EU member states in Central and Eastern Europe (NEW-8) are facing that arise from both EU membership and from developments that are essentially independent of EU membership. While the direct fiscal strains caused by EU membership may appear...

This paper argues that the implications of globalization for monetary policy come mainly through two channels: On the one hand, the many structural changes, which are associated with the globalization process, cause an increase in uncertainty surrounding monetary policy. This leads to an...

Different goods are produced by different sectors in an economy. The fact that sectors use different production technologies is named technology-bias. The technology-bias is well documented and has important theoretical implications for economic growth and unemployment. We provide a theoretical...

There is nowadays a wide consensus among economists that central banks should be independent. The substantiation of this claim was derived from the modern theory of monetary policy and from empirical experiences with central bank independence, both concentrated on developed industrial countries....

This paper focuses on the challenges China is confronted with in the context of structural change. It first shows that the service sector in China is ‘relatively small’ compared with other developed and developing countries in their historical context of structural change. Then it discusses...