A healthy and developing financial sector is a key support to balanced and sustainable economic growth. And as the countries of central Europe - the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia - approach EU membership and ultimately adoption of the euro, the litmus test for financial...

Capital markets are - by definition - a fairly new phenomenon for countries that started embracing capitalism a little more than ten years ago. More specifically, the first securities exchanges in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) opened at the beginning of the 1990s and the last had been set up...

This paper shows that countries with weak banking system and fiscal institutions, should benefit from the presence of foreign banks, which can constitute a commitment and transparency device. Foreign banks can also reduce the probability of self-fulfilling speculative attacks. A strong presence...