This chapter offers a framework to analyse the impact of EU membership on economic ("means"), institutional ("ways") and social ("ends") convergence of EU11 countries to the frontier. It identifies the channels through which this impact works: trade, investment, finance, migration and...

In the first decade of EU membership, the Hungarian economy was unable to take advantage of the economic potential of the accession. The expansion of export markets and rapidly deepening financial integration opened up new growth opportunities, but the improved access to external financing...

This paper examines financial market comovements across European transition economies and compares their experience to that of their regions. Correlations in monthly indices of exchange market pressures can partly be explained by direct trade linkages, but not by measures of other fundamentals....

This paper compares Hungary’s experience with sterilization with that of other capital inflow episodes. The study focuses on the short-run impact of sterilization on monetary policy. The empirical data indicate that sterilized interventions by the National Bank of Hungary (NBH) were not...

The paper analyzes common issues emerging from the recent experience with Fund-supported programs in Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania. These comprise the initial price-overshooting and the output collapse, fiscal sustainability as well as the financial and structural...

This paper investigates the currency reforms undertaken subsequent to the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918. The reforms were motivated by the lack of coordination of monetary policy and the absence of a rule for sharing seigniorage. Because the Successor States’ reforms were...

As the countries of Eastern and Central Europe transform their economies from centrally–planned to market–oriented, the question of the role that the governments should play in mobilizing savings to ensure a high growth rate must be addressed. This paper argues that the issue of a good...