Focusing on a very rich panel of exchange rate regimes in transition countries, this Paper asks the question of the appropriate exchange rate regime for countries aiming at joining the EU, that is, subsequently, the EMU. Four arguments plead in favour of the adoption of a fixed exchange rate...

This Paper reviews the pros and cons of an early EU enlargement towards Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs hereafter). First, the Maastricht criteria, which cannot be literally assessed during the catching up process, but that nevertheless mirror the huge efforts undertaken in order...

There are two opposite points of view on the link between economic integration and business cycle synchronization. De Grauwe (1997) classifies these competing views as 'The European Commission View' and 'The Krugman View'. According to the European Commission (1990), closer integration leads to...

This paper presents evidence for structural differences in economic growth dynamics between the current EU and the central- and eastern European accession countries. Two important results emerge from the analysis. First, accession countries have posted higher average growth and wider output...

A cikkben a szerzõk azt vizsgálják, hogy az EU-hoz 2004 óta csatlakozott tizenkét új tagállam az euróövezethez való csatlakozás szempontjából milyen mértékben felel meg az optimális valutaövezet elmélete (Optimal Currency Area, OCA) által támasztott kritériumoknak. Fõ...

This paper intends to fill two gaps in the Optimal Currency Area literature. First of all, Mundell's original idea has very little formalmodel theoretical underpinning. Second, it almost exclusively views countries contemplating monetary unification as single economies. We question this view and...

This paper examines the degree of trade integration and business cycle synchronisation between eight Balkan countries and the Euro area over the period 2000:1-2011:4. The main findings are that Slovenia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia exhibit a high level of openness relative to...

The former EU president Jean-Claude Junker has proposed that all countries of the European Union should also adopt the euro as their currency and recent research has shown that countries currently pursuing this goal indeed fulfill the classical Optimal Currency Area (OCA) criterion of positively...

The aim of this paper is to investigate business cycle synchronization between seven candidate countries to the Euro Area (EA) - Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Sweden - and the Euro Area (EA-12/EA-19), France and Germany. The Hodrick-Prescott filter is used to...

The present paper is concerned with the prospect of euro adoption in Romania. The study starts from the relevant literature of the Optimum Currency Areas and identifies the most widely acknowledged meta property and methodological model for this purpose: the SVAR Blanchard and Quah decomposition...