During the last decade the development of the banking sectors in CEC5 countries was greatly determined by increasing presence of foreign banks. Foreign banks played a significant role in privatising, re-capitalising and modernising the banking sectors in the region. In this sense they...

This paper, using a stochastic dynamic general equilibrium framework, considers how a small open EMU accession country should choose its Euro conversion rate. In this model a monetary union is interpreted as a perfectly credible infinite nominal exchange rate peg, and an algorithm is provided...

It is generally recognized that countries wanting to join a monetary union should display the optimal currency area properties. One such property is the similarity of business cycles. We therefore undertook to analyze the synchronization of business cycles between the EMU and eight new EU...

This paper provides a statistical analysis of the components of real exchange rate in Hungary for the period 1991-1996. The real exchange rate is decomposed into a tradable and a nontradable rate. The following main conclusions are valid: 1. The Balassa-Samuelson effect, which presumes a real...

In this paper, I examine the exchange rate exposure of Hungarian enterprises from a financial stability perspective. In connection with the recent growth in FX loans to enterprises, the central bank assesses the vulnerability of the banks’ loan portfolio to changes in the exchange rate. To...

This paper examines the interaction between minimum wage legislation and tax evasion by employed labor. I develop a model in which firms and workers may agree to report less than the true amount of earnings to the fiscalauthorities. I show that introducing a minimum wage creates a spike in the...

This paper proposes a simple and transparent methodology for decomposing changes in the aggregate labour force participation rate over time into changes in the labour force participation behaviour of different population groups and changes in each group’s population share. Unlike traditional...

Differences in financial systems are often named as a prime candidate for the current state of global imbalances. This paper argues that the process of capital liberalization can explain a substantial fraction of the US net external liabilities. We present a simple two-country model with an...

We investigate the relation between the EUR/HUF exchange rate on the one hand and news announcements and order flow on the other hand using intraday data. We extend the existing literature on foreign exchange market microstructure by considering a small open transition economy. We find that the...

In April 2003, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision published the third consultative paper (CP3) of the new Basel Capital Accord relating to the prudential regulation of banks, which was followed in July 2003 by the EU Commission’s draft directive with the same contents, but slightly...