The Paper is one of the first attempts to compute cyclical and structural deficits for a set of countries candidate to accession to the EU. Three main results are derived: first, the high deficits observed in candidate countries in recent years have a structural nature. Second, the fiscal stance...

The article develops the thesis that the EU Commission borrowed some features from the open method of coordination (OMC) in order to implement the 1997 reform of the fifth EU enlargement policy. Contrary to the thesis of enlargement conceived as a unilateral policy, I use tools of historical and...

Starting with May 1st 2004, EU integrated ten more countries that had received the “graduation diploma” of the exam for joining Europe on general basis. For Poland, Lithuania, Lithonia, Estonia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Malta, Cyprus, Slovakia, and Slovenia the harvest of that “marriage”...

Russia is shown to have every reason to seek special consideration of, as well as express its concerns over, the impact of the European Union's (EU) eastern enlargement. The latter relate, in particular, to the current and expected negative repercussions of the changes in the political and...

Joining the European Union club implies, among many other policy changes, full integration of Romania's economy into EU's customs union. This is expected to have significant implications for domestic farmers and food processors. The paper constructs a single-country Applied General Equilibrium...

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...

Here the author empirically estimates if the different monetary and exchange rate frameworks observed in the Accession Countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltics do yield different outcomes in terms of level and variance of a set of nominal and real variables. The author follows and...

Over the last two decades entrepreneurship and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have emerged as the engines of economic and social development throughout the world. SMEs are now considered as important drivers behind the growth and creation of employment, economic growth and increased...