Pension systems and pension expenditures show large variations among countries worldwide. This variation appears to reflect mainly demographic factors and differences in the level of insurance protection, the latter tending to increase with the level of development. The focus of this paper is...

The difference between common law and French civil law countries fails to have a statistically significant effect on economic growth, whereas the difference between British and French colonies has a strong effect when the two pairs of institutional variables are included separately in...

This paper is focused on the development of a proper macroeconomic strategy in the process of Poland's accession to the European Monetary Union. It is argued that due to legal and political considerations Poland may not opt out from EMU participation. The country will however command net gains...

Labor migration from Eastern Europe and the member countries of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) to the Western countries became an important socio-economic issue. Since political systems and the nature of border management in these regions, migrations turned out to be a very complex and...

This paper examines the critical problems of international currency derivatives that have emerged in international financial markets over the past two years, emphasizing the departures of spot exchange rate movements from the macroeconomic fundamentals among the “triad” currencies: the U.S....

This paper discusses the link between the deficit bias in public finance and institutional settings. The Polish experience is put in a wider context and provides an extensive discussion of possible institutional reforms that may be implemented to stabilise the path of fiscal policy and reduce...

The dispersion in current account balances among countries in the euro area has widened markedly over the past decade-and-a-half, and especially since 1999. We decompose current account positions for euro area countries into intra-euro-area balances and extra-euroarea balances and examine the...

Institutional variables are the most important factor explaining real convergence. But what are institutions? This paper examines the relationship between institutions and policies, institutions and organisations, and formal and informal institutions. The concept of propelling and stabilizing...

In this paper the concept of total gross seigniorage is used to analyze sources of revenues of National Bank of Georgia (NBG) and their distribution in the period 1996.1999. A comprehensive framework for measuring total seigniorage and its main components is presented and estimates of...

There are diverse ideas about governance around the world, and this paper studies them through the following questions: (a) what does the available evidence tell us about the political and institutional requirements for sustained economic growth? (b) What do we need from the state to secure...