This paper empirically assesses how democratization affects real exchange rates. By doing this, we combine so far separated strands of the economic literature and argue that democratization reduces currency undervaluation leading to a real exchange rate appreciation. We test this hypothesis...

We analyze business cycle convergence in the EU by focusing on the decoupling vs. convergence hypothesis for central, eastern and south eastern Europe (CESEE). In a nutshell, we fnd that business cycles in CESEE have decoupled considerably from the euro area (EA) during the financial crisis in...