The purpose of this paper is to provide a comparative stock-taking exercise of recent banking sector developments in four current EU candidate countries (CC-4), namely the two acceding countries Bulgaria and Romania and the two negotiating candidates Croatia and Turkey. The paper finds that a...

The euro is already present throughout Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe today. Against this backdrop, the OeNB has been regularly conducting household opinion polls for years in the countries that make up this economic space. The survey questions place special emphasis on euro cash...

From June 12 to 14, 2008, the Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB) hosted a roundtable discussion on global imbalances at Weiîenbach/Attersee co-organized by the European Affairs and International Financial Organizations Division of the OeNB and the Reinventing Bretton Woods Committee (RBWC)....

In this paper we review the developments of prices in the Central and Eastern European EU accession countries between 1990 and 2001. The paper starts with an analysis of the short-term and long-term (dis)inflation dynamics. This is complemented by an appraisal of price level convergence. The...

The empirical literature has consistently rejected that the uncovered interest parity (UIP) theorem holds in practice, thus posing the well-known forward premium puzzle. In this study, we examine this issue for a sample of 18 emerging market currencies and, in addition, for a subsample of 6...

Credit to the private sector has risen rapidly in many Central and Eastern European EU Member States (MS) and acceding countries (AC) in recent years. The lending boom has recently been particularly strong in the segment of loans to households, primarily mortgage-based housing loans, and in...

This paper reviews financial stability challenges in the EU candidate countries Croatia, Turkey and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. It examines the fi nancial sectors in these three economies, which, while at very different stages of development and embedded in quite diverse economic...