The paper scrutinizes the role of wages and capital flows for competitiveness in the new EU member states in the context of real convergence. For this purpose it extends the seminal Balassa-Samuelson model by international capital markets. The augmented Balassa-Samuelson model is linked to the...

The paper scrutinizes the role of wages and capital flows for competitiveness in the new EU member states in the context of real convergence. For this purpose it extends the seminal Balassa-Samuelson model by international capital markets. The augmented Balassa-Samuelson model is linked to the...

Real exchange rates in the transition region have been relatively volatile over the past two decades, with major variation across countries and over time. In most countries, there was a shift between the pre-global crisis period, when the region saw significant real appreciation of currencies,...

The Balassa-Samuelson effect is usually seen as the prime explanation of the continuous real appreciation of central and east European (CEE) transition countries' currencies against their western counterparts. The response of a small country's real exchange rate to various shocks is derived in a...

This paper applies the NATREX model of equilibrium exchange rates to evaluate several key studies of the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) in general, with particular emphasis upon the Czech Republic and Hungary and with references to Poland and Bulgaria. On the basis of the NATREX...

We use a spatial model of endogenous growth to investigate the likely impact of discriminatory integration between two advanced insider countries on their own welfare as well as on the welfare of an outsider transition economy. A first point is that, since convergence in per capita income levels...

This paper reviews three different concepts of equilibrium exchange rates that are widely used in policy analysis and constitute the backbone of the IMF CGER assessment: the Macroeconomic Balance, the External Sustainability and the reduced form approaches. We raise a number of econometric...

This paper reviews three different concepts of equilibrium exchange rates that are widely used in policy analysis and constitute the backbone of the IMF CGER assessment: the Macroeconomic Balance, the External Sustainability and the reduced form approaches. We raise a number of econometric...

Equilibrium exchange rate theories (FEER, BEER and NATREX) make the assumption that the Real Equilibrium Exchange Rate (RER) is independent from internal equilibrium and economic policies. We develop a model in which economic policies depend on the minimisation of an intertemporal loss function...

This study analyzes the dynamics between real effective exchange rates and current account patterns from a novel perspective. We start by dissecting long-run and time-varying short-run dynamics between both variables. Following this, we extend our framework by including interest rates into our...