Progress in achieving institutional changes should be evaluated through the prism of their influence on the development abilities of the relevant country. In Poland, during 20 years of comprehensive systemic shift, GDP increased more than in any other postsocialist country. To judge the...

Tunisia's recent growth and development performance relative to countries in its region, and relative to countries at similar levels of development in other parts of the world, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, have been notable. An analysis of Tunisia's path to development reveals that the...

We examine how institutional and policy reforms affect the relationship between entrepreneurship and growth. We perform Arellano-Bond GMM estimations on annual data (over the period 1990-2002) from a large group of developing countries and focus in particular on the interplay between policy and...

Most small island economies or microstates have distinctly different characteristics from larger developing economies. They are more open and vulnerable to external and environmental shocks, resulting in high output volatility. Most of them also suffer from locational disadvantages. Although a...

This paper discusses alternative adjustment patterns in Bolivia over the last three decades using a SAM-based model that explicitly separates formal from informal activities, includes separate accumulation balance adjustments for different economic agents, differentiates closures by periods of...

Eastward enlargement is one of the hot topics in European economics. The accession of central and eastern European Countries (CEEC) into the European Union (EU) is accompanied by an extension of the eurozone to this region. This paper surveys likely outcomes and challenges of this specific...

The main topic of the paper is optimal dynamics, i.e., timing of entry of the accession countries in the ERM 2 and EMU. Some of the crucial questions addressed in the paper are as follows: a) Should accession countries aim at an early or a delayed entry into the EMU? b) What are economic and...

We perform an empirical investigation of the macroeconomic consequences of international terrorism and interactions with alternative forms of collective violence. Our analysis is based on a rich unbalanced panel data set with annual observations on 177 countries from 1968 to 2000, which brings...

The European Union (EU) accepted ten new member states (NMS) in 2004. These countries, mostly former socialist countries, have had to adjust their economic policies to the EU's standards. Perhaps most difficult has proven to be fiscal policy whereby NMS must comply with the Stability and Growth...

In this paper, we set out to examine an efficient fiscal-policy framework for a monetary union. We illustrate that fiscal policy's bias toward budget deficit only temporarily ceased at the end of the 20th century as European countries endeavored to qualify for euro-zone membership, which...