This paper explores the impact of housing reforms on public rented housing in Eastern Europe, using Latvia and Ukraine as case studies. The focus on public housing is important, since in both countries municipalities and state institutions are the major social landlords. Rent structures are not...

The paper argues that the national and local authorities in Bulgaria do not utilize the vast experience accumulated by many developed and developing countries, the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (UNCHS) and the World Bank in providing housing for the poor and dealing with squatter...

Male life expectancy at birth fell by over six years in Russia between 1989 and 1994. Many other countries of the former Soviet Union saw similar declines, and female life expectancy fell as well. Using cross-country and Russian household survey data, we assess six possible explanations for this...

The proximity of the European Union, the prospect of membership, and actual entry by the New Member States (NMS) increased economic and financial integration in the region, leading to fast economic growth based on sizeable capital inflows. EU membership helped in developing sound macroeconomic...

Exchange rate flexibility has facilitated an impressively fast insertion of the Czech koruna and the Polish zloty into the global currency market. However, exchange rate volatility patterns differ: Lower volatility is observed for the koruna against the euro relative to the U.S. dollar, while...

The countries of Eastern Europe achieved two remarkable transitions in the short period of the last two decades: from plan to market and, then, in the run-up to and entry into the European Union, they rode a wave of global trade and financial market integration. Focusing on the second...

The aim of the paper is to understand the specifics of the interaction of two models of regional economic integration co-existing in Eastern Europe: the post-Soviet integration and the cooperation with the EU. The paper claims that institutional competition between integration projects may...

The starkly different histories and institutions in the eastern and western member states of the European Union (EU) suggest different roles of being non-native in these two regions. In this paper we study the roles of foreign origin and citizenship in the comparative East-West perspective. Our...

The central challenges facing the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia as they work to catch up to advanced European Union (EU) income levels are discussed in this new book. Focusing on the region’s growth performance, and outlining two...