Cultural factors and especially common languages are well-known determinants of trade. By contrast, the knowledge of foreign languages was not explored in the literature so far. We combine traditional gravity models with data on fluency in the main languages used in EU and candidate countries....

We analyze the development of the Austrian, Dutch, German, Italian and Swedish trade structures (SITC two-digit levels) with Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic. We revealed that the increase of the intra-industry trade was a major feature of the trade...

Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (CESEE) had experienced an export boom as well as a surge in capital inflows up to the outbreak of the economic and financial crisis, which had a major negative impact on these two facets of the CESEE growth model. Did the long-term growth prospects of...

Slovakia joined the euro area after a period of unprecedented real appreciation. The response to financial crisis combined internal devaluation with productivity increasing measures, including capital deepening in the banking sector. Although this strategy was successfully restoring an external...

In light of the recent financial and economic crisis the present paper analyzes the determinants of loan default. We employ a unique firm-level panel data of 700 bank loans given to small and medium sized enterprises in Slovakia between 2000 and 2005 to investigate three loan default hypothesis....

We analyse trade between countries of the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance in Eastern Europe between 1950 and 1990. Despite central planning of the CMEA, we show that trade could be explained by standard demand factors surprisingly well. We document that the oil price crisis had several...