The Permanent Income Hypothesis (PIH) entails that consumption reacts more strongly to persistent than to temporary income shocks. This prediction is tested using data from the Estonian Household Budget Surveys for 2002-2007. The dataset contains questions which make it possible to distinguish...

The Euro Plus Pact was approved by 23 EU countries in March 2011. The Pact stipulates a range of quantitative targets meant to strengthen competitiveness and convergence with the ultimate aim of preventing the accumulation of unsustainable financial imbalances. This paper uses Granger causality...

This article analyses the time series properties of the fiscal balance in the 10 EU countries from Central and Eastern Europe. The persistence of the fiscal balance is analysed by means of unit root tests that account for possible nonlinearities and structural changes. The linear and nonlinear...

This paper analyses the dynamics of the unemployment rate in the eight countries from Central and Eastern Europe which joined the EU in 2004. Unit root tests allowing for nonlinearities and structural changes suggest that the unemployment rate is not stationary in most of the sample countries....

This paper analyses managerial dishonesty in the form of economic activity not reported to the authorities. We employ data from a survey of Baltic firm managers, who were asked to assess the prevalence of unreported profits, employment and wages in their industry and to give their views on a...

This paper examines the impact of European Union (EU) enlargement on the process of political and economic reforms in postcommunist countries. The main result is that both prospective and actual membership have advanced democratic reforms, while the effect on market-economic reforms has been...

This paper examines the empirical validity of the covered interest parity (CIP) hypothesis in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. Before the global financial crisis, CIP was mostly satisfied for the first three countries but not for Romania. During and after the crisis, deviations...

This paper analyses the time series properties of the fiscal balance in the 10 EU countries from Central and Eastern Europe. The persistence of shocks in the variable is analysed by means of unit root tests that account for the possibility of non-linearities and structural changes. The results...

After the global financial crisis, some governments in the EU experienced serious debt financing problems, while others were less affected. This paper seeks to shed light on the divergent fiscal performance by assessing the fiscal conduct in the EU countries before and after the outbreak of the...