The European Central Bank (ECB) recently became engaged in macro-prudential policies and the micro-prudential supervision of the largest Euro area banks. These new tasks should help complete financial integration, and make the Euro area more resilient to financial instability risks. However, the...

The paper discusses the issue of labor force mobility in a broad sense, and analyses how changes in social security policy and the structure of the social safety net (SSN) affects different aspects of labor force mobility. The text is structured as follows: Introduction, then follows Chapter 2,...

This paper seeks to disaggregate concerns about energy security within the wider European neighborhood from the nation-state to the household, and particularly to poor households in the transition and developing economies of the former Soviet Union. It argues that two decades of under-investment...

The paper discusses possible directions and magnitudes of the relationship between the social security driven tax wedge, employment and shadow employment in Russia and Ukraine. The first section presents a summary of the economic and institutional background for development of the current size...

This paper discusses the global financial crisis of 2008/9 in thirteen countries, the ten new EU members that previously were communist and the three countries of Western former Soviet Union. Their problems were excessive current account deficits and private foreign debt, currency mismatches,...