This paper examines the performance of 515 banks in 16 transition economies for the years 1994 - 99 based on their public financial accounts. We first examine lending behaviour and probability distribution of bank profitability to determine whether these banks exhibit behaviour and performance...

Countries in Eastern and Central Europe that are likely to join the European Union will eventually also join the European Monetary Union. The process of accession will entail a transition period at the end of which it is certain that the domestic currency will be replaced by the Euro. This paper...

The January 2001 proposal for a New Basel Capital Accord has renewed the interest in obtaining default probabilities for various types of borrowers. This paper uses a panel logit model to estimate default probabilities of 78 emerging market countries (1984-97) as a function of a set of economic...

This paper investigates the accountability of the independent monetary authority in the case of strategic interaction between the delegating authority (government) and the agent (central bank) in the policy game with complete information. As the unelected monetary authority is not the by-product...

This paper considers tax competition and tax harmonization in the presence of agglomeration forces and falling trade costs. With agglomerative forces operating, industry is not indifferent to location in equilibrium, so perfectly mobile capital becomes a quasi-fixed factor. This suggests that...

It is widely argued that Europe's unified monetary policy calls for the international coordination at the fiscal level. We survey the issues involved with such coordination of fiscal policy as a demand management tool and we use a simple model to investigate the circumstances under which...

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The paper looks for evidence of grease and sand effects in Europe, in particular the possibility that the natural rate of unemployment is affected run by the inflation rate. Looking at four countries, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland, the paper reports some preliminary evidence...

It is a widely observed fact that in many European countries, regions of low population density get subsidies that are not justified by their size. This paper throws some light on the effect of this phenomena on location of manufacturing activities. Considering a simple two-region economic...