This article examines how corruption operates as a gendered informal institution that restricts women’s substantive political empowerment in post-socialist democracies. Focusing on North Macedonia, we argue that clientelism and male-dominated party networks function as gatekeeping mechanisms...

This study identifies the minimum economic and institutional conditions that candidate countries must meet to ensure macroeconomic stability, sustainable growth, and effective integration into the EU, under a politically accelerated enlargement process. In the area of external accounts,...

This report describes the bioeconomy policy developments in Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Kosovo*, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Moldova, Serbia, Türkiye and Ukraine, associated to the Horizon Europe Framework Programme. The work extends the geographic coverage of the...

The banking sector in the Western Balkan countries has changed dramatically in recent years. A variety of factors have contributed to these changes, such as economic growth, increased competition, and the implementation of new regulations. As a result, the profitability of the banking sector...

The Western Balkan economies have faced numerous external shocks in recent years, while simultaneously becoming more integrated with the European Union. This paper employs a global vector autoregressive (GVAR) model to estimate the spillovers of real, financial, monetary, and global commodity...

The population of North Macedonia has been steadily declining over the past two decades and is projected to continue to decline into the foreseeable future due to emigration. This paper estimates an expected cost of the population decline on potential output growth of around 0.5 percentage...

This Selected Issues paper examines the expected costs of the population decline on potential output growth in New Macedonia. The IMF estimates that the population decline would create a drag on output growth of around 0.5 percentage points. Increased emigration, potentially driven by further EU...

The 2025 Article IV Consultation discusses that economic growth in North Macedonia is gaining momentum in an environment of increased uncertainty. A credible fiscal strategy is essential to rebuilding buffers, reducing debt and ensuring compliance with fiscal rules. This is key to maintaining...