This paper presents a model of development of an economy comprised of a rural-agricultural sector and an urban-industrial sector. The interaction of investment with unemployment creates a channel for potentially divergent long-run outcomes. If the urban-industrial capital stock falls short of a...

This Paper develops a framework for the analysis of the effects of institutions on economic performance in a monetary union in the presence of stabilization policy, unionized labour markets and monopolistically competitive price setting firms. Nominal wages are fixed contractually. In spite of...

The Great Recession has shattered the consensus on the benefits of capital account liberalization. Capital account controls have been introduced in several countries and have even been supported by the International Monetary Fund. In this paper we investigate whether capital account policies in...

The surge in the German current account surplus in the 2000s is often interpreted as the result of efficiency-enhancing structural reforms, especially in the labor market. However, this interpretation is puzzling because the growth rate of the German economy has been one of the lowest in the...

This paper presents new estimates of the economic benefits from economic and political integration. Using the synthetic counterfactuals method, we estimate how GDP per capita and labour productivity would have behaved for the countries that joined the European Union (EU) in the 1973, 1980s, 1995...

This paper offers empirical evidence showing that, relative to "normal" recessions, financial crises hit the labor market by either enhancing the degree of joblessness and/or by further depressing the real wage – a situation that the paper labels "wageless recovery." This holds for a sample of...

The relationship between economic and political liberalization has received a great deal of attention lately, yet the possibility of a non-linear relationship and the role of reversals remain largely neglected. Focusing on democratization and financial reform, this paper offers evidence for a...

Real exchange appreciation has been a common feature in transition economies since the launching of stabilization and reform programs at the beginning of the 1990s. Previous literature has described this phenomenon as an equilibrium adjustment that followed a sharp undervaluation at the start of...

The paper analyses the pressures on the pace of reform that can arise through fiscal constraints. A simple analytical framework is used to illustrate the relation between the budget deficit and the pace of restructuring, unemployment, and the relative dynamics of state and private firms. It is...

We discuss sources of volatility and vulnerability in the CEECs during the transition and leading up to EU accession. The Paper emphasizes the role of the transition shock as a source of extreme volatility on a much larger scale than the one observed during crises in emerging markets. The low...