The transition paths from plan to market have varied markedly across countries. Central and Eastern European and the Baltic countries, which opted for a fast and profound transformation of their institutions including business climates, rapidly narrowed the productivity gap with advanced...

We find that productivity gains in tradables cause an appreciation of the real exchange rate via both tradable and nontradable prices in the CEE-5 and have no affect in the Baltic countries, while they lead to a depreciation of the real exchange rate of tradables in OECD economies that...

In this paper we present an overview of a number of issues relating to the equilibrium exchange rates of transition economies of the former soviet bloc. In particular, we present a critical overview of the various methods available for calculating equilibrium exchange rates and discuss how...

This paper investigates the importance of the Balassa-Samuelson effect for two acceding countries (Bulgaria and Romania), two accession countries (Croatia and Turkey) and two CIS countries (Russia and Ukraine). The paper first studies the basic assumptions of the Balassa-Samuelson effect using...