In 1991, the rate of inflation in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland was between 35% and 70%. At the end of 2001, it is below 8%. We setup a small structural macro model of these economies to explain the process of disinflation. Contrary to a widespread skepticism, which permeated a large...

During the last decade, economists have intensively searched for evidence on the importance of the Balassa-Samuelson (B-S) hypothesis in explaining nominal convergence. One general result is that B-S can at best explain only part of the excess inflation observed in the European catching-up...

The Balassa–Samuelson (B–S) hypothesis suggests that, in catching-up countries, inflation will be comparatively higher, as prices of non-traded goods “catch up” with the growth of productivity in the tradable goods sector; as a result, these countries will experience real appreciation....

We model empirically the role of labor market institutions in affecting the response of inflation to labor market and exchange rate shocks in the EU. We adopt a simple Phillips curve framework, treating separately the sectors producing traded and non-traded goods. Our results show that labor...

We consider the transitions among intragenerational and alternative intergenerational financing and liquidity risk sharing mechanisms, in an overlapping generations model with endogenous levels of long-lived investments. The existence and characterization of a self-sustaining mechanism, stable...

We measure the amount of central bank seigniorage generated in three economies in transition and inquire to what extent seigniorage ultimately accrues to the government. We relate our findings to the institutional environment of the three countries. We find that, in parallel to the process of...

We measure the amount of central bank seigniorage generated in three economies in transition and inquire to what extent seigniorage ultimately accrues to the government. We relate our findings to the institutional environment of the three countries. We find that, in parallel to the process of...

The transition process has had different distributional impacts across different interest groups and countries. These have led to differences in the support for transition. In this paper, we study support attitudes for both the economic and political transition using data from the New Barometer...