Gauged against despair of global recession just weeks before the G-20 gathering, the London summit appeared a spectacular, historically unifying and "full-figured" success in modern international finance. However, this paper strives to take a closer look at the backstage nature and true...

Maastricht criteria are well known to be arbitrarily designed. To top it all off, times and again they’ve been only briefly fulfilled and –worse even- often manipulated with. Among them, fiscal criteria and overall Stability and Growth Pact are perhaps the most controversial of all, as...

Bitcoin, a peculiar crypto-currency has been the loudest buzzword in global finance over the last year or so, both for its spectacular and seemingly robust appreciation trend as well as for more recent equally ostentatious demise. After reviewing the history of bitcoin and specificities of its...

The purpose of this paper is to challenge couple of dangerous theoretical misconceptions in open-economy macro, namely, in respect to desirability or sustainability of available exchange rate regimes and inflation targeting framework and their mutual compatibility in small open economies with...

Contrary to mainstream opinions, with external deficit of more than 16% of GDP and foreign debt of 16 billion €, Serbia is at the verge of balance of payments crisis. It is most likely going to unravel as a sudden stop phenomenon, after which considerable real depreciation of national currency...

Twelve years into transition process, Serbia doesn’t have consistent, if any, let alone coherent economic development policy. This review is therefore aimed at Serbian (and alike transition countries’) policy-makers and stake-holders in an effort to distill the ever-green lessons available...

The chapter explores current stance of developments in Serbian credit market, by looking at credit aggregates and interest rates. Although, there are signs of weak credit market, full scale credit crunch is so far avoided thanks to efforts coordinated by the key stakeholders: IMF, National Bank...

This chapter studies the flow of funds and financial resilience of the banking industry in the Balkans in the face of the global financial crisis and the second great depression. After presenting the stylized facts in terms of standard variables like deposit potential, credit activity, capital...