Following the economic and political reforms international private capital started flowing into the emerging market economies of Central and Eastern Europe reducing the official capital flows to the region. The composition of private capital flows showed continuous dominance of direct equity...

The nineties has been a period of increasing migratory flows from less developed countries to industrialized nations. It is instructive to compare the two largest economies in the world, the European Union and the United States, in terms of the magnitude, trends and composition of their...

This paper locates the collapse of East German communism in Marxist-Leninist monetary theory. By exploring the economic and cultural functions of money in East Germany, it argues that the communist party failed to reconcile its ideological aspirations ­ a society free of the social alienation...

"...It is impossible for any community to have very full employment and completely free collective bargaining and stable prices. Either one of the three will be completely sacrificed, or else all three will have to be modified." "...In the last resort the answer will be given not by economists...

Europe’s single currency is widely invoked as a potential solution to the monetary and exchange rate problems of other regions, including Asia, Latin America, North America and even Africa. This lecture asks whether the Europe’s experience in creating the euro is exportable. It...

Now that the decision has been taken to admit to the European Union eight of what were once called the transition economies, attention has naturally turned to whether these countries should also join Europe’s monetary union. But where is a consensus that joining the EU, while posing...

On January 1st, Europe’s monetary union will celebrate its fifth anniversary. Congratulations are not exactly pouring in. For going on two years, growth in the countries of the Euro Area has been significantly slower than in the United States. Unemployment over much of the continent...

When the red-green (SPD-Bündnis90/DieGrünen) coalition took over the federal government from the Christian-Democrat/Free-Democrat (CDU/CSU/FDP) coalition in 1998, tax reforms had a very high political priority. And, in fact, the government pushed through an astonishing number of far-reaching...

This paper reviews the controversy over Europe’s Stability and Growth Pact and offers a proposal for its reform. It argues that Europe would be best served by focusing on the fundamental causes of unsustainable debts — public enterprises that are too big to fail, unfunded public...