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This study investigates causal dynamics between crude oil prices and exchange rates in Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary by employing monthly data from the beginning of flexible exchange regime in each country to December 2011. The study benefits from the recent advance in the time series econometric analysis and carries out linear causality, non-linear causality, volatility spillover and frequency domain causality tests. The frequency domain causality analysis results imply that oil price fluctuations affect real exchange rates in the long run in Poland and Czech Republic. On the other hand, frequency domain causality test results indicate that oil price fluctuations do not affect exchange rate in any period in Hungary despite its economy’s high imported energy dependency. Key words: Oil prices-exchange rates relationship, Transition countries, Frequency domain.JEL: C32, F31, F41, Q43.

This paper analyzes the behavior of Central and Eastern European migrants regarding money remitting to their country of origin and is based on data provided by the National Immigrant Survey of Spain. In order to analyze the impacts of migrants? demographic and economic characteristics on remitting behavior, the variables employed in the econometric model referred to individual factors, factors that evaluate the migrant?s links with the native country and those that account for the degree of migrant?s integration in Spain. The factors showing a stronger attachment to relatives and the country of origin have a positive impact on the decision to remit and on the remitted amounts, while the factors that point to the integration of the migrant into Spanish society have a negative and smaller impact on the remitting decision.

Summary: This paper investigates the long-run and short-run relationship between deposit euroization in twelve European post-transition economies and two determinants of deposit euroization that are under the influence of monetary policy: the exchange rate and the interest rate differential. The link between deposit euroization, exchange rates and interest rate differentials is investigated using Johansen cointegration and error correction models for each country separately. The results suggest that changes in both monetary drivers have significant effects on deposit euroization and are therefore important for explaining and fighting deposit euroization. Differences between exchange rate regimes, fixed and managed vs. floating, seem to matter for deposit euroization. The latest economic crisis, aggravated by large currency depreciations in some European post-transition countries and massive defending of hard pegs in others, has emphasized the severity of high financial euroization (FE). FE is not just a temporary consequence of macroeconomic instability experienced in the first period of transition, but a long-lasting phenomenon in almost all European post-transition countries. For twelve countries that record very high FE levels, we investigate two monetary determinants of deposit euroization (DE): the interest rate differential and the exchange rate. We show how DE reacts to changes in those variables and how those responses differ depending on the level of DE and the exchange rate regime in the observed country. This study provides new insights into the relationship between DE and its drivers and unveils the relationship between DE and monetary policy, more specifically central banking. We choose monetary policy because it is most closely related to financial system stability and as such to FE. In addition, this research gives insights into the correlation between the type of the exchange rate regime (fixed vs. floating) and DE, providing a good base for designing deeuroization policies. Lastly, this study considers country-specific characteristics and it includes periods after 2008 marked by strong depreciatory pressures in most countries we explore. Our study extends the research by Marijana Ivanov, Marina Tkalec, and Maruska Vizek (2011) who use similar variables and data samples but for one country only.

This paper investigates the short to medium-term empirical relationships between the current account balances and a broad set of macroeconomic determinants in Serbia and selected CEE countries. Using novel model averaging techniques we focus the analysis to individual country?s data only. The results suggest that the model tracks the current account movements over the past decade quite well and captures its relative volatility. Signs and magnitudes of different coefficients indicate significant heterogeneity among countries providing empirical support for the country-level analysis.

This article assesses country-risk of sixteen Central, Baltic and South-East European transition countries, for 2005 and 2007, using multivariate cluster analysis. It was aided by the appropriate ANOVA (analysis of variance) testing and the multicriteria PROMETHEE method. The combination of methods makes for more accurate and efficient country-risk assessment. Country risk classifications and ratings involve evaluating the performance of countries while considering their economic and socio-political characteristics. The purpose of the article is to classify, and then find the comparative position of each individual country in the group of analyzed countries, in order to find out to which extent development of market economy and democratic society has been achieved.

While a bulk of economic theoretical and empirical research deals with various aspects of financial liberalization, there is far less research devoted to the measurement of financial liberalization. In this paper we calculate an index of financial liberalization in 18 transition countries in the Central, Eastern and South-East Europe (CESE) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). This index was previously developed in works of Aaditya Mattoo (1999) to measure financial liberalization that the WTO member countries have committed to. We make a slight modification to scaling to take into account the specific aspects of CESE and CIS countries and also apply the index to a non- WTO member (Serbia) using its currently applied regime. In this paper we will examine the influence of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) framework on liberalization commitments in financial services sector in the target countries.

This paper aims at reviewing selected literature on (1) structural financial changes observed in a large sample of transition economies in the Central and/or Oriental Europe during the last two decades, (2) efficiency of this financial liberalization in relative terms (in macroeconomic sense), and (3) impact of liberalization on financial problems of small and medium-size enterprises, a specific 'puzzle' concerning this very important economic sector as for its role in the employment and growth of these economies.

Recent studies have suggested the existence of 'election-year economics' in fiscal policy in transition countries. This study asks whether such electoral cycles in aggregate measures (overall expenditures, revenues and balance) and spending composition (broad vs. targeted outlays) differ among countries with different political systems. This question is motivated by a sharp division between majoritarian presidential systems in Central Asia and Eastern Europe, and proportional-parliamentary systems in the Baltic's, Central and Southeastern Europe. Further, in the absence of context-sensitive theories, the paper asks whether observed outcomes in the transition process conform to the theoretical priors developed for conditions in stable democracies. Finally, the paper attempts to normatively establish whether either of the alternative combinations yields more optimal policy outcomes. The results suggest that the differences indeed exist, primarily on the revenue side and in the composition of expenditures. These results differ markedly from those for stable democracies, especially in the case of composition of spending. Normatively, presidential yields sub optimal outcomes in comparison to parliamentarians, likely due to inefficient system of constitutionally intended checks and balances. .