Suchergebnisse

Western Balkan (WB) countries have a clear orientation towards the European Union (EU), all of them currently being candidate or potential candidate countries. Moreover, the EU is an important trading partner of the WB economies, therefore, there is a recognizable need for convergence of this region towards the EU economy. The real convergence is a rather slow process and the WB region is still lagging behind the EU. This paper explores the catch up of the WB region during the global crisis that severely hit the EU economy, trying to identify potential changes in the convergence pace. In addition, this work makes a joint overview of the nominal and real convergence processes as well as the convergence of the general macroeconomic indicators of the WB countries to the EU, taking them as complementary and mutually self-supporting processes.

National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia (NBRM) has been implementing an exchange rate targeting strategy for a more then a decade and so far it proved to be very successful. The aim of this paper is shortly to explain the advantages of this strategy and moreover to put more focus on the analysis for peg sustainability. Also, the paper discusses the effectiveness of the interest rate transmission channel in Macedonian economy. Based on the analysis for peg sustainability and still existing problems in the functioning of the interest rate transmission channel, the main findings are that current monetary policy strategy is still valid and regular monitoring of the environment that is changing dynamically is more then necessary.