Bulletin No 60 Spring 1994

The first article of this Bulletin summarizes the main conclusions of CEPR's most recent book, in which Richard Baldwin outlines a structure of trade agreements to integrate Central and Eastern Europe into West European trade. This issue also reports a conference on the social role of enterprises in transforming economies and discussion meetings on prospects for growth in Eastern Germany, the German banking system, theories of unemployment, Eastern Europe's international trade, and renarrowing the bands of a modified ERM.

Pan-European Integration
Richard Baldwin proposes `multilateralizing' the EU's current Association Agreements with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in order to overcome the difficulties currently arising from `hub-and-spoke' bilateralism and smooth their path to eventual EU membership.

Enterprises and Welfare
A Vienna conference with the Institut für Höhere Studien considered the effects of the transition in Central and Eastern Europe on enterprises' role in the provision of social and welfare services.

Discussion Meetings
At a Bonn meeting with the Anglo-German Foundation, Michael Burda argued that recent forecasts of poor growth in Eastern Germany take little account of its special circumstances and are therefore unnecessarily pessimistic.

At a meeting with Commerzbank in Frankfurt-am-Main, Jeremy Edwards and Klaus Fischer argued that the compelling theoretical case for the `German system' of lending to industry bears little relation to the reality of German banking practice.

Dennis Snower argued that most current academic theories of unemployment bear very little relation to the patterns of unemployment in European economies since the early 1980s.

L Alan Winters maintained that EU special interest groups cannot be allowed to undermine trade liberalization in Eastern Europe.

At a Brussels meeting with ECARE, Michael Artis proposed reintroducing the ERM's narrow bands with increased policy cooperation in Stage Two to make it a genuine transition.

Among Recent Discussion Papers
Wendy Carlin reviews contrasting accounts of the determinants of West German growth since 1945 and considers the current prospects for growth in the East.

Sweder van Wijnbergen argues that Poland's decentralized approach to financial and enterprise reform holds much greater promise than those pursued elsewhere in Eastern Europe.

Paul Levine and Joseph Pearlman find that nominal and real wage rigidities may improve the prospects of European monetary union with an independent European Central Bank.

Gene Grossman and Elhanan Helpman identify the conditions under which it will be politically viable for two governments to form a free trade area.

David Blanchflower and Simon Burgess dispute many common beliefs about job creation and destruction and employment growth rates for the UK in the 1980s.

Gilles Saint-Paul argues that a rise in the proportion of skilled workers may damage the employment prospects of the unskilled and even raise aggregate unemployment.

Lars-Hendrik Röller and Robin Sickles maintain that EU competition policy should allow mergers and strategic alliances of airlines but also allow competition by third parties.

René Weber and Thomas Straubhaar find that Swiss data on resident foreigners' net contributions to public transfers provide no support for restricting migration.