In March 1998 the European Union formally launched the accession process that will lead to a significant enlargement of the Union. So far ten countries from Central Europe: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia have submitted their applications for EU membership. This unique process immediately attracted attention of economists and policy makers. Nevertheless, it can be noticed that among numerous results already published, there is a distinctive shortage of books and papers in which quantitative research methods are applied. This is to a large extent justified by the fact that the transition and accession processes are new to the economic sciences, their methodology is not wellresearched, statistical data for the Central and East European countries are scarce and not always reliable and, generally, quantitative approach seems to be a risky and uncertain business. All these all problems can also be seen as a challenge rather than an obstacle. With this on mind, we have decided to clarify the status quo by organising a research seminar which focused on the methodology and quantitative analysis of the Central and East European transition and pre-accession processes. The seminar, East European Transition and EU Enlargement: a Quantitative Approach organised by Macroeconomic and Financial Data Centre (University of Gdansk and University ofLeicester) took place in Gdansk in June 2001. Our edited volume contains papers developed from this seminar.

Inhalt

1: Methodological Studies.- Bounded Rationality, Very Young Financial Markets and the EU Enlargement.- A Continuous Time Approach to Cross Country Convergence.- 2: Current Status, Prospects, Country Specific Problems of Accession and CEE's Convergence.- Current Status, Prospects and Country Specific Problems of Accession: Republic of Latvia.- The EU Accession Rally: Some Cross-Country Simulation Results.- The EU Accession Rally: Some Cross-Country Simulation Results.- On the Convergence of Growth Path Towards Steady-States in OECD Countries in Solow-Swan Type Models.- External Sector Response to Transition and External Shocks: The Case of Hungary.- 3: Studies in Transition.- Modelling and Forecasting the GDP Structure of Polish and Estonian Economies in Transition Period Using Markov Chains.- Macroeconomic Forecasts in Transition - Polish Projections in the `90s.- A Quarterly Econometric Model of the Slovak Economy QEM-ECM-1.0.- Business Fluctuations and Changes on the Money Market in the Polish Economy under Transition.- Stabilisation, Reform, Initial Conditions and Output Paths in Transition Economies.- 4: Modelling Agriculture.- European Integration: Estimation of Agricultural Supply Response of Central and East European Countries.- Economic Welfare Effects of Romanian Agricultural Accession to the EU.- 5: Wages, Prices and Labour Market.- Modelling the Wage-Price System in Transition Economies.- The Institutional Dimension of Wage Determination in Romanian Industry.- Interpreting the Price Adjustment Dynamics in Transition Economies.- Wage and Price Inflation in Poland in the Period of Transition - The Cointegration Analysis.- 6: Financial and Consumption Markets.- Is the Warsaw Stock Exchange Mature Enough to Analyse the Returns by the Models Known on the Developed Markets?.- Liquidity Constraints and Consumer Impatience.- Modelling and Forecasting Volatility at Warsaw Stock Exchange: Application of ARCH Models.- Looking for the Pattern of GARCH Type Models in Polish Stock Returns. Comparison with Indices of the EU and the East European Stock Markets.- A Markov Switching Model of Stock Returns: An Application to the Emerging Markets in Central and Eastern Europe.