This book analyzes the banking crisis and the events surrounding it in Hungary and other emerging EU member countries in 2007-2013. Written by Júlia Király, a former policymaker, and the Deputy Governor of the Hungarian Central Bank at the time of the crisis, it also offers a firsthand account of the processes in and responses to the financial crisis. While there is extensive literature on the crisis, most of it focuses on the US or the Eurozone, sometimes mentioning the “emerging world” in passing. However, Central and Eastern Europe experienced the crisis very differently than other emerging countries. In the pre-crisis years, the region in accession to the EU attracted abundant fresh capital, but the seemingly unconstrained global liquidity fuelled credit bubbles. After the Lehman crisis, capital rapidly fled these countries. In this part of the world, the recession proved to be much worse than elsewhere, with double-digit growth soon turning into a double-digit decline in GDP. Several countries had to turn to the IMF and the EU for stand-by credit. Based on her own inside experience as a top central banker, the author offers a personal yet professional analysis of the causes and consequences of the financial hurricane.

This edited volume examines the development path of eight Central and Eastern European countries with an overlapping historical background that joined the European Union between 2004 and 2013, and identifies the main similarities and differences between the countries concerned. Based on wide comparative data analysis of Bulgaria, Croatia, The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia, each chapter in the volume provides detailed information about the state of the economy in a specific area preceding the pandemic shock. The book offers a detailed snapshot of the state of the different areas of the economy, starting from the time when the countries concerned came out of the 2008 financial crisis, up to the date when COVID-19 hit. Further, each chapter analyzes the effects of this unprecedented shock on a particular field, which is followed by highlighting the main problems the countries are facing at present and in the near future, together with identifying the available policy options. Finally, before concluding and making general and country-specific policy recommendations, some thoughts will be given to longer-term prospects. More specifically, the question of how the subject area could contribute to avoiding the "middle-income-trap" that this region may be facing will be addressed. The comprehensive approach makes this volume a must-read for scholars and students of economics, as well as policy decision-makers in Europe, interested in a better understanding of the region's economic development.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the biggest event of worldwide proportion was the 2008 global financial crisis, which was caused primarily by ineffective governance, failed surveillance systems, and implementation flaws. While fiscal and monetary policies succeeded in pulling many countries out of a financial freefall, most economies have performed beneath pre-recession levels as governments continued to struggle with their finances. Examining the financial crisis from the viewpoint of intangible assets provides a different perspective from traditional economic approaches. National Intellectual Capital (NIC), comprised mainly of human capital, market capital, process capital, renewal capital, and financial capital, is a valuable intangible asset and a key source of national competitive advantage in today’s knowledge economy. The authors—pioneers in the field—present extensive data and a rigorous conceptual framework to analyze the connections between the global financial crisis and NIC development. Covering the period from 2005 to 2010 across 48 countries, the authors establish a positive correlation between NIC and GDP per capita and consider the impact of NIC investment for short-term recovery and long-term risk control and strategy formulation. Each volume in a series of SpringerBriefs on NIC and the financial crisis provides in-depth coverage of the impact of the crisis, the aftermath, future prospects, and policy implications for a regional cluster. This volume focuses on Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Poland.

Emerging Europe was particularly hard hit by the global financial crisis, but a concerted effort by local policymakers and the international community staved off impending financial meltdown and laid the foundations for renewed convergence with western Europe. This book, written by staff of the IMF's European Department that worked on the region at the time, provides a unique account of events: the origins of the crisis and the precrisis policy setting; the crisis trigger and the scramble to avoid the worst; the stabilization and recovery; the remaining challenges; and the lessons for the future. Five regional chapters provide the analytics to put events into perspective. Dedicated chapters for all 19 countries of the region dig deeper into the idiosyncrasies of each economy and provide extensive economic data. A final chapter distills the lessons from the overall regional experience and the wide intraregional diversity. Taken together, they make this book an indispensible reference for economic scholars of the region and beyond.

Emerging Europe has suffered a severe economic crisis in recent years, and is only gradually recovering; the prospects for a convergence with the rest of the EU are still uncertain. In this book policymakers, high-level practitioners and experts from central banks identify the main reasons for the crisis and the challenges for the recovery process.

'A major source of vulnerability in the CE5 is their nascent financial systems and their ability to handle large and increasing volume of capital. As the experience of East Asia demonstrates, a high priority should be given to improving the quality and performance of the banking system.'- From 'Financial Integration, Vulnerabilities to Crisis, and EU Accession in Five Central European Countries'The objective of this study is to help assess the possible vulnerabilities in a number of Central European countries as they proceed with global financial integration and EU accession. The report focuses on those countries slated to be the first in the region to join the EU, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia (CE5). The study: • Discusses the context and presents a short description of the CE5 countries' experience in attracting capital flows • Analyzes the manifestations of vulnerability to financial crises and sustainability of foreign capital flows to the CE5 • Interprets the results and draws implications in view of the initial conditions of the various countries • Compares the EU accession of the CE5 to the Southern Mediterranean countries' accession to the EC in the 1980s • Draws conclusions and makes recommendations

The book explores the Fund’s engagement in Europe in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, and especially after 2010. It explains how, why, and with what consequences the International Monetary Fund—along with the European Central Bank and the European Commission (together known as “the troika”)—supported adjustment programs in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Cyprus as well as helping to monitor Spain’s adjustment program and exploring modalities for supporting Italy. Additionally, it analyzes how the euro area developments interacted with and affected the rest of Europe, including not only eastern and southeastern Europe but also the United Kingdom, where the political fallout from post-financial crisis populism—in the form of “Brexit” from the European Union—was, in the end, the most extreme. The IMF’s European programs embroiled the Fund in numerous controversies over the exceptionally large lending, over whether or not to impose losses on private creditors, and over the mix between external financing and internal adjustment undertaken by program countries. They also required the IMF to confront longstanding questions about its governance and evenhandedness in the treatment of different segments of its membership. The crisis programs, with Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus, all revolved around debt sustainability. In the Greek case, after an intense internal debate, the IMF initially chose a program without debt reduction because it feared that such a program–even if ultimately in the interests of Greece, the client country–would trigger a panic of banks and other creditors and thus generate contagion for the rest of Europe. Learning from the Greek case, in Ireland and Portugal, the IMF pushed for debt reduction, to which the government in Ireland but not in Portugal was sympathetic. There was thus no private sector debt reduction in Ireland and Portugal. The European programs were caught up in big geopolitical debates about the appropriate role of the Fund in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. The book examines the intellectual and policy shifts that took place in the IMF as a result of the controversies about its European programs. It concludes with some reflections on how all the programs also produced genuine policy reform and held out the possibility of a return to growth and prosperity.

At the end of the 1990s and the start of the new millennium, globalisation was the main buzzword in the social sciences; nowadays, however, this role has been taken over by governance. So much so in fact that the term has earned considerable credit outside of the academia, and has become the topic of heated discussions in public debates as well. Globalisation and governance are, nevertheless, not independent from each other. It is a pity that a full-blown crisis, such as the global financial and economic crisis of 2007-2008, was needed to make it painfully evident that the success of globalisation and the design of good governance mutually presuppose one another; one cannot exist without the other. As globalization exists simultaneously on the global, regional and national levels, the same can be said of governance as well. Consequently, this volume focuses on each of these highly interdependent levels and gives a critical account of economic globalization and governance. István Benczes is an Associate Professor at the Department of World Economy, Corvinus University of Budapest (formerly known as the Budapest University of Economic Sciences). Currently, he is a Fulbright Professor at Indiana University, Bloomington, US. He earned his PhD in Political Economy at Central European University, Budapest. His main research interests include the political economy of European economic integration and economic transformation of Central and Eastern Europe. He has been teaching International Political Economy, International Economics, European Economic Governance and Development Economics for more than a decade. His monograph on Trimming the Sails: The Comparative Political Economy of Expansionary Fiscal Consolidations was published by CEU Press.

Europe is in a deep recession. Adverse feedback between the financial and real sectors and across borders is likely to delay the recovery and create downside risks. Unprecedented policies have been undertaken to address the crisis-but are they likely to be successful and sufficiently coordinated for a tightly integrated region? To restore trust and confidence in financial markets, additional and forceful action will be essential. Maintaining fiscal support should help soften the downturn, in particular if sustainability is supported by solid medium-term strategies and fiscal frameworks. To be effective, these policies require coordination across advanced and emerging economies. The report's analytical work underpins the link between fiscal sustainability, coordination, and effectiveness, and stresses that emerging markets have been affected differently by the crisis, with the quality of policies and external vulnerabilities being key factors.