The East European Financial Crisis

This paper discusses the global financial crisis of 2008/9 in thirteen countries, the ten new EU members that previously were communist and the three countries of Western former Soviet Union. Their problems were excessive current account deficits and private foreign debt, currency mismatches, and high inflation, while public finances were in good shape. The dominant cause was fixed exchange rates. Many lessons can be drawn from this crisis. A dollar peg makes no sense in this part of the world. The five currency boards in the region have lacked credibility. By contrast, inflation targeting has worked eminently. The euro has proven credible both in the countries that officially adopted it and in the countries that adopted it unilaterally. With the exception of Hungary, all the countries in the region have displayed decent fiscal policies. No government should accept large domestic loans in foreign currency and they can be regulated away. The IMF has successfully returned to the original Washington consensus with relatively few conditions: a reasonable budget balance and a realistic exchange rate policy, while focusing more on bank restructuring. The most controversial issue is the role of the ECB. The ECB should facilitate the accession of willing EU members to the euro by relaxing the ERM II conditions

Evaluation of Latvia’s re-exports using firm-level trade data

We use an anonymized firm-level trade database provided by the Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia to evaluate Latvia's re-exports. By solving a linear maximization problem for each firm-product pair, we obtain estimates of re-export flows and corresponding re-export mark-ups. We find that the share of-re-export flows in the total merchandise exports and imports is significant and follows an increasing trend. The share of re-exports is especially large in such product groups as transport vehicles, plastics, mineral products, and machinery and electrical equipments. The majority of re-export flows are directed to closest neighbours - Lithuania and Estonia - suggesting that Latvia serves as a sort of a regional transport hub. We also find that average re-export mark-ups are sizeable and re-export operations may provide an important contribution to Latvia's GDP