Sustainability of the Estonian macroeconomic performance in the light of the EU membership

For the new Member States of the EU, the question of choosing the optimal macroeconomic policy mix is rather complicated as these countries are all in the dynamic movement towards joining the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). This implies a considerable change in macroeconomic policy environment. Many of the countries have to change their macroeconomic framework in order to meet the strict criteria set in the Maastricht Treaty and accompanying legislative acts (SGP). Although currency board arrangement and sound government finances have helped to stabilise Estonian economy during the transition, the aim of the current paper is to evaluate the sustainability of the Estonian macroeconomic policy in the light of the future developments, especially participation in the EMU. The analysis is based on the comparative performance of the Estonia with the EU15 and former accession countries. It gives an overview of the nominal convergence according to the rules laid down by EC Treaty on EMU convergence criteria. In the context of real convergence the set of criteria provided by the theory of Optimum Currency Areas are analysed, as these are expected to be fulfilled in order to guarantee sustainability and success of the region participating in the monetary union. The paper highlights the dilemmas to be faced between the nominal criteria and real expected performance of the acceding country using the example of Estonia

Limit theorems for weighted functionals of cyclical long-range dependent random fields

The paper investigates isotropic random fields for which the spectral density is unbounded at some frequencies. Limit theorems for weighted functionals of these random fields are established. It is shown that for a wide class of functionals, which includes the Donsker scheme, the limit is not affected by singularities at non-zero frequencies. For general schemes, in contrast to the Donsker line, we demonstrate that the singularities at non-zero frequencies play a role even for linear functionals.Comment: 19 pages, 2 figures. This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article in the Stochastic Analysis and Applications, Vol. 31, No. 2. (2013), 199--213. [copyright Taylor \& Francis], available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/ [DOI:10.1080/07362994.2013.741410

Sojourn measures of Student and Fisher-Snedecor random fields

Limit theorems for the volumes of excursion sets of weakly and strongly dependent heavy-tailed random fields are proved. Some generalizations to sojourn measures above moving levels and for cross-correlated scenarios are presented. Special attention is paid to Student and Fisher-Snedecor random fields. Some simulation results are also presented.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.3150/13-BEJ529 the Bernoulli (http://isi.cbs.nl/bernoulli/) by the International Statistical Institute/Bernoulli Society (http://isi.cbs.nl/BS/bshome.htm