We examine the effects of Eastern and Northern enlargement of the EU on regional business-cycle synchronization and sector specialization. Difference-in-difference estimates show that cyclical synchronicity decreased and differences in sector structure increased in acceding region-pairs after Eastern enlargement. For Northern enlargement, results are more ambiguous. Moreover, in both enlargement episodes, region-pairs with highly synchronous business cycles before accession experienced weaker cyclical and structural convergence than region-pairs with less synchronous cycles. Likewise, region-pairs with more similar sector structures before accession experienced stronger divergence (or weaker convergence) of structural similarity and business-cycle synchronicity after the enlargement. We argue that these results call for developing more differentiated hypotheses on EU enlargement's effects on business-cycle synchronization and sector specialization.

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The paper examines the causal relation between the stock markets development and economic growth in the EU countries. In particular, the nature and causality direction is investigated. Panel data techniques including cointegration tests, vector error correction models and Granger causality tests were applied to indicate the nature and direction of causality. Long‑run effects of the economic growth upon stock market development was detected in the sample of the Euro area member countries. In addition, the short‑run mutual relations between growth and stock markets were indicated in that country‑sample. In the non‑Euro area countries, only short‑run impact of the stock market development upon economic growth was found. The empirical findings bring up implications for macroeconomic stabilization and development policies. The indicated relations also play a role in predicting economic growth and stock markets’ development.

Job polarization simply refers to the decline or disappearance of employment in middle skill occupations. Recent literature focuses on this phenomenon as a source of rising income inequality in countries. The hypothesis is that growth in employment over the last decades has favoured jobs at the low and high skill occupations with declines in employment shares in the middle of the distribution. First, this paper seeks to investigate whether labour polarization occurs in Central and Eastern European countries. Secondly, the paper assesses the role of technology on employment in the Central and Eastern European countries. Using employment shares and a cointegrated panel autoregressive distributed lag model, the paper presents comprehensive results on labour polarization and the impact of technology on employment in the labour markets of the Central and Eastern European countries. The results show positive impact of technology on high skill employment while negative on low and middle skill employment in the long-run. The study finds that though middle skill employment shares declined, there is no clear case of a U-shape employment distribution to indicate labour polarization.

The paper deals with an actual issue of the Euro adoption in the Central and Eastern European countries. The main goal is to assess the preparedness of candidate European countries to adopt the Euro from a perspective of the theory of Optimum Currency Areas (OCA). The measure of dynamic similarity of business cycles of selected Central and Eastern European countries (CEE), Baltic countries and the Eurozone was applied in the analysis. This measure indicates dynamic convergence trends of the CEE and Baltics towards the Eurozone. Business cycle correlation belongs to characteristics listed within a frame of the New Theory of Optimum Currency Areas approach. Particularly, the rolling window correlation of Gross Domestic Product and Industrial Production time series were applied to asses the dynamic moments in the evolution of similarity in business cycles of the analysed European candidate countries and the Eurozone. The results shed some light on continuing convergence process in Baltic, CEE countries and Eurozone. A possible impact of a beginning of the global financial crisis on the business cycle correlation results are also discussed in the text. Abstrakt Článek se věnuje problematice přijetí eura v zemích střední a východní Evropy. Hlavním cílem je posoudit připravenost kandidátských evropských zemí přijmout euro z pohledu teorie optimálních měnových oblastí (OCA). Kritérium dynamické korelace hospodářských cyklů vybraných zemí střední a východní Evropy, baltských zemí a eurozóny bylo aplikováno v analýze. Toto kritérium umožňuje odhalit dynamické konvergenční trendy v analyzovaných zemích vzhledem k eurozóně. Sladěnost hospodářských cyklů patří k charakteristikám definovaným v rámci tzv. Nové teorie optimálních měnových oblastí. Dynamická sladěnost byla měřena pomocí klouzavé korelace ukazatelů hrubého domácího produktu a průmyslové produkce. Klouzavá korelace umožňuje popsat dynamiku vývoje podobnosti hospodářských cyklů zkoumaných ekonomik k měnové unii. Z výsledků vyplývá pokračující konvergenční proces zemí střední a východní Evropy a pobaltských republik k eurozóně. V textu je také diskutován možný vliv začínající globální ekonomické krize na výsledky korelace hospodářských cyklů.