A subject underlying the Balassa-Samuelson effect in transition economies is that of convergence. A difficult term to define as many interpretations have been made over the past forty years and the first work initiated by Barro. In economic convergence affects the real economy, a country in transition should converge to a certain level of development to catch up. In Europe, or rather the term community was used repeatedly. First, to define "convergence of economic policies within the European Union in 1974, which directly connected the term to the concept of coordination of economic policies. In the 1990s, the convergence rallied to indicators of economic performance that is to say a set of conditions based on price stability, public finance, balance of payments or a certain degree opening to the outside and open to competition. The implementation of the Treaty of Maastricht, the term convergence as a condition for admission to the single currency. The criteria being mainly of a monetary exchange rate stability, inflation and interest rates in the long term. Nominal convergence is here. That is the confusion between what may be called the real and nominal convergence is a problem. Because on the one hand, real convergence has therefore involved the upgrading of the developing economies relative to economies considered the most powerful in the European Union (through the regional funds including through the ERDF) and secondly we override two definitions of convergence to talk of convergence of nominal and real convergence ... In addition the Maastricht criteria have nominal convergence while funds allocated to the least developed have facilitated a real convergence. But the problem takes a different turn when considering the use made of these concepts.
The Maastricht Treaty provides an important criteria of order while the nominal economic research is generally based on real criteria whatsoever in choosing an exchange rate (Mundell 1961) or the choice of joining a single currency. The peculiarity of these models is that they do not refuse the design criteria but consider them secondary as compared to non-invariant structural criteria such as degree of asymmetry between countries (affecting the distribution of shocks across countries), the mobility of production factors and the effectiveness of adjustment mechanisms. In addition to these criteria of real importance are neutral with respect to the exchange rate regime but condition the effectiveness of monetary union. So there is a genuine disagreement between the nominal criteria, applied today, the real criteria put forward by economists but not yet implemented. Pisani-Ferry (2004) shows that these objections are the result of a debate initiated in the 70s between the Economists arguing that monetary union is the result of structural convergence and "monetarists" asserting that the union should lead to structural convergence. The first proposal is gradual, similar to the second shock. Further developments in the European community has favored the 2 factors to ensure a progressive and step (vision economists), while ensuring that the objectives would be achieved at a given date (the monetarist view) sub- strain credibility.
Define what goals should tend towards a country in transition in Eastern Europe remains difficult. Besides, the most industrialized European countries rarely have reconciled them to catch up with nominal convergence, the extension of the activity was accompanied by a rise in inflation until the 90's while stabilization policies for converge towards the Maastricht criteria have weakened the activity for the benefit of a low inflation rate. CEE countries have undergone an evolution similar to the exception that stabilization occurred in 90 and extending around 2000s. Since 1993 these countries have experienced strong gains in productivity accompanied by a rapid rise in wages in the tradable goods sectors. This increase in wages is spreading in those areas of non-tradable services. But the productivity gains being lower in the latter sector, a gap has formed between wages and productivity of each asset, where the inflationary gap: there is a strong economic growth but inflation. To meet the nominal convergence criteria in a given period and boost production ex-post, countries have adopted policies to stop and go. A situation allowing also reject the hypothesis of a development model invariant with gradualism Hungary and Poland with shock therapy, or better explain why the Russian therapy was not accompanied by shock. There is therefore a trade economic policy to establish the political criteria of Copenhagen and Amsterdam. In addition, if Hungary is often associated with incrementalism is more by his desire to improve its convergence in first-line and not the nominal one, Poland had made the opposite choice. The Balassa-Samuelson therefore largely conditioned the process transition countries of Eastern Europe.
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