What will joining the EU mean for the new Eastern member states and their economies? This book offers a detailed study of the macroeconomic and structural adjustment burden. It envisages a real currency appreciation stemming from price convergence, capital inflows and weak structural change. The widespread belief that an Eastern enlargement of the Union would be overwhelmingly to the detriment of the present EU (budgetary costs, locational decisions, trade deficits) is rejected. The authors discuss the lack of competitiveness of Eastern countries and their need for structural adjustments (in...

With hindsight, we tend to exaggerate what we had known with foresight. This phenomenon can be observed in a memory design in which previous judgements have to be recalled after outcome information has been made available, or in a hypothetical design in which participants receive outcome information but are asked to ignore it when subsequently judging what they would have said without this information. Since the introduction of this so-called hindsight bias or knew-it-all-along effect to the psychological literature in the mid-1970s, there has been immense research on this topic. theoretical...