Abstract
Until January 1st 1993 the Czechs and Slovaks lived in the same state - Czechoslovakia. Their transition to independent nations commenced with an identical set of institutions - legal, political and monetary.
Although they followed the same general post-transition path, several nuances developed. This text focuses on the impact the process of the euro-area accession had on the institutional development in Slovakia compared to the evolution in the Czech Republic.
Using two different sources of institutional quality indicators we found a trend change in Slovakia coinciding with the public commitment to adopt the euro. No such development is observable in the data for the Czech Republic, even though the plans to join the monetary union were very similar.
We argue that this divergence took place due to political reasons.