Euroisation in Serbia is rooted in a long history of macroeconomic instability. Extreme inflation volatility has undermined trust in the dinar and discouraged dinar savings. At the same time, an abundant supply of foreign capital inflows has provided easy access to foreign currency lending at...

While credit is essential for investment, innovation and economic growth, there are risks related to excessive indebtedness in the corporate sector in the form of increased likelihood of financial distress and bankruptcy. The recent global crisis has highlighted the macroeconomic risks of credit...

Institutions are now widely believed to be important in explaining performance. In this paper, we analyse whether commonly used measures of institutions have any significant, measurable impact on performance, whether of countries or firms. We look at three ‘levels’ of institutions and...

Recent developments and theoretical work on the transition economies has emphasised the importance of internal bargaining and incentives. This paper constitutes the first attempt to systematise the large and growing body of case studies of enterprise restructuring in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia,...

Somewhat surprisingly, cross-country empirical evidence (at least in the cross section) does not seem to support the predictions of standard models that economies with stricter regulations on hiring and firing should have a lower pace of job reallocation. One problem in exploring these issues...

This paper provides a survey of the theoretical and empirical literature on the dollarisation of corporate and household liabilities; presents evidence on the causes of FX lending specifically in transition economies; and proposes a set of criteria to help decide on the right policy response...

The paper provides empirical analysis of the relationship between fiscal decentralisation and the quality of public services in the Russian regions. The analysis suggests that fiscal decentralisation has no significant effect on the key inputs into secondary education, such as schools,...

Commodity resources offer vast opportunities for development. In the long run, however, the performance of commodity-rich countries tends to fall short of expectations, as commodity rents induce macroeconomic volatility and undermine incentives to improve institutions. The paper looks at the...