Drawing on a unique set of surveys, this article explores the question of whether Russia s post-communist business associations are generally antithetical to or supportive of the broad objectives of economic restructuring.Contrary to the most widely cited analysis as to the purposes of...

The paper proposes a new indicator of expected real effects of a policy aimed at controlling inflation.The indicator, called real effect of inflation targeting (REIT), involves the comparison of expected and output-neutral inflation.It is shown that it can be derived from a simple...

The likelihood of a banking crisis appears to be higher in fast-developing countries. An explanation is provided in a Diamond and Dybvig framework, where banks are vehicles of consumption-smoothing, offering insurance against shocks to the consumption path of consumers. The theoretical model...

Drawing on a unique set of surveys, this article explores the question of whether Russia’s post-communist business associations are generally antithetical to or supportive of the broad objectives of economic restructuring. Contrary to the most widely cited analysis as to the purposes of...

The paper proposes a new indicator of expected real effects of a policy aimed at controlling inflation. The indicator, called real effect of inflation targeting (REIT), involves the comparison of expected and output-neutral inflation. It is shown that it can be derived from a simple...

Russia s economy is energy intense and wasteful of resources.This situation has arisen in part due to the country s ample energy supplies and regulated privileges for domestic consumers.Recently enacted and proposed reforms intended to increase the efficiency of the energy sector by raising...

We introduce endogenous time preference via investment in patience (farsightedness) in an overlapping generations growth model to study development traps.There is no investment in patience, if the economy is very poor, while if it is wealthy enough there is always such investment.We explore the...

This paper sets out to estimate equilibrium real exchange rates for the Czech Republic, Hungary, Po-land, Slovakia and Slovenia.A theoretical model is developed that provides an explanation for the ap-preciation of the real exchange rate based on tradable prices in the acceding countries.Our...

This paper investigates the importance of factor endowment vis-à-vis institutions in explaining the locational choice of foreign investors during the 1990s.Using dynamic panel estimation on data for transition economies, we find that low labour costs, bureaucratic efficiency ("institutions"),...

In today s increasingly competitive business environment, many firms in declining industries have been confronted with the need to restructure.However, lobbies in these industries have often managed to attract government subsidies instead.This paper looks at the decision of a loss-making firm...