Enterprises in post-socialist and transition economies often participate in providing infrastructure and social services to the surrounding community. We argue that this bundling of social and infrastructure goods provision with an enterprise’s core operations is a fully rational choice in an...

This paper discusses growth differentials of Chinese provinces geared to agricultural activities and those focusing on industrial production over three decades of economic reform. Following trade theory and endogenous growth theory, we suggest that the fundamental differences between regions...

Market economy models differ in the degree of the power of the government vis-à-vis the market in the economy. Under the classications set forth by Glaeser and Shleifer (2002, 2003), and Djankov et al. (2003), these market models range from those emphasizing low government intervention in the...

This paper examines the effects of market deregulation on consumers and state commercial banks in China, a large developing country. I jointly estimate a system of differentiated product demand and pricing equations under alternative market structures. While China's banking reforms overall have...

We evaluate the monetary determinants of inflation in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia by using the McCallum rule for money supply. The deviation of actual money growth from the rule is included in the estimation of Phillips curves for the four economies by Bayesian model...

This paper analyzes interest margin determinants in the Russian banking sector with a particular emphasis on the bank ownership structure. Using a unique bank-level data covering Russia’s entire banking sector for the 19992007 period, we find that the impact of a number of commonly used...

Hong Kong’s currency is pegged to the US dollar in a currency board arrangement. In autumn 2003, the Hong Kong dollar appreciated from close to 7.80 per US dollar to 7.70, as investors feared that the currency board would be abandoned. In the wake of this appreciation, the monetary authorities...

The purpose of this paper is to carefully assess the size of public sector within the Russian banking industry. We identify and classify at least 78 state-influenced banks. For the state-owned banks, we distinguish between those that are majority-owned by federal executive authorities or Central...

The paper estimates McCallum and Taylor monetary policy reaction functions, and hybrids mixing instruments and targets from the two frameworks, for 20 emerging market economies. McCallum-Taylor specifications with an interest rate instrument and a nominal income gap target perform better than...

This paper investigates whether seasonalities in daily stock returns are related to the trading behavior of individual and institutional investors. The change in the investor structure of B-share markets in Shanghai and Shenzhen after the abolition of ownership restrictions in 2001 provides a...