China has sought to improve enterprise performance not through privatisation as in other transition economies, but through corporatisation as means of improving corporate governance. Actual governance practices of corporatised Chinese firms are however seriously defective, characterized by...

This paper examines the cross-sectional relation between ownership structure and corporate performance of a sample of 434 manufacturing firms listed on the Chinese stock exchange. Following the agency theory and taking other influential factors into account, such as firm size, leverage ratio,...

The paper argues that exchange rate reform is a vital supply-side factor in China's export growth. It contributes to China's export expansion by affording a realistic exchange rate and allowing freer access to foreign exchange, thereby leading to the reduction of anti-export bias and strong...

This paper re-examines the current debate on price scissors based on an extended framework, in which the production and trade of industrial consumer goods within the rural sector is incorporated. It confirms that in the economy considered by Preobrazhensky, consumer rationing, especially of...

Market competition is essential for any economy to be efficient. In order to develop competition in a transition economy, it is conventionally thought that privatisation should take place first. This wisdom has been challenged by the Chinese reform experience of the last two decades, which...

This paper investigates the effects of firm specific variables on indebtedness, and thus financing decisions in the Czech Republic during the first years of transition. By estimating a Structural Equation Model with latent variables, the paper analyses the determinants of credit demand and...

This paper studies the spatial differences of grain production efficiencies in China using a panel data set on 30 provinces (cities) for the period 1987-92. A stochastic frontier production function is estimated to derive the technical efficiencies across the regions. The results suggest that...

Contrary to a widely held view, the targeting of the Employment Guarantee Scheme in the Indian state of Maharashtra was unsatisfactory and worsened over the period 1979–89. Among the participants, from a large group the non-poor became the majority. Some of them were in fact (moderately)...

Transition countries, and many other countries with incomplete markets, have faced long periods with both high inflation and unemployment. Policies to reduce inflation without high unemployment include incomes policies, which were widely employed in transition countries. This paper studies the...

In the paper we consider one of the faster growing Central European emerging markets: the Budapest Stock Exchange (BSE), in order to see whether the market becomes more weak-form efficient over time. The Hungarian exchange is selected because it is the oldest stock exchange operating in the...