This survey discusses recent developments in the growing literature on the Russian economic history of the 19th and 20th centuries. Using novel data and modern empirical methods, this research generates new insights and provides important lessons for development economics and political economy....

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) advocates fiscal control of money supply, with a view toward assuring full employment and robust growth without inducing high inflation. Successful implementation requires a strong, determined state that commands a relatively self-sufficient economy and refuses to...

This paper analyzes whether the propensity to secede by subnational regions responds mostly to differences in income per capita or to distinct identities. We explore this question in a quantitative political economy model where people's willingness to finance a public good depends on their...

This paper studies the causal effect of technology and knowledge transfers on early industrial development. Between 1950 and 1957, the Soviet Union supported the "156 Projects" in China for building technologically advanced industrial facilities. We exploit idiosyncratic delays in project...

The Russian–Ukrainian war has its own post-Soviet history. The initial big mistake of the West was that with the collapse of the USSR, many politicians and experts in the West considered that the Cold War of the times of the Soviet Union was over. After the collapse of the USSR, Russia was...

This article examines the research literature on the economic aspects of the "Sino-Soviet Alliance", which lasted from the end of the Chinese Civil war until the Sino-Soviet split (1949-1960/63). The Soviet and Eastern European contribution to China's industrialization, called the "largest...

This paper studies the long-term effect of aid on bilateral trade and provides a new mechanism for this effect - aid fosters inter-group affinity. Our empirical setting is the Soviet aid to China during the 1950s, namely the 156 program, when numerous large-scale industrial plants were...