Old and new EU member states still adopt quite different labor market institutions and policies: convergence has been partial and limited. Nevertheless, a new agreement is spreading on the importance of well-developed, coordinated institutions, supported by social dialogue, in view of the...

The literature on Walrasian markets in large economies with adverse selection has used various equilibrium refinements, but has obtained no general incentive efficiency of equilibrium, namely when cross-subsidies are needed for efficiency. We show that the same refined equilibria may also be...

We decentralize incentive efficient allocations in large adverse selection economies by introducing a Walrasian market for mechanisms, that is, for menus of contracts. Facing a budget constraint, informed individuals purchase (lottery) tickets to enter mechanisms, while firms sell tickets and...

In a three-period finite competitive exchange economy with incomplete financial markets and retrading, we show the generic existence of financial innovation which decreases equilibrium price volatility (as well as innovation which incresases it). The existence is obtained under conditions of...

In 1991, the rate of inflation in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland was between 35% and 70%. At the end of 2001, it is below 8%. We setup a small structural macro model of these economies to explain the process of disinflation. Contrary to a widespread skepticism, which permeated a large...

How did post-communist transformations affect people’s perceptions of their economic and political systems? We model a pseudo-panel with 89 country-year clusters, based on 13 countries observed between 1991 and 2004, to identify the macro and institutional drivers of the public opinion. Our...

Using a unique dataset for 14 transition economies, we propose a new measure for individual evaluations of transitional reforms, which we use to study, for the first time, the evolution of support for economic and political reforms from 1991 to 2004. We show that support for economic changes has...

In 1991, the rate of inflation in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland was between 35% and 70%. At the end of 2001, it is below 8%. We setup a small structural macro model of these economies to explain the process of disinflation. Contrary to a widespread skepticism, which permeated a large...