This paper summarizes some of the findings of Boeri, Burda and Köllo (1998), which provide an overview of the state of labour markets in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe. It argues that a hasty ‘return to Europe’ with respect to labour market policies may not be in the...

Differences in regional unemployment in post-communist economies are large and persistent. We show that inherited variation in human-capital endowment across the regions of four such economies explains the bulk of regional unemployment variation there and we explore potential explanations for...

In their privatization programs, transition governments have frequently given away shares (so-called `mass privatization'), while maintaining significant minority ownership. We explain the rationality of these policies for an expected net-revenue maximizing government. Our argument rests on a...

We examine the relation between bureaucratic corruption and firm performance in CEE countries. While previous research uses data from BEEPS, which suffers from excessive non-reporting of corporate performance, we combine reliable firm financials from the Amadeus database with information on...

This paper introduces a model, based on the Kalman filter framework, which allows for time varying parameters, latent factors, and a general GARCH structure for the residuals. With this extension of the Bekaert and Harvey (1997) model it is possible to test if an emerging stock market becomes...

This paper analyses the distribution and allocation of budgetary subsidies and tax arrears in Central and Eastern Europe. Budgetary subsidies are relatively small in aggregate, highly sector specific, and the manufacturing sector receives few of them. Tax arrears, by contrast, are a significant...

This paper analyses the political economy of trade liberalization by the European Community towards Eastern nations. We identify the sectors that are both sensitive and politically effective. We find that Eastern nations may have a comparative advantage in industries that use capital and...

We exploit organizational reforms in a foreign-owned bank in Central-East Europe to study the implementation of modern HRM policies in an emerging market context. We have branch-level data and use our knowledge of the process that led to the adoption of the reforms to implement two estimators...

This paper makes a tentative forecast of the impact on Spanish trade of the liberalization of economic transactions between the EU and the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs), as envisaged in the Association Agreements aimed at the eventual enlargement of the EU to...

I present a political economy model of limits to regional redistribution under the threat of secession. The model depicts a union composed of two regions with centralized fiscal policy. The key feature is the trade off between the benefits of secession embodied by autonomous fiscal policy, and...