The success of an economy depends largely on how successful it is in allocating inputs and outputs across businesses efficiently with minimum disruption and frictions. Market institutions that impact this allocation potentially account for productivity differences across countries. Existing...

We have conducted the first survey on management practices in transition countries. We found that Central Asian transition countries, such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, have on average very poor management practices. Their average scores are below emerging countries such as Brazil, China and...

We investigate whether management quality explains firm performance in Russia. We find that it explains relatively little in terms of firm performance, but it does explain some of the differences between firms in Russia’s Far East and the rest of Russia. While management practices may not yet...

Somewhat surprisingly, cross-country empirical evidence (at least in the cross section) does not seem to support the predictions of standard models that economies with stricter regulations on hiring and firing should have a lower pace of job reallocation. One problem in exploring these issues...

At the crossroad of Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, Morocco is a key partner of our institutions. Morocco is rich in history and tradition, economic and human resources. The emergence of a dynamic and broad-based private sector can become a powerful driver of...

Wide-ranging reforms linked to Georgia's EU aspirations have strengthened its economy and improved living standards. Nevertheless, further reforms are still needed and the Covid-19 pandemic has had a big impact on the hospitality sector, which has been a key driving force behind the country's...

This paper studies the determinants and consequences of equity ownership in multinational affiliates. We construct a multi-period model of foreign direct investment with incomplete contracts and uncertainty to analyse the size of equity stakes. The productivity of a multinational parent and its...

We use a growth diagnostic approach to analyse the main impediments to investment and growth in Serbia. We look at a wide set of quantitative and qualitative indicators to understand if businesses are constrained by access to finance or if they forgo investment opportunities because they cannot...

The paper studies the extent of corporate leverage and range of excessive debt of Slovenian firms during the recent financial crisis. Half of all firms (of those with some non-zero debt and at least one employee) are found to face an unsustainable debt-to-EBITDA leverage ratio beyond 4,...

In this study, we consider how gift-exchange and bonus systems function in a natural field setting by measuring the effort response of participants to non-monetary gifts over time. Our field experiment tests the difference in effort response to unconditional gifts delivered immediately, promised...