What are the relative roles of macroeconomic variables, structural policies, and initial conditions in explaining the time path of output in transition and the large observed differences in output performance across transition economics? Using a sample of 26 countries, this paper follows a...

FDI has played a strong role in the export-led growth of eastern European countries that are now members of the European Union (EU). Largely sourced from advanced Europe, FDI inflows were motivated by the intention to pursue new markets and cost efficiency. Over time, foreign investment has...

The short answer: The size of the Russian State has not increased much in the last few years, but its economic footprint remains significant. Concretely, the state's size increased from about 32 percent of GDP in 2012 to 33 percent in 2016, not far from the EBRD's estimate of 35 percent for...

This paper examines factors determining the allocation of bank credit to the enterprise sector, and the implications of this allocation for aggregate supply and macro-economic performance, in the former socialist economies. It first develops a model to explain how changes in demand for money by...

The transitional recession in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union has lasted much longer than expected. It has been the result of both the legacy of the past and policy mistakes. Due to structural reforms and gradual institution-building, the postsocialist economies have started to...

In this paper we analyze how Western Balkans public finances adapted to the boom-bust cycle. Large capital inflows into emerging European economies during the mid-2000s resulted in rapid economic growth and convergence to EU income levels. This also resulted in improved fiscal positions of most...

This paper studies changes in the transmission of common versus sectoral idiosyncraticshocks across different U.S. nonfarm business sectors during the Great Recession, andevaluates the cross-sectoral spillovers. Shocks are identified by dynamic factor methods. Wefind that the Great Recession is...

Studies of the empirical relationship between income and mortality often rely on data aggregated by geographic areas and broad population groups and do not distinguish disabled and nondisabled persons. We investigate the relationship between individual mortality and lifetime income with a large...

We propose a simple macroeconomic model with input-output sectoral linkages based on Acemoglu et al. (2016) to quantify how changes in aggregate demand due to additional income from household's remittances propagates through the network of input-output linkages in Sub-Saharan African countries....

With the recent jump in world oil prices, the issue of petroleum product pricing has become increasingly important in developing countries. Reflecting a reluctance of many governments to pass these price increases onto energy users, energy price subsidies are absorbing an increasing share of...