Economic development implies that the efficiency of firms in developing countries is approaching that of firms in advanced economies. We examine the extent of this convergence in the Czech Republic and Russia, economies that represent alternative models of implementing development policies,...

The paper analyzes the incidence, the severity and the determinants of household poverty inUkraine during transition using two comparable surveys from 1996 and 2004. We measurepoverty using income and consumption and contrast the effects of various poverty lines...

We theoretically and empirically examine how acquiring new skills and increased financial worries influenced entrepreneurship entry and exit intentions during the pandemic. To that end, we analyze primary survey data we collected in the aftermath of the COVID-19's first wave in Russia, which has...

This paper exploits the idiosyncratic line of contact separating Allied and Soviet troops within East Germany at the end of WWII to study political resistance in a non-democracy. When Nazi Germany surrendered, 40% of what would become the authoritarian German Democratic Republic was initially...

After the German Reunification in 1990, East Germany transitioned from a centrally planned economic system to a market economy. At the time, upskilling through adult education was deemed essential for the successful integration of the workforce into the labor market. Besides substantial...

We examine how cultural norms shape attitudes toward immigration. Our causal identification relies on comparing students who moved across the East-West border after German reunification with students who moved within former East Germany. Students who moved from East to West became more positive...

In most transition countries the aggregate level evidence suggests that most industries are just destroying jobs, due to the legacy of communism where over-manning levels of employment were the norm. This paper sheds light on whether the transition process in Slovenian manufacturing has been one...

This paper analyses Russian city growth during the command and transition eras. Our main focus is on understanding the extent to which market forces are replacing command forces, and the resulting changes in Russian city growth patterns. We examine net migration rates for a sample of 171 medium...

Institutional change has taken place gradually since 1978 for State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in the Industrial Sector of China. In this paper we estimate the effect of deep reform (the right to hire and fire labour, buy and sell capital and operate on international markets) on the productivity...

Using micro data on women in the Czech Republic, we compare returns to various measures of human capital at the end of communism (1989), in mid-transition (1996) and in late/posttransition (2002). We show: dramatic increases in returns to education from 1989 to 1996 but no change from 1996 to 2002;...