We use rich firm-level data and national input–output tables from 17 countries over the 2002–2005 period to test new and existing hypotheses about the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the efficiency of domestic firms in the host country (i.e., spillovers). We document that...

In this paper, we examine changes in wage structure and wage premia during Vietnam’s transition from command to market economy. Relative to other work in this literature, our paper is unique in that we identify the policies that lead to such changes. By examining skill premium trends along the...

This study explores how initial endowments at the start of transition have shaped reform outcomes and reform trajectories in 27 former communist countries in Europe and Central Asia. Countries of the former Russian Empire that had a large resources sector at the start of transition...

We investigate the connection between privatization in post-communist Russia and a mass privatization reform in Imperial Russia, the 1906 Stolypin land reform. Specifically, we relate historical measures of conflicts associated with the Stolypin reform to contemporary views on whether the...

Much recent political economy and political science literature views democracy in terms of political rights. This view, often referred to as electoral democracy, is particularly pronounced in the empirical literature. We reincorporate the role of civil liberties, which are at the core of modern...

The existing studies on vertical integration focus on factors at the transaction parties’ level, such as asset specificity and contractual incompleteness. What is overlooked is the quality of the underlying institutions, in particular, contracting institutions. In this paper, using a World...

Recruiting and retaining leaders and public servants at the grass-roots level in developing countries creates a potential tension between providing sufficient returns to attract talent and limiting the scope for excessive rent-seeking behavior. In China, researchers have frequently argued that...

Effective property rights protection plays a fundamental role in promoting economic performance. Yet measurement problems make the relationship between property rights and entrepreneurship an ambiguous issue. As an advancement on previous research in this paper we propose a new approach to the...

Using a survey of new firms in Poland, Romania, and Slovakia, I explore how an entrepreneur’s social networks affect the amount paid in bribes to government officials. Lower levels of bribe payments are associated with ownership by a former manager of a state-owned enterprise (SOE), with being...

This paper illustrates the sensitivity of political attitudes to the business cycle. It shows how the 2008 economic crisis has reshaped individual support for democracy and market liberalization in post-transition countries. Pro-reform attitudes have lost ground between 2006 and 2010 in Central...