This paper examines the importance of agglomeration economies and institutions vis-à-vis initial conditions and factor endowments in explaining the locational choice of foreign investors. Using a unique panel data set for 25 transition economies between 1990 and 1998, we find that the main...

Although the theoretical literature has identified various sizeable benefits from foreign direct investment inflows (FDI), the empirical literature has been unable to establish a positive and significant impact of FDI on the rates of economic growth of host countries. One reason for this...

The paper studies the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth when sufficient provisions of infrastructure is a pre-requisite. In the overlapping generations setting, we show that technology spillovers via FDI take place only when the host country has the sufficient level...

I study the effects of technology spillovers ("catch-up") and a firm's investment in skills (training) on the firm's productivity when FDI (foreign direct investment) is a carrier of new technology. Using a 1992 firm-level survey data in China, I test the investment equation proposed by Parente...

Two faces of R&D (innovation and learning) and technology spillovers from FDI (foreign direct investment) on a firm's productivity growth are examined in this paper. Using firm-level panel data on Czech manufacturing firms between 1995 and 1998, I find that: (i) the learning effect of R&D is far...

This paper investigates the role of structural reforms – privatization, financial reform and trade liberalization– as determinants of FDI inflows based on newly constructed dataset on structural reforms for 19 Latin American and 25 Eastern European countries between 1989 and 2004. Our main...

How valuable are the education and skills acquired under socialism in a market economy? This paper uses data for about 3 million Hungarian wage earners, from 1986 to 1998, to throw light on this question. We find that returns to schooling reach 10 percent early on and remain at this high level....

What are the determinants of economic reform efforts? This paper tries to throw light on this question by examining recent reforms in Brazil, a country which followed a gradualist approach and was a late-starter among Latin American economies. We argue that these first generation reforms (trade...

An alleged achievement of socialism was gender equality in the labour market. Has its collapse shattered this accomplishment? The theoretical literature and attendant empirical evidence are inconclusive. Using data for 2.9 million wage earners in Hungary we find that the male-female difference...

This essay surveys macroeconomic issues that marked the transition from centrally planned to market economy in Central and Eastern European and former Soviet Union countries. We first establish a set of stylized facts of the transition so far, namely: (1) output fell, (2) capital shrank, (3)...