In Romania, the 1991 Land Reform marked the beginning of a series of transformations in the ownership structure and the production system in agriculture. Nevertheless, after recently joining the EU it became evident that the agricultural sector is in need of major improvements in performance. We...

We use rolling cointegration to measure the convergence of base money, M2, the consumer price index and industrial output between two reference countries, Germany and France, and recent EU members and some transition economy candidates. Counties that recently joined the EU exhibit time-varying...

Nationbuilders in less developed countries need to understand how Western legal systems with "property" at their center have materially accounted for Western prosperity and liberty, but legal definitions of property are so abstruse that explication of this vital concept is made difficult. This...

The paper tests the proposition that money generates value in trade. It examines the data for 5,746 Russian companies for 1997 and finds that money accounts for 24.6 percent of their value-added. The functional form of the return on money in trade is determined to be positive and marginally...

Using Demographic and Health Surveys, government statistics, and field observations I examine trends in infant and child health in Uzbekistan, Kazakstan and the Kyrgyz Republic. Health indicators (anemia and marked low weight for age) for the population under the age of 3 are examined...

We provide a new theory of the role of banks as catalysts for industrialization. In their influential analysis of 19th century continental European industrialization, Gerschenkron and Schumpeter accorded banks a central role, arguing that they promoted the creation of new industries. We...

We study the effect of globalization on the stock of trust in organizations. We present a simple model of endogenous trust and show that contrary to centralized hierarchies (pure limited liability firms), decentralized organizational structures (cooperatives) foster the emergence of trust. We...

This paper explores the determinants of job search behavior, search intensity and choices of search methods of the unemployed workers in transitional Russia. We use pooled data from rounds 5-9 of the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) to estimate the effects of socio-economic factors...