This book provides authoritative academic and professional insights into the effects of FDI on home and host countries. It highlights global trends and patterns, and explores related policy challenges all with a special focus on the countries in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. The...

The authors study eleven banking crises over the past twenty-five to thirty years and show that sustainable economic recovery and decreased dependence on commodity prices will be virtually impossible without the clearing of balance sheets and capitalization of the financial sector.

This paper analyzes the causes and consequences of non-monetary transactions in Russia, drawing on a large enterprise survey. We show that barter and offsets are linked to liquidity problems at the level of the firm and to arrears in particular. We find evidence that the state has channeled...

This paper analyzes the evolution of interregional income inequality during transition in Russia. The transition matrix approach reveals that between 1991 and 1997 income mobility tended toward a highly uneven long-term distribution with the majority of regions at low income levels and a...

This paper explores sources of the output collapse in Russia during transition. A modified growth accounting framework is developed that takes into account changes in factor utilization typical of the transition process. The results indicate that declines in factor inputs and productivity were...

This paper studies how financial stress, defined as periods of impaired financial intermediation, is transmitted from advanced to emerging economies using a new financial stress index for emerging economies. Previous financial crises in advanced economies passed through strongly and rapidly to...

This paper analyzes past fiscal consolidation plans and their outcomes in France. It covers the early attempts at fiscal consolidation in the 1970s and the 1980s (Plan Barre and Virage de la Rigueur), the first episode of medium-term fiscal consolidation in 1994-97 ahead of joining the European...

The paper studies the effect of liberalization of imports and foreign direct investment on Russian firms. Using the firm-level data from 1993-2000, the paper finds that competition with imports and with FDI exerts positive effect on domestic firms. Prior to the 1998 crisis, this effect is weaker...