We examine the role of financial development in economic growth in the former Communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States during the first two decades since the beginning of transition. These countries, which had undeveloped financial systems...

In a well-known and widely-cited paper, Akerlof, Yellen, and Katz (1996) proposed a novel and counter-intuitive explanation for the rise of non-marital births in the U.S. that emphasized the way in which improved birth control and legalized abortion altered social norms about the responsibility...