This paper reports first results from a survey of 404 middle-sized and large manufacturing firms from 40 Russian regions in April-June 2003. We examine the extent of social service and infrastructure provision by the firms and the firms’ assessment of the quality of public infrastructure and...

This paper estimates the effect of economic shocks that affect families with young children on children’s health, educational and behavioral outcomes in adolescence. Transition period in Russia provides a natural experiment setting for estimating this effect. During the economic turmoil of...

Bulk of the empirical studies on corporate boards analyze boards in an institutional environment of dispersed ownership, i.e. mainly in the USA and UK. In this paper we investigate the role that corporate boards play in an environment with highly concentrated ownership and weak institutional...

In this survey, we describe the current state of corporate governance in Russia and discuss its dynamics and prospects. We review the main mechanisms of corporate governance in the country and relate them to firms' ownership structures, financial market development and government influence....

In the planned economy firms were made responsible for providing their workers with so-cial services, such as housing, day care and medical care. In the transforming Russia of the 1990s, social assets were to be transferred from industrial enterprises to the public sector. The law on divestment...

Just as in established market economies, many Russian firms provide non-wage benefits such as housing, medical care or day care to their employees. Interpreting this as a strategic choice of firms in an imperfect labor market, this paper examines unique survey data for 404 large and medium-size...