n Russia and Ukraine (1985-2002). There has been an increase in returns to schooling in both countries but the increase is much bigger in Russia than in Ukraine. The intriguing question is why returns to schooling in Russia and Ukraine diverged so much over the transition period while the skill...

We present a model of neighborhood effects in wage payment delays. Positive feedback arises because each employer’s arrears affect the late payment costs faced by other firms in the same local labor market, resulting in a strategic complementarity in the practice. The model is estimated on...

We establish that domestically owned firms in two alternative models of emerging market economies, the Czech Republic and Russia, have not been converging to the technological frontier set by foreign owned firms. In both countries, the distance of domestic firms to the frontier grew (in all...

Economic development implies that the efficiency of firms in developing countries is approaching that of firms in advanced economies. We examine the extent of this convergence in the Czech Republic andRussia, economies that represent alternative models of implementing development policies, often...

We explore the pace of increase in returns to schooling during the transition from planning to market over time across a number of Central and Eastern European countries, Russia, and China. We use metadata from 33 studies of 10 transition economies covering a period from 1975 through 2002. Our...

This study attempts to explain why the transition to a market economy is skill-biased. It shows unequivocal evidence on increased skill wage premium and supply of skills in transition economies. It examines whether similar skill–favoring shifts in the Russian and U.S. economies are driven by...

What role do community norms play in the diffusion and persistence of new organizational practices? We explore this question through an examination of the widespread practice of wage arrears, the late and nonpayment of wages, in Russia during the 1990s. Existing research on wage arrears most...

The theoretical and policy literature on decentralization has long asserted since Oates (1972) that decentralized governance increases allocative efficiency in the public sector. But, despite the colossal growth in the literature on decentralization and fiscally decentralized systems in the real...

We use firm-level data and national input-output tables from 17 countries over the 2002- 2005 period to test new and existing hypotheses about the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the efficiency of domestic firms in the host country (i.e., spillovers). Providing evidence from a...

We construct an endogenous growth model that includes a cultural variable along thedimension of individualism-collectivism. The model predicts that more individualism leads to more innovation because of the social rewards associated with innovation in an individualist culture. This cultural...