In this paper we survey the common explanations of barter in transition economies and expose them to detailed survey data on 165 barter deals in Ukraine in 1997. The evidence does not support the notion that soft budget constraints, lack of restructuring, or that the virtual economy are the...

Many developing countries have suffered under the personal rule of “kleptocrats”, who implement highly inefficient economic policies, expropriate the wealth of their citizens, and use the proceeds for their own glorification or consumption. We argue that the success of kleptocrats rests, in...

This paper proposes an explanation of the puzzling coexistence of elements of both inertia and dynamism in the Russian labor market. In an environment of high uncertainty, risk averse and heterogeneous workers face a trade-off between wages and insurance against risk. The firm proposes a...

Many observers have noted a strong tendency for protection, once it is instituted, to persist over time. This paper first shows that persistent protection arises whenever lobbying is an alternative to costly adjustment. With endogenous protection, the level of tariffs is an increasing function...

Despite the fact that nonprofit organizations play a large role in the production and distribution of goods and services in modern economies, and the rising role of non-governmental organizations in carrying out projects in developing countries, our knowledge of their governance, and of its’...