At the crossroad of Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, Morocco is a key partner of our institutions. Morocco is rich in history and tradition, economic and human resources. The emergence of a dynamic and broad-based private sector can become a powerful driver of...

Wide-ranging reforms linked to Georgia's EU aspirations have strengthened its economy and improved living standards. Nevertheless, further reforms are still needed and the Covid-19 pandemic has had a big impact on the hospitality sector, which has been a key driving force behind the country's...

The paper provides an empirical analysis of the early impact of formation of the customs union of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia and associated changes in imports schedule on the structure of Kazakhstan's imports. Trade creation effects appear to have been insignificant. At the same time the...

Since 1990, countries in emerging Europe and Central Asia have undergone comprehensive economic transformation. These reforms helped achieve an impressive degree of income convergence toward the levels of the advanced economies, although at the cost of rising inequality and lower life...

This paper looks at variation across Russian regions in terms of perceived constraints to doing business using the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey of Russian firms. The analysis identifies a number of region-specific business environment components that businesses perceive...

The paper looks at the effects of employment concentration on resource allocation with a particular focus on one-company towns in Russia defined as towns where a single company accounts for a significant share of total employment of the locality. Empirical analysis of firms' production functions...

The purpose of this paper is to offer a comprehensive overview of the socio-economic effects of earthquakes. We begin with a thorough literature review. Following this, we assess policy measures taken in response to major earthquakes, drawing on existing research to formulate insights and...

How does government control over mass media affect banking system? Our theoretical model predicts that if the media are biased, depositors are less likely to run on their bank, but also less likely to deposit their money in the banking system in the first place. Empirically, we show that...

We introduce financial constraints in a theoretical analysis of illegal immigration. Intermediaries finance the migration costs of wealth-constrained migrants, who enter temporary servitude contracts to pay back the debt. These debt/labor contracts are more easily enforceable in the illegal than...

Using newly available data, we re-evaluate the impact of transition from plan to market on objective and subjective well-being. We find clear evidence of the high social cost of early transition reforms: cohorts born around the start of transition are shorter than their older or younger peers....