The geographic distance between a household and financial institutions may constitute a significant obstacle to achieving the benefits of modern financial institutions. We measure the impact of improved distance-related access to microcredits in Uzbekistan. Residents living closer to...

Employing novel household survey data, this paper examines how rainfall variability and mean temperature affect individual labor supply in Uzbekistan, a highly traditional lower-middle-income country in Central Asia. The findings suggest that rainfall variability induces the reallocation of...

The paper describes the microfinance environment in Uzbekistan, with an emphasis on two types of non-bank microfinance institutions - Credit Unions and Microcredit Organizations. The specific nature of these institutions provides new evidence of the commercially oriented microcredit model and...

Research for evidence on offshoring activities and its driving forces has been done by analyzing gross trade flows related to offshoring using gravity equations augmented by ad hoc measures of supply-side country differences. We develop a specification grounded in incomplete specialization that...

We suggest that bilateral gravity equations augmented by ad hoc measures of absolute supply-side country differences are misspecified. Building on Haveman and Hummels (2004), we develop and test an alternative specification rooted in incomplete specialization that views bilateral gravity...

We analyze how a set of traditional as well as new determinants affect trade among European countries over the period 1992-2008. The factors encompass variables from the areas of geography, culture, institutions, infrastructure, and trade direction. Trade is analyzed for three types of goods:...

We analyze the extent of the integrated control of the state over privatized firms during the post-privatization decade (1995-2005) in the Czech Republic. During this period the integrated control potential of the state resembled a corporate pyramid. While pyramidal control was not fully...

In contrast to many other accession countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs), the Czech Republic experienced a shorter and less severe transition recession in the first half of the 1990s. The decline in output lasted two years and by 1995, real GDP had returned to its 1989 level....

Measured rates of growth in real per capita income differ drastically depending on the data source. This phenomenon occurs largely because data sets differ in whether and how they adjust for changes in relative prices across countries. Replication of several recent studies of growth determinants...

We analyze the long-term effects of firm break-up and ownership change on corporate performance. Our analysis is based on a unique data set for a large number of Czech firms spanning the period 1996-2005. We employ a propensity score matching procedure to deal with endogeneity problems. Our...