This paper considers the Russian privatization process through the end of voucher privatization and examines how its deviation from the competitive sale standard was likely to affect wealth inequality. While empirical evaluation is all but impossible due to the dearth of reliable data, it is...

This note argues that the most commonly used estimates of the size of the unofficial economies in the former Soviet republics are flawed. Most important, they are based on calculations that disregard the variation in unofficial economic activity across space in the pre-transition Soviet Union....

The reform era in Russia has been marked by a massive increase in reported crime, including organized crime. The purpose of this paper is to look more closely at the interaction between crime and economic reform measures. Widespread economic crime in the old system paved the way for the removal...

The extent of political and fiscal centralization in Russia has experienced dramatic changes since the end of the Soviet era. The heavily centralized, both politically and economically, federal structures became dysfunctional and unstable until the introduction of the Budget and Tax Codes over...

Budget consolidation and reduction of budget deficit are now becoming more urgent issues for a number of countries, especially for the European Union members. Though, today debt ratio is low at both federal and subnational levels in Russia, economic slowdown, problems with oil and gas related...

In the interview, Michael Alexeev compares the economics of transition to market-type systems.

Using comparable 2002–2011 data, we examine the effect of oil on growth of Russia’s regions and American states. Although Russia’s oil regions are richer than other regions, they did not grow faster, while US oil producers grew faster than other states. We attribute these differences to...

We analyze the relationship between product market competition and corruption. The existing literature typically views corruption as extortion of “pre-existing” rents. This perspective suggests that competition usually reduces corruption, although generally the sign of this relationship is...

Using cross-country regressions, we examine the relationship between “point-source” resource abundance and economic growth, quality of institutions, investment in human and physical capital, and social welfare (life expectancy and infant mortality) for all countries and for the economies in...