This paper examines the effects of shortages on the demand for money of Soviet citizens. It is the first to examine the demand for money in a centrally planned economy using cross-section data in which alternatives to income and interest rates are used to explain money demand. The authors find...

We use a new independent survey of 4,000 Russian households (the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey or RLMS) to study their saving behavior. The RLMS household saving rate (12%) is less than half the official figure (29%). Despite the massive changes of the transition, the Russian household...

This study analyzes the determinants of employment and earnings for female-headed households from 1987 to 1995 in Mexico. During those years, the percentage of female-headed households and their employment rate substantially increased. The paper explores the possible causes for the relative...

This paper shows that inter-regulatory competition can have powerful pro-consumer effects in an open economy world even when the consumers have little political influence. These findings overturn the welfare implications of capture theories that show that regulators do not vigorously pursue...

This paper estimates a simple error correction mechanism (SECM) model of consumption a la Davidson, Hendry, Srba and Yeo (1978) for 13 OECD countries over the period 1951-82. This is done for each country separately as well as for the pooled data. The basic results of this study are the...

Two decades of tax system reforms in the Central Asian Republics (CARs) show that, in addition to political commitment, understanding reformers’ incentive structure and a roadmap are necessary if full reform equilibrium is to be reached. Borrowed laws and institutions that are based on...