Economic development implies that the efficiency of firms in developing countries is approaching that of firms in advanced economies. We examine the extent of this convergence in the Czech Republic and Russia, economies that represent alternative models of implementing development policies,...

A well-developed financial intermediation industry increases domestic savings, efficiently allocates investment resources to the most productive uses in the economy and increases the rate of economic growth. In the Soviet economy the banking system served as a means of collecting household...

Economic development implies that the efficiency of firms in developing countries is approaching that of firms in advanced economies. We examine the extent of this convergence among all firms as well as a subset of firms near the efficiency frontier in two economies that represent alternative...

Am 2. Februar 2005 hat die Europäische Kommission den Neustart der Lissabon-Strategie für die Europäische Union (EU) verkündet. Diese Strategie soll die Grundlage bilden für die Bewältigung des dringenden Bedarfs der EU an mehr Wirtschaftswachstum, Arbeitsplätzen und Wettbewerbsfähigkeit...

There is a growing debate in the emerging market on the choice of an appropriate monetary or exchange rate policy that could lead to a sustainable economic growth. Inflation targeting has become one of these policy alternatives and has recently been implemented in some of the emerging markets in...

This paper proposes a pair-wise approach to testing for output convergence that considers all N(N-1)/2 possible pairs of log per capita output gaps across N economies. A general probabilistic definition of output convergence is also proposed. The approach is compatible with individual output...

The relationship between economic freedom and economic growth has always been frequently discussed in the economic literature. Economic freedom is often believed to enhance economic growth, which in turn creates more economic freedom. The first part of this paper studies the transition process...

Knowledge accumulation in the richer countries provides them with comparative advantages in higher productivity products. The countries that import the higher productivity intermediate products and capital equipments produced in the richer countries, however, derive benefits from knowledge...

The first chapter demonstrates that although it is possible to design utility functions that behave like empirical well-being, the functional forms relying on income adaptation and social comparisons put forward in the happiness literature fail to receive empirical validation. Under the income...

Although the theoretical literature has identified various sizeable benefits from foreign direct investment inflows (FDI), the empirical literature has been unable to establish a positive and significant impact of FDI on the rates of economic growth of host countries. One reason for this...