This paper reviews the political economy view of economic growth in post-communist economies making the transition to free markets, focusing on the role of economic policy and institutions. We test the hypothesis that better institutions, measured in terms of economic freedom, contribute to...

This paper evaluates the usefulness of business sentiment indicators for forecasting developments in the Chinese real economy. We use data on diffusion indices collected by the People's Bank of China for forecasting industrial production, retail sales and exports. Our bivariate vector...