The paper uses a large household dataset -- the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring survey -- to measure inequality and poverty in Russia since the start of transition in 1992. What emerges is that inequality had already emerged by 1992 and has grown subsequently. By 1996 the Gini for Russia was...

Contrary to popular perception, Russia entered the transition with significant inequality. Using the large Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey dataset, we demonstrate that inequality has subsequently risen yet further and by end-1996 was roughly comparable to inequality in Mexico, Colombia or...

The informal economy has burgeoned in many transition economies but particularly in the Former Soviet Union. While the variation in the size of the informal economy has been related to differences in tax regimes and the degree of transparency in the legal and commercial system the causality is...

One challenge in transition economies has been to avoid being caught between overrapid restructuring (harmful to the private sector) and gradual change (can undermine robust private sector emergence). Empirical evidence suggests that in most of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union,...

The labor market is the main channel through which economic growth affects poverty. This paper is the first empirical account of main channels through which the growth in transition period has affected labor market and living standards in Georgia. It is based on both the official aggregate...