We apply several well-being measures that combine average income with a measure of inequality to international and intertemporal comparisons of well-being in transition countries. Our well-being measures drastically change the impression of levels and changes in well-being compared to a...

In this paper we examine trends in economic well-being in transition countries from 1988-2008 to determine whether the populations of transition countries are better off today than prior to the transition process. To do this, we examine economic performance, inequality-adjusted well-being...

European ex-socialist countries' experience is exploited for two difference-in-differences analysis: effects of a) transition to a market economy, and b) accession to the European Union (EU) on oncome. Many countries adopting regime change simultaneously; and ten of them joining the EU mostly in...

Economic self-interest and social considerations are the key determinants of public support for market reforms in transition countries. However, political strategies that rely mainly on public support for pushing through economic reforms have limited relevance if the prevailing institutional...

We reexamine the recent controversy over the possibility that mass enterprise privatization raised mortality in post-communist countries. Our analysis demonstrates that the country-level correlation of privatization and mortality reported in previous research is not robust to recomputing the...

According to leading economic theorists, creating capitalism out of communism requires rapid privatization. In this article we empirically test the welfare implications of privatization policies in Post-Soviet countries by using cross-national panel mortality data as an indicator of social...

To achieve sustainable economic growth in transition countries, it is crucial that enterpriseperformance is improved. However, it is not a priori clear which factors are essential for this. ForRussia, data to investigate the potential determinants of enterprise performance is scarce.Therefore,...

A critical, but largely unexamined assumption in the debate over transition policy design concerns the complementarity or substitutability of market competition and private ownership in increasing firm efficiency. We analyze a simple Cournot model that distinguishes two aspects of privatization...