The first chapter of this dissertation considers the complexity of contracts to be determined bytransacting partners based on their exposure to the opportunistic behavior of theother. A transaction cost economics model generates the hypothesis that buyer andseller relationship-specific...

We survey the empirical literature analysing the process of enterprise restructuring in transition economies. The survey provides new insights into the relative effectiveness of different reform policies, and into how this effectiveness varies across regions. We study the effects of...

We offer a new perspective on the effect of relationship-specific investment on contract complexity, which has broad implications because complex contracts and vertical integration are substitutes. A simple model using transaction cost economics (TCE) predicts that buyer and seller...

At present, there is no generally accepted accounting of the institutional strengths and weaknesses of the transition economies. The first goal of the paper is to fill this gap by assessing current levels of institutional development. The second is to examine which types of institutional...

Prepared for The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd Edition, this essay examines the evolution of both institutions and economists' thinking on institutions during transition. Early in transition, institutions were virtually ignored in the majority of normative prescriptions, but were...

Prepared for the Handbook Of New Institutional Economics, this chapter focuses on how the NIE has been used to understand transition and how the experience of transition can help inform the NIE. It first shows that the NIE, as an analytical tool, hardly played any role at all in early...

How quickly do firms respond to new institutions? Romanian survey data permits investigation of this question, using variables summarizing firms' strategies on transactional governance. These variables are regressed on the factors that should determine efficient behavior according to standard...

The paper proposes a methodology to obtain evidence on the relative importance of different mechanisms for supporting agreements. A survey question posed to company directors summarizes key aspects of mechanisms and asks for judgments on use. In contrast to existing approaches, the data covers...