This paper examines the impacts of the 2005 shift in Russian exchange rate policies from single-currency to bi-currency basket targeting on domestic interest rates and sovereign risk premium dynamics. The policy shift disconnected domestic interest rates from US dollar-denominated interest...

We examine how regional-level political influence affects firm financial performance and survival. Combining representative survey data on mid-sized manufacturing firms in Russia with official registry data, we find that politically influential firms exhibit higher profitability and retain...

We exploit variation in consumer price inflation across 71 Russian regions to examine the relationship between the perceived stability of the local currency and financial dollarization. Our results show that regions with higher inflation experience an increase in the dollarization of household...

We investigate the rationale and impact of the corporate debt subsidization program implemented by the Russian government during the recent financial crisis. Employing the difference-in-difference approach, we show that the program did not have a significant impact on capital investments of...

The paper describes an integrated approach to seismic hazard assessment, which was applied for the Taiwan region. First, empirical modelsfor ground motion estimation in the region were obtained on the basisof records from recent (1993-1999) earthquakes. The databaseincludes strong-motion data...

Consideration of within-earthquake ground-motion correlation is essential for the estimation of seismic hazards, damage, and loss for spatially distributed systems. In many seismically active regions, the strong motion data of real engineering significance are completely unavailable or very...