The 15 newly independent states that emerged from the breakdown of the Soviet Union are now celebrating their 10th anniversary of independence. This paper looks back over the first decade and draws some lessons from the experience made to date. It focuses on the energy-rich states of the...

The paper analyses optimal contract design in various municipal infrastructure settings. Particular contract types considered are concessions, management contracts and service contracts. The last of these is defined as a contract between a municipal-owned company and a municipality. The paper...

This paper explores how bank characteristics and the institutional environment influence the composition of banks’ loan portfolios. Using a new data set based on the recent EBRD Banking Environment and Performance Survey (BEPS), which was conducted in 2005 for 220 banks in 20 transition...

Capital flight is a fuzzy and unhelpful concept. Russian capital outflows should be analysed in a wider context involving all major determinants of the risk and return faced by Russian savers and investors. Building saver/investor confidence and strengthening the credibility of policies and...

A defining feature of the banking systems in many transition countries is the large-scale presence of subsidiaries of multinational banks. We use new panel data on the intra-group ownership structure and the balance sheets of 45 of the largest banking groups in the world to analyse what...

This paper looks at the relation between foreign direct investment (FDI) and gross fixed capital formation in transition countries as well as other sources of capital formation financing, namely debt financing, capital market financing and subsidies. The paper shows that capital formation is...

This paper provides a non-technical summary of a framework for evaluating the transition impact (social returns) of any infrastructure investment that reduces transaction costs and thereby intensifies product market competition. The framework applies both to physical and institutional...

We analyse informal-sector employment in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BH), using panel data from the Living Standards Measurement Studies. We derive four main conclusions. First, there is significant labour market mobility in BH, with education being an important factor in explaining movements from...

This paper uses a survey of 3,300 firms in 25 transition countries to shed light on the factors that influence restructuring by firms and their subsequent performance as measured by growth in sales and in sales per employee over a three-year period. We begin by surveying what a decade of...

Recent developments and theoretical work on the transition economies has emphasised the importance of internal bargaining and incentives. This paper constitutes the first attempt to systematise the large and growing body of case studies of enterprise restructuring in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia,...