Since August 1998, Russia has been suffering from a severe banking crisis. In finding a solution, two peculiarities of the Russian economy need to be taken into account: the substantial foreign liabilities of commercial banks and the failure of the government to service its liabilities. Apart...

Globalization has affected business cycle developments in OECD countries and has increased activities of firms across national borders. This paper analyzes whether these two developments are linked. We use a new firm-level dataset on the foreign activities of German firms to test whether foreign...

This paper provides empirical evidence on the determinants of foreign activities of German banks. We use regionally disaggregated panel data for the years 1981?98 and distinguish foreign direct investment from total foreign assets of domestic banks, of their foreign branches and their...

Russia's foreign debt problems worsened substantially after the financial crisis of 1998. The paper focuses on the key role of the government in servicing foreign debt and promoting institution building by showing how foreign debt influences the choice between official and unofficial taxation....

Recent initiatives to hold back cross-border mergers and acquisitions for 'strategic' reasons have made headline news. We discuss whether the initiatives may mark the start of a new protectionist era. We argue that standard globalization indicators show no such signs. However, an increasing...

Recent literature on multinational firms has stressed the importance of low productivity as a barrier to the cross-border expansion of firms. But firms may also need external finance to shoulder the costs of entering foreign markets. We develop a model of multinational firms facing real and...

Exporters and multinationals are larger and more productive than their domestic counterparts. In addition to productivity, financial constraints and labor market constraints might constitute barriers to entry into foreign markets. We present new empirical evidence on the extensive and intensive...

Die beteiligten Institute legen hiermit ihren dritten Bericht über die Wirtschaft Rußlands vor. Der Bericht ist in zwei Teile gegliedert. Im ersten Teil wird der aktuelle Stand der Wirtschaftsentwicklung und der Reformpolitik dargestellt. Seit der Fertigstellung des zweiten Berichts hat sich...