In integrated economies, inter-city price differences can be explained largely by transportation costs. This is not the case in Russia. Here, we argue that this is due to an internal border that separates a region we denote as the Red Belt from the rest of Russia. Regions within the Red Belt...

In pursuit of its transition from a command to a market economy, Russia has witnessed enormous regional differences in economic growth rates. Moreover, the implementation of economic reforms has also differed markedly across regions. We analyze whether regional differences in reform policies can...

Post-Soviet Russia has experienced a considerable degree of regional economic fractionalization. While previous evidence has assigned a causal role to openness to international trade in accounting for this phenomenon, we show here that evidence of this nature is less clear-cut upon conditioning...

Working with 110 pairs of time series of state and market commodity prices in Russia, we search for signs of transition in Russia from a command to a market economy. Beginning with inter-city comparisons of state and market prices, we find that differences in the levels of these prices have...

A growing body of national-level survey evidence indicates that small-scale entrepreneurial activity has been an important engine of growth in post-socialist economies. Here we use a rich regional data set to obtain a statistical characterization of the relationship between entrepreneurial...