Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical assessment of legal and regulatory impediments to effective governance of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in Kazakhstan. Design/methodology/approach – The qualitative study develops propositions from the PPP literature and then...

The countries of Eastern Europe achieved two remarkable transitions in the short period of the last two decades: from plan to market and, then, in the run-up to and entry into the European Union, they rode a wave of global trade and financial market integration. Focusing on the second...

As in other sectors, competition in finance matters for allocative, productive and dynamic efficiency. Theory suggests, however, that unfettered competition is not first best given the special features of finance. I review these analytics and describe how to assess the degree of competition in...

Economic integration should not be an end in itself, but the outcome of domestic reforms that increase the general contestability of markets. The paper finds that for India, comprehensive domestic regulatory reform dominates as an integration strategy, while an ASEAN+6 PTA would fail to deliver...

The European Union service sector hampers many regulations by the Member States. For this reason, the European Commission issued a directive to reduce regulations and raise competition. We update the study from Kox, Lejourr and Montizaan (2005) with the latest changes of the directive on...

The EU Single Market remains fragmented by complex and heterogeneous rules at the EU and national levels affecting trade, capital, including foreign direct investment, and labour mobility. Further development of the Single Market and removing barriers to external trade would bring substantial...

The paper relies on a rich firm-level data set on transition economies to examine the role of informality as an important channel through which regulatory and other policy constraints affect firm growth. We find that firms reduce their formal operations with a higher tax and regulatory burden,...