The paper examines the behaviour of 100 firms interviewed regularly between 1993-4. It reaches the following conclusions:1) Following the inter-enterprise debt (IED) crisis of 1992, most firms have switched to a `pay-in-advance' system, which pushed firms towards a `hard budget constraint'...

This paper presents a simple model for analysing the contribution of investments in physical and institutional infrastructure to the transition process. In addition to the direct cost savings, infrastructure investment generates important indirect effects, or transition impacts. The model shows...

The East German labor market has hardly made any progress since German reunification, despite massive migration flows and support from the West. We argue that East Germany is in trouble precisely because of the support it has received. This paper explores the phenomenon of 'the caring hand that...

Following monetary union with west Germany in June 1990 the median real monthly wage of prime age east German workers rose by 83% in six years. I use the German Socio-Economic Panel data to investigate the determinants of this wage growth and some of its implications. For the 1990-1991 period I...

This study is the first to provide a systematic measure of bribery using micro-level data on reported earnings, household spending and asset holdings. We use the compensating differential framework and the estimated sectoral gap in reported earnings and expenditures to identify the size of...

The paper analyses the transition in Russia through a theoretical model in which job-to-job mobility plays a crucial role. It shows that job-to-job mobility is a key factor preventing a discontinuous break in unemployment and insulating wages in declining sectors from aggregate disequilibria. In...

In 1994, China began a profound reform of its state-owned enterprises (SOE). We first describe and characterize this progress in two areas: privatization of small state-owned enterprises (SOEs) at the county level and mass lay-offs of excess state workers at the city level. Local governments...

This paper examines the relationship between differences in civil society development under communism and divergence in the nature and pace of political and economic reform and transformation after 1989. We put together a unique data set on dissident activities for the 27 former centrally...

The countries of Central and Eastern Europe have displayed widely disparate trade performance since the beginning of the transition. The Czech Republic and Hungary have had some success moving into the production and export of more technologically-sophisticated, higher value-added goods, while...