Following formal privatisation of farm land and assets in Central Europe, the change in agricultural production structures has been both more limited and different than was initially expected. In this paper, the theoretical reasons underlying those expectations are reviewed. An alternative...

In this paper we focus on the timing of marriages of women, whose marriages are associated with bride wealth payments, which are transfers from (the family of) the groom to the bride's family. Unmarried daughters could therefore be considered assets who, at times of need, can be cashed in. We...

Russian agriculture in transition (1991-1998) was characterised by a production collapse due to a loss in quality and quantity of acreage, disinvestments, falling purchasing power, and increased imports. Neither traditional agriculture nor the nascent family farm sector have been able to ensure...

This paper contributes to the productivity literature by using results from firm-level productivity studies to improve forecasts of macro-level productivity growth. The paper employs current research methods on estimating firm-level productivity to build times-series components that capture the...

In the present paper we address the relationship between the extent of business ownership (self-employment) and economic development. We will focus upon three issues. First, how is the equilibrium rate of business ownership related to the stage of economic development? Second, what is the speed...

Goods are often allocated publically by means of queuing processes in developing countries. In such situations, which group of citizens should a corrupt government official favor? In addition, what should be the basis for this favoritism? To the best of our knowledge, these salient questions...

Most measures of vulnerability are a-theoretic and essentially static. In this paper we use a stochastic Ramsey model to find a household's optimal welfare and we measure vulnerability as the shortfall from the welfare attained if the household consumed permanently at the poverty line. The...

Division of labor models have become a standard analytical tool, along with competitive general equilibrium models (Ricardian, HOS, Ricardo-Viner), in public finance, trade, growth, development, and macroeconomics. Yet unlike the earlier models, specialization models lack a canonical...

Empirical work in labour economics has focused on rent sharing as an explanation for the observed correlation in cross-sections between wages and profitability. The alternative explanation of risk sharing between workers and employers has not been tested. Using a unique panel data set for four...

There has been a revival of interest in the effect of risk on economic growth. We quantify both ex ante and ex post effects of risk using a stochastic version of the Ramsey model. We develop a simulation-based econometric methodology which allows us to estimate the model in the structural form...