Voucher privatization programmes have been criticized for leading to excessively dispersed ownership and hence failure of control and insufficient corporate governance. We analyse the results of the five auction rounds of the Czech privatization programme and subsequent stock market...

Eastern Europe is not well served with straightforward textbook advice. The common wisdom on privatization fails to address the problems created by diffuse ownership and control prior to privatization. Cash auctions may not efficiently match managers and capital stock because of wealth...

Rapid trade liberalization is often followed by a decline in private savings, although permanent changes in trade policy do not affect intertemporal prices and should thus leave private savings unaffected. But a positive probability of future policy reversal lowers the consumption rate of...

We present evidence of major adjustment efforts in the State sector in Poland well before privatization. Extensive survey evidence is used both to establish this point and to find an answer to the question why managers instigated such reforms in spite of the absence of an effective ownership...

We use an intertemporal model incorporating short-run labour and goods markets disequilibrium to analyse the consequences of oil price shocks for unemployment, investment and the current account. A dominant transfer element leads to Keynesian unemployment now and deterioration tomorrow in the...

King-Fullerton methodology cannot assess the minimum-asset tax (MAT) because it cannot handle uncertainty. We present an alternative based on option pricing, and show how carry-over rules, depreciation conventions and uncertainty affect the MAT burden. Using Brazilian data, we show that: (a)...

Governments throughout Eastern Europe have been singularly unsuccessful in dealing with large loss-making SOEs. A more promising approach would create an incentive framework and legal environment where the SOE's major non-government creditor can take the lead in initiating restructuring and the...

Interest rates fell sharply after Mexico's Brady deal, and private investment and growth recovered. We show, econometrically, that debt relief influenced the macroeconomy mostly though its favourable impact on uncertainty. While the impact of the <MI>variability<D> of the future net transfer is...</d></mi>

Using an intertemporal, two-country general equilibrium model, I demonstrate that international asymmetries in expenditure patterns determine the real exchange rate effects of capital controls. Capital import taxes lower world interest rates but raise home interest rates. These changes in...

An empirical stylized fact is that primary exporters' terms of trade worsen when the dollar appreciates and improve when the dollar depreciates. In our theoretical analysis, we demonstrate that an appreciation of the dollar will worsen a primary exporter's terms of trade, the smaller the United...