How do economic policies and institutions affect job reallocation processes and what are the consequences for productivity growth? This paper studies the extreme case of economic system change and alternative transitional policies in the former Soviet Republics of Russia and Ukraine. Exploiting...

Why do the reported effects of privatization on firm performance vary so much? This paper re-estimates these effects and tests potential explanations for heterogeneity using comprehensive, long-panel data for 70,000 firms in five East European economies. Estimated average effects are positive,...

What role does new firm entry play in economic growth? Are entrants and young firms more or less productive than incumbents, and how are their relative productivity dynamics affected by financial constraints and the business environment? This paper uses comprehensive manufacturing firm data from...

This paper reports estimates of the effects of the Small Business Administration (SBA) 7(a) and 504 loan programs on employment, using a complete list of all SBA loans linked to annual data on all U.S. employers from 1976 to 2010. The estimation approach combines firm fixed effect regressions...

In this paper prepared for inclusion in the Oxford Handbook of the Russian Economy (Michael Alexeev and Shlomo Weber, eds.), we replicate, update, and extend our earlier work on manufacturing enterprise privatization and productivity in Russia. Our results suggest a more nuanced view of Russian...

How do economic reforms affect resource reallocation processes and their contributions to productivity growth? This paper studies the consequences of enterprise privatization and liberalization of product markets, labour markets, and imports in the former Soviet Republics of Russia and Ukraine....

This paper estimates the effects of privatization on worker separations and wages using retrospective data from a national probability sample of Ukrainian households. Detailed worker characteristics are used to control for compositional differences and to assess types of observable "winners" and...

We analyze the impact of privatization on multifactor productivity (MFP) using long panel data for nearly the universe of initially state-owned manufacturing firms in four economies. Controlling for firm and industry-year fixed effects and employing a wide variety of measurement approaches, we...

We analyze the pace and patterns of job reallocation in Ukraine using 1992-2000 panel data on nearly the surviving universe of manufacturing firms inherited from the Soviet Union. Employment growth displays a substantial increase in heterogeneity during this transition period, with a...

Although the development of a new private sector is generally considered crucial to economic transition, there has been rather little empirical research on the determinants of startup firm growth. This paper uses panel data techniques to analyze a survey of 297 new small enterprises in Romania...