The transition paths from plan to market have varied markedly across countries. Central and Eastern European and the Baltic countries, which opted for a fast and profound transformation of their institutions including business climates, rapidly narrowed the productivity gap with advanced...

Trade reforms in transition economies are analyzed in a model of trade and vertical product differentiation. We first show that trade liberalization in transition economies reduces the local firm s output and raises the prices of all variants. Second, we find that neither free trade nor the...

This study compares incentive effects of various tax depreciation methods currently adopted in European transition economies. In these countries straight-line, geometric-degressive and accelerated depreciation measures are quite popular in combination with different corporate tax rates. Their...

The paper argues that economic integration causes problems for the labor market of high-wage countries due to cross-border labor mobility and the accompanying increase in labor supply. Empirical evidence is provided from an analysis of regional labor market effects of German re-unification. In...

In this paper we argue that strong political economy forces explain the rush of the EU to expand eastwards. We use a model of vertical product differentiation in order to claim that technologically- advanced EU firms (residing in high-income member countries) prefer a mutual market-opening with...

The relationship between the distribution of political rights and that of economic resources has been studied both theoretically and empirically. This paper reviews the existing literature and, in particular, the available empirical evidence.Our reading of the literature suggests that formal...