Ukraine's economic performance has been anemic since the early 1990s. A major impediment to productivity growth has been low investment, held back by lack of strong and independent institutions. This paper aims to assess the major areas of institutional weakness in Ukraine and quantify the...

China and Australia have increasingly strong links, especially through trade. These are driven by demand from China for Australian commodities (coal and iron ore) and services (tourism and education). These links are influenced by China's transition to a services-driven, consumer-led economy....

This paper reviews briefly the controversy in the literature concerning the speed of adjustment and sequencing of reforms, and presents a model parameterized with Chinese data. The model is used to generate different policy simulations to illustrate some of the key issues in the debate on the...

Although various factors point to a more arduous and longer transition in Russia than in Eastern Europe, the broad policy approach should be similar. A necessary condition for effective macroeconomic stabilization is the imposition of hard budget constraints on enterprises. Financial assistance...

The IMF Working Papers series is designed to make IMF staff research available to a wide audience. Almost 300 Working Papers are released each year, covering a wide range of theoretical and analytical topics, including balance of payments, monetary and fiscal issues, global liquidity, and...

A consistent set of disaggregated industrial output data for four Eastern European countries is examined In order to determine the extent to which structural adjustment has taken place since the initiation of market-oriented reform. The latter created a massive relative price shock whose affects...

The IMF Working Papers series is designed to make IMF staff research available to a wide audience. Almost 300 Working Papers are released each year, covering a wide range of theoretical and analytical topics, including balance of payments, monetary and fiscal issues, global liquidity, and...

With the start of the process of its transition to a market economy in early 1990, Romania joined the ranks of other reforming Eastern European countries. At the starting point of its reform program, however, Romania was in a deep economic and institutional crisis and had no experience in even...