This paper shows that donors that maximize relative aid impact spread their budgets across many recipient countries in a unique Nash equilibrium, explaining aid fragmentation. This equilibrium may be inefficient even without fixed costs, and the inefficiency increases in the equality of donors'...

This paper shows that donors that maximize relative aid impact spread their budgets across many recipient countries in a unique Nash equilibrium, explaining aid fragmentation. This equilibrium may be inefficient even without fixed costs, and the inefficiency increases in the equality of donors'...

The IMF attempts to catalyze and stabilize private capital flows to emerging markets by providing public monitoring and emergency finance. In analyzing its role we contrast cases where banks and bondholders do the lending. Banks have a natural advantage in monitoring and creditor coordination,...

This paper addresses an apparent lack of economic theory in the analysis of multilateral development bank (MDB) behavior. A simple comparative statics model that is adapted from the credit union literature is used to predict potential areas of conflict, agreement, and indifference between MDB...

The Soviet ruling elite, the nomenklatura, used both cooption and political repression to encourage loyalty to the communist regime. Loyalty was critical both in defusing internal opposition to the rule of the nomenklatura and in either deterring or defeating foreign enemies of the Soviet Union....

The primary function of banks during economic transformation is seen to be provision of an efficient payments mechanism. The lack of banking skills, particularly in credit allocation, is seen as the major problem in stable monetary systems. This is a problem which can be expected to last many...

This paper addresses the major issues concerning the compilation of money and banking statistics for the fifteen republics of the former Soviet Union (FSU), including (1) the treatment of ruble currency circulation and (2) the classification of claims on FSU financial institutions. The paper...

The purpose of this paper is to show that, under the price fluctuations that characterize most transition economies, the commonly used chain index derived from the published month-to-month price change of the PPI in some cases dramatically overstates the rate of price inflation. The analysis is...

Russia, the Baltic states and the other countries of the former Soviet Union inherited health and education systems that were in need of substantial structural and financial reform. In spite of a sharp decline of real resources, this reform has barely begun. While health and education have not...