Underlying Greece's public debt crisis is a fundamental economic problem: its lack of international competitiveness. While in the short term the debt crisis must be solved, in the long term the economic perspective of the country will depend on whether it will succeed in developing competitive...

In the first part of the paper, it was shown that decisions on privatization have to be considered in the context of more general problem of finding a rational property structure in an economy. The second part demonstrates that public enterprises fulfill a number of special functions which are...

We assess the effects from the industrial policy of growing state-controlled national champions on the Russian banking system, its concentration and competitiveness. Some light is shed on comparative financial performance of state-controlled banks versus other market participants. We also show...

Uzbekistan is not usually considered an economic success story, but in fact it is: its GDP increased since 1989 more than in any other post-communist country, except for China, Vietnam and Turkmenistan. The success of Uzbekistan is very much similar to the Chinese – gradual economic reforms...

Between 1981 and 2001 Italy became a services-oriented economy. The loss of jobs in manufacturing was less pronounced in Italy’s organized industrial districts than in the rest of the country. The branches of manufacturing that typify the districts outperformed the others in terms of...

This paper presents a simple stochastic model of proportionate growth to describe international trade and it applies this set-up to the relationship between export dynamics and economic development. Trade flows are assumed to grow as a geometric Brownian motion while new trade links follow a...

Abstract This paper provides a critical analysis of the World Bank’s new thinking on industrial policy. After outlining the changing perspectives on industrial policy put forward by the World Bank over the last three decades, we argue that the bank’s economists have taken one step forward...

During the past two decades, the “Washington Consensus” has been the dominant recipe for unleashing economic growth in developing countries. In view of the strong criticism mounted against it, it seems to have lost prominence recently. The success of the East Asian newly industrialized...

The costs and benefits of privatization are considered, focusing on the current Russian conditions. The experience of many countries, as well as econometric and theoretical studies, a review of which is given in the paper, show that relative efficiency of privatized enterprises in comparison...