This paper deals with the early stages of transformation of centrally-planned economies (CBEs) into market economies during which expectations playa key role. It focuses on the transitional phase during which the economy is not any more a CPE but has not yet become a market economy. During this...

An ongoing debate sets capital budgeting against market timing. The primary difficulty in evaluating these theories is finding distinct exogenous proxies for investment opportunities and mispricing. We use demand shifts induced by demographics to address this problem, and hence, provide a more...

We document that net equity issuance is considerably more sensitive to aggregate stock returns and Q's than to firm-level stock returns and Q's. Very similar patterns also emerge when we look at merger activity. In light of earlier work (Campbell 1991, Vuolteenaho 2002) which finds that...

This paper investigates the institutional causes of China's Great Famine. It presents two empirical findings: 1) in 1959, when the famine began, food production was almost three times more than population subsistence needs; and 2) regions with higher per capita food production that year suffered...

We study the evolution of market-oriented policies over time and across countries. We consider a model in which own and neighbors' past experiences influence policy choices, through their effect on policymakers' beliefs. We estimate the model using a large panel of countries. We find that there...

We analyze consequences of changing the terms of trade between agriculture and industry on capital accumulation and on welfare of workers in different sectors. The issue was central to Soviet industrialization debate and it remains important in today's developing world. Through a simple general...

The paper considers issues in recent research on macroeconomic equilibrium in centrally planned economies. I defend the explicit aggregative , macroeconomic approach in theory, institutional relationships and measurement. It has offered a fresh, coherent framework for analysis of many CPE...

This empirical study stresses the underlying macroeconomic forces which determine foreign trade flows in CPEs. The general specification includes a planners' demand equation for the volume of imports, a planners' supply equation for the volume of exports, and a rest-of-world demand equation for...

Two competing explanations for why consumers have trouble with financial decisions are gaining momentum. One is that people are financially illiterate since they lack understanding of simple economic concepts and cannot carry out computations such as computing compound interest, which could...

We measure heterogeneity in risk aversion among households in Thai villages using a full risk-sharing model and complement the results with a measure based on optimal portfolio choice. Among households with relatives living in the same village, full insurance cannot be rejected, suggesting that...