We document a statistical association between the severity of the persecution and mass murder of Jews (the Holocaust) by the Nazis during World War II and long-run economic and political outcomes within Russia. Cities that experienced the Holocaust most intensely have grown less, and cities as...

Just how unequal were the incomes of different classes of Russians on the eve of Revolution, relative to other countries, to Russia's earlier history, and to Russia's income distribution today? Careful weighing of an eclectic data set provides provisional answers. We provide detailed income...

This paper examines the effect of banking on economic growth in modern Russia. To overcome simultaneity and selection, we exploit regional banking variation induced by the creation of "specialized banks" (spetsbanks) in the last years of the Soviet Union (1988-1991). Consistent with the...

The "loans for shares" scheme of 1995-6--in which a handful of well-connected businessmen bought stakes in major Russian companies--is widely considered a scandal that slowed subsequent Russian economic growth. Fifteen years later, I reexamine the details of the program. In light of evidence...

Russia is often considered a perfect example of the so-called "resource curse"--the argument that natural resource wealth tends to undermine democracy. Given high oil prices, some observers see the country as virtually condemned to authoritarian government for the foreseeable future. Reexamining...

We discuss recent policy debate in Russia on moving from the present value added tax to a sales tax structure covering households, government and exports. What is distinctive in this debate is the range and nature of problems identified with the VAT, most of which stem from its multistage...

We construct key household and individual economic variables using a panel micro data set from the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) for 1994-2005. We analyze cross-sectional income and consumption inequality and find that inequality decreased during the 2000-2005 economic recovery....

In this paper we analyze the link between corruption money laundering and round-trip investment via offshore jurisdictions utilizing Russian firm-level data. In particular we empirically explore location strategies of round-trip investors (namely, from Cyprus and British Virgin Islands) across...

We identify the impact of local firm concentration on incumbent performance with a quasi natural experiment. When Germany was divided after World War II, many firms in the machine tool industry fled the Soviet occupied zone to prevent expropriation. We show that the regional location decisions...

Every country faces what economists call an intertemporal (across time) budget constraint, which requires that its government's future expenditures, including the servicing of its outstanding official debt, be covered by its government's future receipts when measured in present value. The...