Despite a vast accumulation of private capital, China is not embracing capitalism. Deceptively familiar capitalist features disguise the profoundly unfamiliar foundations of "market socialism with Chinese characteristics." The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), by controlling the career advancement...

Investment in a broad array of intangible capital - R&D, organizational capital, worker training, and brand equity - has occurred in many of the most advanced world economies and has been found to be an important source of economic growth. This evidence suggests that intangible capital formation...

We have conducted the first survey on management practices in transition countries. We found that Central Asian transition countries, such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, have on average very poor management practices. Their average scores are below emerging countries such as Brazil, China and...

This paper examines alternative hypotheses concerning the determinants of success in the transition from Communism to the market. In particular, we look at whether speed of privatization, legal institutions or initial conditions are more important in explaining the growth of the transition...

This paper develops a general equilibrium two country, two commodity dynamic simulation model of international trade in commodities and financial claims. The model generalizes the Heckscher-Ohlin static theory of trade by incorporating costs of quickly adjusting levels of capital stocks in...

While output declined in virtually all transition economies in the initial years, the speed and extent of the recovery that followed has varied widely across these countries. The contrast between the more and less successful transitions, the latter largely in the former Soviet Union, raises many...

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...

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...

Over the last two centuries, many countries experienced regime transitions toward democracy. We document this democratic transition over a long time horizon. We use historical time series of income, education and democracy levels from 1870 to 2000 to explore the economic factors associated with...

Political and economic transition is often blamed for Russia's 40% surge in deaths between 1990 and 1994. Highlighting that increases in mortality occurred primarily among alcohol-related causes and among working-age men (the heaviest drinkers), this paper investigates an alternative...