This paper develops a large-scale, dynamic life-cycle model to simulate Russia's demographic and fiscal transition under favorable and unfavorable fossil-fuel price regimes. The model includes Russia, the U.S., China, India, the EU, and Japan+ (Japan plus Korea). The model predicts dramatic...

We develop a model of firm learning in volatile markets with noisy signals and test its predictions using historical data from the Ifo Institute's Business Climate Survey. We find that firms' forecasts improve as they age. We also exploit German Reunification as a natural experiment where firms...

We provide an empirical and theoretical analysis of the Greek Crisis of 2010. We first benchmark the crisis against all episodes of sudden stops, sovereign debt crises, and lending boom/busts in emerging and advanced economies since 1980. The decline in Greece's output, especially investment, is...

This paper investigates the potential reasons for the surprisingly different labor market performance of the United States, Canada, Germany, and several other OECD countries during and after the Great Recession of 2008-09. Unemployment rates did not change substantially in Germany, increased and...

How will countries handle idiosyncratic national macroeconomic shocks under the European single currency? The ways in which European countries now react to internally asymmetric shocks provide a better forecast than do the regional response pattern of the United States. In this paper we compare...

This paper identifies obstacles hindering the transformation of centrally-planned economies (CPEs) into well-functioning market economies. The analysis is motivated by the recent experience with economic transformation and restructuring in Eastern Europe and the U.S.S.R. The economic system in...

Based on matching household surveys for three central European countries, Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland, we explore the determinants of household saving rates in transition economies. We find savings rates to increase strongly in relative income and to be significantly higher for households...

In this paper I examine the evolution of labor relations institutions during the initial phase of marketization in Poland, Hungary. and Czechoslovakia and develop a model of changing support for reforms during the transition to a market economy. I find surprising stability in labor institutions...

During the past five years, there has been an important debate over the differing styles of market reforms in the formerly planned economies in East Asia versus Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (EEFSU). This paper puts forward three related propositions. First, the rapid growth of East...

Privatization of state assets is an essential step to the creation of a viable private sector in the formerly socialist economies of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. A standard approach to the problem has rapidly emerged. Small firms are being privatized by sale very rapidly. The strategy...