Recent studies have found that political disintegration is a cause of severe and rapid trade disintegration in former Eastern European countries. This finding somewhat conflicts with another strand of the literature highlighting the fact that trade patterns change relatively slowly. This article...

This paper examines how international openness can change firm productivity in south-eastern Europe (SEE), a crucial question for middle-income countries. Using firm-level data for six transition economies over the 1995-2002 period, we identify whether foreign ownership and propensity to trade...