Business groups, which are ubiquitous in emerging market economies, balance the advantages of characteristics such as internal capital markets with the disadvantages such as inefficient internal distribution of resources and suppression of technological and other forms of innovativeness. In this...

Using data on 157 large companies in Poland and Hungary this paper employs a Bayesian structural equation modeling to examine interrelationships between corporate governance, managers’ independence from owners in terms of strategic decision-making, exporting and performance. It is found that...

Does entrepreneurial optimism affect business performance? Using a unique data set based on repeated survey design, we investigate this relationship empirically. Our measures of ‘optimism’ and ‘realism’ are derived from comparing the turnover growth expectations of 133 owners-managers...

Based on insights from Joseph Berliner's work on innovation in the Soviet centrally planned economy and its reform variants, we analyze process innovation (technological development) and product development in restructuring Hungarian companies from 1992 to 1995. Using data from a survey...

A large number of countries have recently experienced competitive shocks: sudden increases in the role that market forces play in determining the evolution of various industries. In this paper, we study the implications of Poland's competitive shock for three elements of the structure of that...

The theoretical literature gives conflicting predictions on how bank competition should affect financial stability, and dozens of researchers have attempted to evaluate the relationship empirically. We collect 598 estimates of the competition-stability nexus reported in 31 studies and analyze...

Business corporations seek profit. That is, after subtracting cost, they maximize net revenue. Spillovers (both costs and benefits) involve trade-offs governing boards should make. Spillovers, especially when coupled with clumsy applications of discounted present value, distort a business'...

Important elements of the transactional structure that created and partially privatized Komercni Banka, the Czech Republic's largest commercial bank, include antecedent actions that determined the bank's management and established its commercial loan portfolio, a decision against splitting the...

Using firm-level data from Bulgaria and Romania, this paper addresses a lacuna in the transition literature, namely, the link of firm-level employment turnover with firm-level growth in labour productivity. The results suggest that while net job creation at the firm level was affected by...

The privatization of Bank Slaski, one of nine regional commercial banks in Poland, illustrates the benefits of attracting a strategic foreign investor in the process. Internationale Nederlanden Group has contributed substantially to the upgrading of Bank Slaski's credit lending practices,...