Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the North Caucasus is known as a politically unstable region and as a melting pot for terrorism and all kinds of criminal activity, reaching from drugtrafficking and illegal arms trade to hijacking and extortion. Furthermore, the North Caucasus is one of...

The paper emphasizes the transition in Russia and the role institutions played before and during the process. In Russia, a "big bang" approach was applied. That is to say, transition was conducted all of a sudden, omitting important underlying reforms. This practice should function as a shock...

The empirical literature is inconclusive about whether a country's democratization goes hand in hand with a reallocation of economic resources. With newly available individual-level data of former residents of the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR), we analyse how supporters and...

The empirical literature is inconclusive about whether a country’s democratization has a long-lasting impact on former supporters or opponents of the bygone regime. With newly available individual-level data of former residents of the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR), we analyze how...

Differences in farm structures between Russia and western market economies can hardly be made consistent with the neoclassical textbook idea of a technologically determined farm size operating in a perfect market environment. The main aim of the paper is to identify embedded institutions that...

This paper examines two drastic changes in the performance of local water associations in providing local public goods - appropriate levels of water table - in the reclamation system in the Powiat Pyrzyce in the Voivodship Zachodniopomorski in northwest Poland. Employing an institutional...

The amount of water used for irrigation has sharply declined during transition in Bulgaria. Large sections of existing irrigation systems were abandoned, and the ones still in use are barely maintained. Crops such as wheat and barley have replaced more water-intensive crops, including...

The former socialist countries of South East and Central Europe exhibit great variation in institutional performance. Unlike the sparse existing literature on the determinants of institutional variation in transition economies, I claim that the variation can be explained by the legacies of the...