This paper develops a model to investigate the welfare implications of barter in Russia and other transition economies during the 1990s. We argue that barter is a welfare-improving phenomenon that acts as a defense mechanism against monetary instability. When firms react to tighter credit...

This paper develops a general equilibrium model and proposes a theory to explain the main stylized facts about the growth of barter transactions in Russia during the 1990s. Because of the high opportunity cost of using fiat money, with a tight enough credit market it may be optimal for firms to...

The Russian labor market was characterized with three main features: a weak sensitivity of employment levels to changing conditions, a high variability of wage, large inter-firm flows of labor resources. This paper recommends a model of a collective firm explaining these phenomena. The main...

East Germany remains unique among the transition economies. Soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, it became part of the Federal Republic of Germany. German Union meant the transplantation of West Germany's legal, administrative and economic infrastructure to the five new Länder. The...

Why have economic reforms aimed at reducing the role of the state been successful in some cases but not others? Are reform failures the consequence of leviathan states that hinder private economic activity, or of weak states unable to implement policies effectively and provide a supportive...

Why have economic reforms aimed at reducing the role of the state been successful in some cases but not others? Are reform failures the consequence of leviathan states that hinder private economic activity, or of weak states unable to implement policies effectively and provide a supportive...

The adjustment of labour markets during transition has been quite different from that anticipated by the Optimal Speed of Transition (OST) literature. In particular, it has involved stagnant unemployment pools, large flows to inactivity and strikingly low workers' mobility especially when...

An ‘efficiency wage’ model developed for Western economies is reinterpreted for Soviet Russia assuming that it was the Gulag not unemployment that acted as a ‘worker-discipline device’. Archival data now available allows for a basic account of the dynamics of the Gulag to be estimated....

Firm entry has been proven to be fundamental for job creation in transition economies. The creation of new ventures as well as their survival and expansion depends on the business environment of the country. It is therefore important to adopt policies aimed at improving the framework conditions...