The implications of the intricate pattern of relationships formed by company directors holding positions on multiple corporate boards, or 'interlocking', have long been the subject of speculation and investigation. While this web of inter-firm relationships is no longer regarded as prime facia...

Some major trends in world income inequalities and relevant economic trends are reviewed here. In recent decades, there have been indications of a reversal of the growing income divergence between North and South after over half a millennium, especially in the last two centuries. Meanwhile,...

Uzbekistan is not usually considered an economic success story, but in fact it is: its GDP increased since 1989 more than in any other post-communist country, except for China, Vietnam and Turkmenistan. The success of Uzbekistan is very much similar to the Chinese – gradual economic reforms...

Utopian socialists believed that socialism is inevitable because it is a more rational system to organize production and life, a system more in line with the “good” nature of human beings. Marxism rejected this reasoning replacing it with what is known as historical materialism: social...

This paper examines the determinants of financial flows between the federal government and regional authorities in Russia. The main question is to what extent intergovernmental transfers correspond to the ‘ideal pattern’ – equalisation of the abilities of the regions to provide public...

This paper looks at Russian experience with austerity programmes since the breakdown of the former Soviet Union in 1991. Downsizing of the state was one of the major elements in a reform package designed to transform the centrally planned economy into a market one (together with deregulation,...

According to a narrow definition, institutional capacity of the state is the ability of the government to enforce laws and regulations. There are a lot of subjective indices (control over corruption, rule of law, government effectiveness, etc.) that are designed to measure the state...

While developing countries as a group did better than developed countries in 2008-09 recession, transition economies – former communist countries – experienced the largest reduction of output. Out of 42 countries that experienced negative growth in 2007-09, 13 were transition economies. In...