In our analysis of the Russian household deposit market during the 1990s, we show how the initial conditions of market emergence contributed to a vicious circle in which private commercial banks progressively lost the trust of potential depositors. The roots of this destructive dynamic lay in...

Why are some business lobbies less benign in their external effects than others? In The rise and decline of nations (New Haven: Yale University Press, <CitationRef CitationID="CR44">1982</CitationRef>), Mancur Olson proposed that less-encompassing groups—i.e., those whose constituents collectively represent a relatively narrow range of...</citationref>

This note argues that the most commonly used estimates of the size of the unofficial economies in the former Soviet republics are flawed. Most important, they are based on calculations that disregard the variation in unofficial economic activity across space in the pre-transition Soviet Union....

Russia’s tremendous inter-regional variation in the pace of industrial land rights reform has meant that geography has helped determine the current tenure status of firms’ production plots as much as any individual firm characteristics. By exploiting both this difference in the pace with...

How does political competition shape the way that firms pursue legislative change? A rich political economy literature describes various ways in which firms influence the design and enforcement of laws, rules and regulations germane to their business activities. Although helpful, this literature...