In the process of implementing market reforms, many post-socialist countries have struggled to preserve economic and political integration. Using a statistical model of commodity trade, we quantify the evolution of economic integration observed among regions within Russia during 1995-1999, and...

In integrated economies, inter-city price differences can be explained largely by transportation costs. This is not the case in Russia. Here, we argue that this is due to an internal border that separates a region we denote as the Red Belt from the rest of Russia. Regions within the Red Belt...

In pursuit of its transition from a command to a market economy, post-Soviet Russia has witnessed enormous regional differences in economic growth rates. Moreover, the economic reforms implemented under this transition, while initiated at the federal level, have also differed markedly across...

In pursuit of its transition from a command to a market economy, Russia has witnessed enormous regional differences in economic growth rates. Moreover, the implementation of economic reforms has also differed markedly across regions. We analyze whether regional differences in reform policies can...

In pursuit of its transition from a command to a market economy, post-Soviet Russia has witnessed enormous regional differences in economic growth rates. Moreover, the economic reforms implemented under this transition, while initiated at the federal level, have also differed markedly across...

Governments that privatize state industries often retain control over key distribution assets. While there are many examples of this form of partial privatization, to our knowledge there are no substantial quantitative studies of how governments use their control under these circumstances. In...

We analyze the determinants of effective legal institutions (legality) using data from 49 countries. We show that the way the law was initially transplanted and received is a more important determinant than the supply of law from a particular legal family. Countries that have developed legal...

We use a statistical model of commodity trade to measure the extent of integration between regional commodity markets within Russia. Monthly time-series data on regional commodity prices spanning 1994 through 1999 indicate substantial temporal fluctuations in integration over this period: an...

We argue that the quality of institutions that enforce contracts and protect property rights influences the costs of producing high-value added (complex) versus low-value added (simple) products. Since data is hardly available for domestic transactions, we generate predictions about the...

Using state-level data from the United States, we find that differences in colonial legal institutions affect the current quality of state legal institutions. These differences in colonial legal institutions arose because some states were settled by Great Britain, a common law country, and other...