This paper examines the effect of banking on economic growth in modern Russia. To overcome simultaneity and selection, we exploit regional banking variation induced by the creation of “specialized banks†in the last years of the Soviet Union (1988-1991). Consistent with the qualitative...

Bank-issued credit is an important source of external financing for dynamic firms in transition economies. However, banks with a primary mission of issuing loans to private firms have only recently emerged in Russia. While this emergence (and subsequent expansion) appears to be carrying...

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Russia’s impressive growth record since 2000 is driven largely by high world oil prices (Desai, 2006). This rapid growth, however, may be a “flash in the pan†because high oil prices enable the Russian government to engage in rent-seeking and to postpone deep restructuring (Berglöf,...

Several important studies of institutions assume that the quality of institutions is persistent following some formative historic event. The assumption of institutional persistence, however, begs the question of how these institutions persisted. To better understand this issue, this paper...

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