The institutions of bankruptcy have been at the center of the great economic events of the last decade, ranging from the Asian economic crisis, to the transition from socialism to capitalism. Our understanding of the economic, and legal structure of these institutions, as well as of their impact...

The authors study the effects of trade barriers and the persistence of past linkages on trade flows in the former Soviet Union. Estimating a gravity equation on trade among and between nine Russian regions and 14 former Soviet republics, they find that Russian regions traded 60 percent more with...