Technology transfer and the so-called productivity spillover-effects are important aspects of foreign direct investments regarding their contribution to the long-term development potential of the host countries.The effects of the foreign direct investments on the foreign and domestic companies...

This study addresses the potential trade-off between inflation and exchange rate targeting in former transition countries, which now may be labeled emerging market economies and which prepare for entry into the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Among this group of countries, some implemented...

This report starts where the previous quarterly publication ended. This first publication of a new annual series contains most of the same data as the quarterly report, plus some new material, through 1991. It also presents historical data covering a longer period of time than the previous...

This report reviews recent global efforts to privatize energy resources and outlines the opportunities and challenges privatization has presented to U.S. and foreign multinational energy companies. The group of energy companies studied in this report includes the major U.S. petroleum companies...

This paper is concerned with the determinants of international steam-coal trade. Most work in projecting coal trade has been either qualitative (a consensus of experts) or, if quantitative, has been based on competitive spatial-equilibrium models. Unfortunately, the competitive model of trade...

The Eastern European Economies offer many major business opportunities but due to the transitional nature of their economies, these are highly complex and fraught with the socialist cultural disposition. There is a dearth of research into the nature of these opportunities/complexities,...

We argue that in addition to host corruption per se, as accounted for by the existingliterature, an explanation of inter-country variation in FDI needs to account for the distance between the host and home corruption, which we call relative corruption. We use a large matched home-host firm-level...

The paper analyzes the factors behind the reorientation of transition countries’ exports to their non-traditional partners outside their former block. First, the amount of reorientation is calculated using a gravity model. Then, reasons for the cross-country differences in the rate of closing...

Microfinance institutions are important, particularly in developing countries, because they expand the frontier of financial intermediation by providing loans to those traditionally excluded from formal financial markets. This paper presents the first systematic statistical examination of the...

The paper examines the inflation targeting regime in the context of transition economies. Recent years have witnessed an increasing number of central banks in these countries moving towards the implementation of inflation targeting regimes. However, the success of such a regime depends largely...