The rise of barter and non-cash payments has become a dominant feature of the Russian transition to a market economy. This paper confronts with empirical evidence two approaches to explain barter in Russia: the 'illusion view' and the 'trust view' of barter. The 'illusion view' suggests that...

This paper is a reply to Barry Ickes' critique of my paper 'Trust versus Illusion: What is Driving Demonetization in Russia?' in which I show that the data reject Barry Ickes' Virtual Economy explanation of barter in Russia in favor of an institutional explanation based on the lack of trust.

Soft budget constraints (SBCs) are a persistent feature of transition economies and have been blamed for i.a. a lack of fiscal consolidation and sluggish growth. EU eastward enlargement has - among other things - been conditioned on tackling SBCs. This paper analyzes such outside conditionality...

The virtual economy argument for Russia suggests that barter allows the parties to pretend that the manufacturing sector is producing value by enabling this sector to sell its output at a higher price than its market value. We confront this prediction with the actual pricing behavior of...

This paper is a reply to Barry Ickes' critique of my paper “Trust versus Illusion: What is Driving Demonetization in Russia?” in which I show that the data reject Barry Ickes' Virtual Economy explanation of barter in Russia in favor of an institutional explanation based on the lack of trust.

The recent financial crisis has led to a major debate about fair-value accounting. Many critics have argued that fair-value accounting, often also called mark-to-market accounting, has significantly contributed to the financial crisis or, at least, exacerbated its severity. In this paper, we...

The recent financial crisis has led to a vigorous debate about the pros and cons of fair-value accounting (FVA). This debate presents a major challenge for FVA going forward and standard setters' push to extend FVA into other areas. In this article, we highlight four important issues as an...

Der Verkauf von Non Performing Loans (NPLs) hat sich innerhalb von wenigen Jahren als ein bedeutendes Instrument zur Restrukturierung des Bankengeschäfts in Deutschland etabliert. Die vorliegende Arbeit gibt auf transparente Weise den aktuellen Stand wieder, welche Formen von NPLs existieren,...

This paper investigates how family ownership, control and management affect firm investment performance. We use the identity of the CEO and the COB to establish under what management the firm is: founder, descendent or external management. The analysis shows that founder management has no effect...

Regulators and shareholders are calling for independent directors. Independent directors, however, have numerous external professional commitments. Using To- bin's Q as an approximation of market valuation and controlling for endogeneity, our empirical analysis reveals that neither external...