November 1997 <p> This paper has been revised as Stanford Economics Working Paper 99-010.

This paper develops a simple model to analyze the "dual-track" approach to market liberalization as a mechanism for implementing efficient Pareto-improving economic reform, that is, reform achieving efficiency without creating losers. The approach, based on the continued enforcement of the...

Pareto-improving economic reforms that also simultaneously achieve efficiency can be implemented through a strategy of "dual-track" liberalization. Its success requires the feasibility of the original plan and its continued enforcement by the state. The Chinese experience demonstrates that such...

We develop a simple model to analyze the "dual-track" approach to transition to a market economy as a mechanism for implementing efficient Pareto-improving economic reform, that is, reform achieving efficiency without creating losers. The approach, based on the continued enforcement of the...

We model the coordination of specialised tasks inside an organisation as "attribute matching". Using this method, we compare the performance of organisational forms (M-form and U-form) in implementing changes such as innovation and reform. In our framework, organisational forms affect the...

The government's incentives to bail out inefficient projects are determined by the trade-off between political benefits and economic costs, the latter depending on the decentralization of government. Two effects of federalism are derived: first, fiscal competition among local governments under...

Social scientists studying the determinants of entrepreneurship have emphasized three distinct perspectives: the role of institutions, the role of social networks and the role of personal characteristics. We conduct a survey from five large developing and transition economies to better...

We study the determinants of the decision to become an entrepreneur in Russia, China, and Brazil, using unique survey data at the individual level. We find that entrepreneurs have many common characteristics relative to non-entrepreneurs in all three countries. They are more likely to have...