We investigate the entry of low-cost airlines (LCAs) in the German market. The strong competitive pressure of LCAs forced incumbent air and rail operators to reconsider their pricing strategy. Lufthansa reacted by a drastic cut of all prices for all intra-German origin and destinations (O&Ds)....

<title>Abstract</title> Railways restructuring takes place under very different circumstances and with very different goals in Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, and Russia. There are some improvements in productivity associated with the reforms in the European Union (among others access to...

We investigate whether management quality explains firm performance in Russia. We find that it explains relatively little in terms of firm performance, but it does explain some of the differences between firms in Russia’s Far East and the rest of Russia. Firms that have always been in private...

We investigate the restructuring of the US freight railroad industry after its deregulation. An econometric analysis of the joint effects of 'defensive' and 'strategic restructuring' reveals that, unsurprisingly, downsizing of the physical network has affected financial performance positively....

We introduce financial constraints in a theoretical analysis of illegal immigration. Intermediaries finance the migration costs of wealth-constrained migrants, who enter temporary servitude contracts to repay the debt. These debt/labor contracts are easier to enforce in the illegal than in the...

External shocks may cause a decline in the productivity of fixed capital in certain regions of an economy. Exogenous obstacles to migration make it hard for workers in those regions to reallocate to more prosperous regions. In addition, firms may devise “attachment” strategies to keep...

Reallocation of workers from obsolete sectors to more pro…table ones is among the most important challenges for many former centrally planned economies on their road towards a market economy. Due to the Stalinist mode of industrialization, this problem has an important regional dimension:...

We relate the phenomena of sluggish interregional labour reallocation and in-kind compensation in Russia to 'attachment' strategies of firms: Paying wages in non- monetary forms makes it hard for workers to raise the cash needed for quitting their region in order to find better jobs in more...

As a result of external shocks, the productivity of fixed capital may sometimes decrease in certain regions of an economy. There are exogenous obstacles to migration that make it hard for workers to reallocate to more profitable regions. We point to an endogenous obstacle that has not been...

We introduce financial constraints in a theoretical analysis of illegal immigration. Intermediaries finance the migration costs of wealth-constrained migrants, who enter temporary servitude contracts to repay the debt. These debt/labor contracts are easier to enforce in the illegal than in the...