Transition requires the reallocation of resources across activities through closure of inefficient firms and the creation of new firms. It also requires restructuring of existing firms where improvements in performance are feasible. Both processes are closely tied together and are aimed at...

How do new and foreign firms achieve superior productivity? Do they conduct more and better R&D? Or do they distinguish themselves through computerization and organizational capital? We investigate the determinants of and returns to several types of investment, using a panel of over 40,000...

Governments throughout Eastern Europe have been singularly unsuccessful in dealing with large loss-making SOEs. A more promising approach would create an incentive framework and legal environment where the SOE's major non-government creditor can take the lead in initiating restructuring and the...

From a theoretical perspective the link between the speed and scope of rapid labor reallocation and productivity growth or income inequality is ambiguous. Do reallocations with more flows tend to produce higher productivity growth? Does such a link appear at the expense of higher income...

Recent literature on international trade has established that the most productive firms become multinationals. But our data reveal a startling variation in productivity levels of foreign affiliates across the countries in Eastern Europe of the same European multinational parent firms suggesting...

This paper discusses the mechanisms of corporate governance in a centrally planned economy, following Kornai’s classical work on the Socialist system. We evaluate the role of different co-ordination mechanisms used in central and east European countries. A critical analysis of the five...

Increased international competition poses challenges to companies' organizational practices, including human resource management. For multinational companies operating simultaneously in diverse local conditions this challenge implies a decision between either opting for universal best practices...

This theoretical study attempts to sketch an initial picture of diversified micro- enterprises (0-9 employees) in transitional economies, such as those in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). A framework of political, economic and legal...

The crisis has hit the corporate sectors of the new EU member states from Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) more than those of most old EU member states. Taking full account of firms' heterogeneity, the paper analyses what kind of CEECs firms' characteristics make some of them more...