Over the past two years, millions of new private investors have entered the stockmarkets in Russia and the USA, but their number in the Russian Federation issignificantly overestimated. In both markets, private investors face the risks of gettinginvolved in speculative transactions. The Russian...

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...

We establish that domestically owned firms in two alternative models of emerging market economies, the Czech Republic and Russia, have not been converging to the technological frontier set by foreign owned firms. In both countries, the distance of domestic firms to the frontier grew (in all...

This paper explores the dynamics of corporate finance during the early stages of industrial growth by examining a newly constructed panel database of Imperial Russian industrial corporations' balance sheets. We document large differences in financial strategies and outcomes across industries,...

Firms' contractual relations with a state may give lenders a positive signal and facilitate access to debt. This paper studies the impact of public procurement contracts on ftrms' access to debt using an extensive survey of Russian manufacturing ftrms combined with accounting and procurement...