In China, inequality in social welfare is of rising political concern. This case study analyzes the determinants of well-being of rural households in Hebei using a secondary panel data set (1986 to 2006). One key question is how well-being was affected by institutional changes in times of...

Monetary restraint in Poland does not operate in the expected manner under the conditions of predominant state ownership of both banks and industrial enterprises. With effective owners' control being prohibitively costly in the state-owned firms, "nobody's" banks continue their old lending...

Since the beginning of transition in 1990 from a centrally planned to a market oriented economy, the performance of Poland's economy has been outstanding if we take GDP growth as our measure. It is not specific reforms that can explain this performance but the radical ("big bang") reforms at the...