This paper develops a model to investigate the welfare implications of barter in Russia and other transition economies during the 1990s. We argue that barter is a welfare-improving phenomenon that acts as a defence mechanism against monetary instability. When firms react to tighter credit...

A general consensus in the transition economies literature links the existence of enterprise restructuring with the pace of the transition process and the potential for economic growth. The existing literature is less clear, however, about whether the lack of economic growth is caused by the...

This paper develops a general equilibrium model and proposes a theory to explain the main stylized facts about the growth of barter transactions in Russia during the 1990s. Because of the high opportunity cost of using fiat money, with a tight enough credit market it may be optimal for firms to...