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...

The world is searching for a new socioeconomic development paradigm, which is sometimes referred to as the “new reality.” Judging by the previous structural crises (in the 1930s and 1970s), this search takes about a decade characterized by volatile economic trends, political crises, and...

Special economic zones (SEZs) have been touted as “tools for development”, and yet their results have often been disappointing. We explain how SEZs can be used to reform a country from a system dominated by rent-seeking to a liberalized economy, where officials derive their revenues from...

Africa's interior-to-coast roads are well suited to export natural resources, but not to support regional trade. Are they the optimal response to geography and comparative advantage, or the result of suboptimal political distortions? We investigate the political determinants of road paving in...

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. In our opinion it is not specific reforms that can explain this performance but the radical ("big bang")...

Africa's interior-to-coast roads are well suited to export natural resources, but not to support regional trade. Are they the optimal response to geography and comparative advantage, or the result of suboptimal political distortions? We investigate the political determinants of road paving in...

The paper discusses the strategy of economic development of Russia, which has to be developed after the end of the first stage of post-communist transition – when private economy replaced the state-controlled one and stabilization has been obtained. Russia is considered as a heavy...

This paper identifies and investigates conceptual and empirical links among Russia?s disappointing growth performance of the mid-1990s, its costly and eventually unsuccessful stabilization, the macroeconomic meltdown of 1998 and the spectacular rise of non-payments. Non-payments developed into a...

The case of the Belarusian economy has puzzled many academic scholars for years. Belarus has often been referred to as a transition outlier, given its relatively fast recovery in 1996 and spectacular growth prior to the global financial crisis without much transformation of its economy. Three...