Economic development implies that the efficiency of firms in developing countries starts approaching that of firms from advanced economies. Various development policies have been pursued to achieve this convergence. We test for this convergence in two economies that represent alternative models...

The article summarises the main lessons of the Bank’s 2010 conference which focused on international trade and foreign direct investment. The research is based on a microeconomic approach to the behaviour of Belgian firms, with reference to developments in the scientific literature on the...

One of the aims of the internationally funded Investment Compact of the Balkan Stability Pact is to reduce investment risk in the region and lay the foundations for the inflow of private capital. This paper discusses the situation of foreign direct investment (FDI) in South-East European...

Recent developments have revealed that (i) advanced transition countries have received most of the FDI to date, especially greenfield projects; (ii) more countries than in the mid?1990s are resorting to FDI in order to accelerate privatization (Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia); and (iii)...

This paper follows the definition of international competitiveness of countries (nations) as defined by Trabold (1995) including the ability to sell, the ability to attract FDI and the ability to adjust - all these leading to the ability to earn. These components can be measured by specific...

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...

Economic development implies that the efficiency of firms in developing countries is approaching that of firms in advanced economies. We examine the extent of this convergence in the Czech Republic and Russia, economies that represent alternative models of implementing development policies,...

This paper follows the definition of international competitiveness of countries (nations) as defined by Trabold (1995) including the ability to sell, the ability to attract FDI and the ability to adjust - all these leading to the ability to earn. These components can be measured by specific...

One of the aims of the internationally funded Investment Compact of the Balkan Stability Pact is to reduce investment risk in the region and lay the foundations for the inflow of private capital. This paper discusses the situation of foreign direct investment (FDI) in South-East European...

Recent developments have revealed that (i) advanced transition countries have received most of the FDI to date, especially greenfield projects; (ii) more countries than in the mid?1990s are resorting to FDI in order to accelerate privatization (Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia); and (iii)...