The transitional economies of the Former Soviet Union (FSU) have enjoyed an extraordinary period of growth and poverty reduction between 2000 and 2007 and this occurred in concomitance with significant increases in private and public transfers to households. The paper assesses the relative...

Lax monetary policy in the United States has been pointed out as one of the responsible factors behind the recent global crisis. Similar loose monetary conditions also prevailed in many European countries before the crisis and were argued to be among the accommodating factors behind the run-up...

This paper focuses on knowledge-based entrepreneurship, or new firm creation in industries which are considered to be science-based or to use research and development intensively, in the East Central European (ECE) context. On the basis of case studies of thirteen knowledge-based firms in six...

Nordhaus (2008) has developed a testing strategy for what he calls "Baumol's diseases", by which name he designates a number of by-products of structural change that are unwanted from an economic policy perspective. He finds that the U.S. economy is strongly affected by the "diseases". This...

This paper examines the costs of recent sovereign defaults using synthetic control methods, a novel econometric technique based on comparative case studies. Evidence on the effects of debt crises is thus presented on a case-by-case basis, uncovering large variations in country-specific...

This paper surveys studies of the importance of Central Asian small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in the economy and their experience during the Russian financial crisis. It also uses survey data from the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development's Business...

Reform of financial regulation is a priority on the international agenda. At the call of the Group of Twenty Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (G-20), a number of new international standards have been issued, most notably Basel III. As a member of the G-20, the Financial Stability...