Using firm-level data from Bulgaria and Romania, this paper addresses a lacuna in the transition literature, namely, the link of firm-level employment turnover with firm-level growth in labour productivity. The results suggest that while net job creation at the firm level was affected by...

In this paper we investigate to what extent firm investment in transition countries is sensitive to internal finance. We use accounts data of over 4000 companies in four countries at different stages of transition. We find that firms in Bulgaria and Romania are less sensitive to internal...

This paper uses representative firm level panel data of 1,701 Bulgarian and 2,047 Romanian manufacturing firms to estimate market power (i.e. price-cost margins) and to analyze how these are affected by privatization and increased competitive pressure. In contrast to earlier work that analyzes...

In this paper, we analyze the effects of trade, concentration and ownership on the pricing behavior of firms in two transition countries, Bulgaria and Romania. We use an extensive dataset of more than 3000 firms and sector level infirmation to estimate the effects of these three factors on the...

Several theoretical explanations for the presence of soft budget constraints have recently been put forward in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to empirically test these theories on the causes of soft budget constraints. We therefore use a panel data set, consisting of company...

This study analyzes the dynamic effect of FDI on local firms' productivity by relaxing the standard implicit assumption that technological spillovers are immediate and pfirmanent. We find that the entry of majority foreign owned firms has a short run negative effect on the productivity of local...

We exploit the census of Romanian firms to provide a microfounded analysis of the sources of regional disparities in the country. To this extent, we adapt to the regional case a decomposition of firm-level output dynamics based on semi-parametric productivity estimates. The methodology, robust...