The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of Chinese government financial incentives on firms’ innovation performance during the nation's initial economic transition period in the mid-1990s. Through a large-scale empirical survey of more than 1000 Chinese manufacturing firms, the...

The aim of this study was to determine secular changes in the sexual maturation of children and adolescents from Eastern regions of Poland between 1980 and 2000, with special attention paid to rural–urban differences. Our sample comprised 34,055 girls and 28,100 boys from 9 to 18 years of age....

The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of corruption on bank lending in Russia. This issue is of major interest in order to understand the causes of financial underdevelopment and the effects of corruption in Russia. We use regional measures of corruption and bank-level data to...

The collapse of communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe marked a historical event for the countries on both sides of the iron curtain. Using the recently released EU KLEMS database on detailed sectoral growth and employment measures, we analyse the productivity performance in the period...

Since 1978 China has been undergoing transition from a socialist to a capitalist economy and the opening up to international trade and investment. This process has been accelerated by WTO membership. This article presents an overview of the gendered processes and outcomes associated with China's...

Falling output and living standards have pushed countries in transition from the socialist system to re-consider how best to target public resources on those in need. The paper investigates the workings of a new social assistance benefit in Uzbekistan, the largest of the former Soviet Central...

The propagandists of ancien regime Russia and Eastern Europe portrayed state family support policies as models of care and efficiency. The collapse of communism revealed that this was a much distorted picture of the reality. But the positive work of these schemes should not be forgotten. Help...

Data on the weight and height of children are used to assess living standards and public policy in Uzbekistan, the most populous of the Central Asian republics. The paper begins by making the case for the use of such data, contrasting them with monetized measures of welfare based on household...

The first half of the 1990s brought major changes to Hungary. The positive sides of the transformation in the Hungarian economy and society were accompanied by less welcome aspects - a sharp fall in GDP, double-digit unemployment and falling real incomes. How have children fared in these...