In 1991, the Baltics, Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union set out on the road to establishing market economies by lieberalizing prices, dismantling the instruments of central planning, and initiating a process of fundamental structural reforms. Since then these 15 countries...

Money demand in dollarized economies often appears to be highly unstable, making it difficult to forecast and control inflation. In this paper, we show that a stable money demand function for Russia can be found for ""effective broad money,"" which includes an estimate of foreign cash holdings....

Russia dramatically reduced its higher rates of personal income tax (PIT) in 2001 establishing a single marginal rate at the low level of 13 percent. In the following year, real revenue from the PIT actually increased by about 26 percent. This ''flat tax'' experience has attracted much attention...

Many countries among the Baltics, Russia and other CIS states are increasingly borrowing on international capital markets, a development that generally reflects their success in achieving financial stabilization. In view of the low level of domestic saving and large capital requirements,...

On occasions, by running arrears, governments have unilaterally borrowed from domestic agents. These agents ended up with implicit claims on the government for which they had no title and that would be honored, at best, on an unspecified future date and for an uncertain value. Having untitled...