Import liberalization forms part and parcel of trade reforms in transition economies. There are, however, significant differences among post-communist countries in the degree of import liberalization. What factors govern the evolution of import tariff policy during the transition period? This...

When designing a trade policy reform, government of a transition country faces the problem of minimizing both trade distortions and losses in tariff revenues. One possible solution of this problem is tariff unification, which undermines stimuli for tariff evasion and thus saves budget revenues....

For economies in transition, the issues of property rights protection provided by the state and implications for economic performance are very important. The paper develops an endogenous growth model with incomplete capital markets and the level of public protection of property rights determined...

This paper employs the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, a nationwide panel, to inquire into the magnitude, determinants, and consequences of occupational mobility in Russia from 1985 to 1998. We show that the restructuring process increases the rate of occupational reallocation....

A macroeconomic model based on search-theoretical foundations is built to show that in an economy with structural deficiencies of the Russian Virtual Economy, money substitutes appear as a result of optimizing behavior of agents. The result obtains for an economy, where there are large natural...

The author analyzes the price dynamics of shares listed in the Russian Trading System (RTS). Preferences for speculative versus strategic investments in the Russian capital market are studied by dividing the risk associated with each share into a general component, which depends on economic...

We analyse the phenomenon of financial pyramids (Ponzi games) that were surprisingly widespread in transitional economies in the mid-1990s. Financial pyramids are modelled as a stochastic game under incomplete information between a Ponzi firm — an intended builder of the pyramid — and a...

This paper concentrates on the theoretical analysis of local housing market behavior in a short-term period such that the set of market agents, the set of dwellings, and the agents' preferences are invariable within this period. The basic model presents the market as an economy of exchange with...

This paper investigates the well-known hypothesis that the higher the rate of inflation, the higher is price uncertainty. Regressions with heteroskedastic errors are applied in order to model inflationary uncertainty in the Russian economy and to study its possible link with inflation. Using...

A model of corruption in the production process is built which is aimed at studying the problem of choosing the optimal scheme of punishment, taking into account the structure of given production relations, as well as the fixed budget assumption. Stable equilibria of the model are characterized,...