We relate the phenomena of sluggish interregional labour reallocation, in-kind compensation, and wage arrears in Russia to 'attachment' strategies of firms: being paid in non-monetary forms makes it hard for workers to raise the cash needed for quitting the region. Attachment may facilitate...

This paper compares the comovement of individual stock returns across emerging markets. Campbell et al. (2001) and Morck et al. (2000) show that the US in the post war period saw rising firm specific stock return variations and thus declining comovement. We detect a similar, albeit weaker,...

We study the role of employment protection legislation (EPL) in explaining the relative small average size of Italian firms. We construct a simple model that shows that the smooth relation between size and growth probability is disturbed in proximity of the thresholds at which EPL applies...

We look at the determinants and consequences of job reallocation in the 22 2-digit sectors of the manufacturing industry in Poland over the period 1993-1997. Import competition and competitve market structure (weak concentration) are found to lead to more reallocation. Moreover, more...

Framework issues in privatization include the alternative of commercialization of state-owned enterprises without privatization, the scope and sequence of divestiture by branch of the economy, the organizational structure for privatization, the choice among standard and non-standard methods, and...

We analyze investment behavior of the population of medium and large industrial firms located in the Czech Republic in 1992-95. We examine the relevance of alternative models of investment and test if investment behavior varies across ownership-legal form categories of firms. By using a large...

In this paper we address the two following questions: (1) what are the major sources of real exchange rate fluctuations in developing countries? (2) do economic policy makers have room to face possible real exchange rate fluctuations? To answer these questions, we estimate a structural VAR model...

Corruption is one of the key problems facing the Russian state as it seeks to evolve out of its socialist past. Naturally, regional patterns of corruption exist across a country as large and diverse as the Russian Federation. To explain these variations, we analyze 2002 data from Transparency...

Measurement of quality changes has proven to be an especially difficult aspect of calculating unbiased rates of inflation. We propose a new methodology of capturing quality improvements based on consumer focus groups and apply this methodology in an environment where quality changes might be...

In 1996/1997 Bulgaria was hit by a severe financial crisis, spreading from a banking crisis to a currency crisis. While being widely neglected by the financial crisis literature and the international discussion we argue that the Bulgarian Financial Crisis might serve as an illustrative example...