This paper proposes an explanation of the puzzling coexistence of elements of inertia and dynamism on the Russian labour market using a segmentation model. Risk averse workers are differentiated according to their productivity. They face a trade-off between wages and access to social services...

We study whether Russian Financial-Industrial Groups facilitate access by Russian firms to investment finance. We compare firms which are members of official Financial Industrial Groups and/or are owned by a large Russian bank with a control set of large firms categorized by dispersed ownership...

We present a model of managerial choice of wage delays that implies a possibility of multiple equilibria in the level of arrears. Positive feedback arises because each employer's wage arrears choice has externalities for other employers by affecting worker quit, effort and protest behavior and...

This paper extends the literature on organizational culture and effectiveness by examining a set of foreign-owned firms operating in Russia. Based on a large-scale empirical study of 179 firms and four in-depth case studies, this study examines the applicability of an American model of...

I present a study of ownership of firms under government rent seeking. Using its control of regulated inputs, a government agency extracts rents from a manager who undertakes an investment. Such a government rent seeking activity leads to a typical hold-up problem. Government ownership is shown...

The paper investigates the role of the minimum wage in a competi- tive economy in which there is underreporting of earnings by employed labour. The minimum wage induces higher compliance by some low- productivity workers and transforms a nominally neutral ?scal system into a regressive one. A...

The privatization of Bank Slaski, one of nine regional commercial banks in Poland, illustrates the benefits of attracting a strategic foreign investor in the process. Internationale Nederlanden Group has contributed substantially to the upgrading of Bank Slaski's credit lending practices,...

We analyze the determinants of effective legal institutions (legality) using data from 49 countries. We show that the way the law was initially transplanted and received is a more important determinant than the supply of law from a particular legal family. Countries that have developed legal...

This paper examines the role of liability for past environmental contamination in the privatization processes of Central and Eastern Europe. The theoretical section establishes a link between a risk-averse investor's amount of information regarding the extent of past environmental contamination...

This paper investigates the consequences of imperfect and uneven factor market development for farm efficiency in rural China during transition. In particular, we estimate the extent to which an inverse relationship in farm productivity can be attributed to the administrative (instead of market)...