How does political competition shape the way that firms pursue legislative change? A rich political economy literature describes various ways in which firms influence the design and enforcement of laws, rules and regulations germane to their business activities. Although helpful, this literature...

Using a database from post-communist, pre-deposit-insurance Russia, we demonstrate the presence of quantity-based sanctioning of weaker banks by both firms and households, particularly after the financial crisis of 1998. Evidence for the standard form of price discipline, however, is notably...

Potential lenders in a transitional economy can confront severe difficulties in securing loans and accessing a legal system in the event of non-payment. They may also face problems in uncovering information that can assist in evaluating borrower creditworthiness. This paper presents a conceptual...

Inter-firm information exchange as to the reliability of trade partners supports the development of markets by mitigating information asymmetries and providing the basis for relational contracting. While this general point has been made in a variety of contexts, most of the literature analyzes...

Inter-firm information exchange with respect to the reliability of trade partners may be unmediated in the sense that it involves direct communication between the personnel of two firms. Alternatively, this information flow may be channeled by or through an organization such as a trade...

Decades of investment decisions by central planners left communist societies with structures of production ill-prepared for competitive markets. Their vulnerability to liberalization, however, varied across space. Similar to the effects identified in the “China shock” literature, we...

This paper demonstrates how the behavior of credit markets in a transition-like environment can be a function of the market structure in the commercial lending sector that was inherited from the pre-reform economy. Using a game theoretic model, we investigate one possible explanation for how a...

This note argues that the most commonly used estimates of the size of the unofficial economies in the former Soviet republics are flawed. Most important, they are based on calculations that disregard the variation in unofficial economic activity across space in the pre-transition Soviet Union....

This note argues that the most commonly used estimates of the size of the unofficial economies in the former Soviet republics are flawed. Most important, they are based on calculations that disregard the variation in unofficial economic activity across space in the pre-transition Soviet Union....

Decades of investment decisions by central planners left communist societies with structures of production ill-prepared for competitive markets. Their vulnerability to liberalization, however, varied across space. Similar to the effects identified in the "China shock" literature, we hypothesize...