The economic crisis of 2008, starting from the crisis in banking in the USA in 2008, affected economic and political development in varied ways around the world. This special issue covers the impact and policy responses in the former state socialist countries of central and eastern Europe and...

While output declined in virtually all transition economies in the initial years, the speed and extent of the recovery that followed has varied widely across these countries. The contrast between the more and less successful transitions, the latter largely in the former Soviet Union, raises many...

This study examines the link between economic complexity and environmental quality by exploiting the similar starting points of the former socialist transition countries after the fall of the iron curtain. We refer to the extended theories of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), stating that...

In their survey of the literature on ethnic fractionalization and economic performance, Alesina and La Ferrara (JEL 2005) identify two main directions for future research. One is to improve the measurement of diversity and the other to treat diversity as an endogenous variable. This paper tries...

This research compares the links between the economic growth and the development of banking credit for the private sector in three transition economies. The empirical results confirm the choice of a case-by-case analytical and time series econometrical approach. Each country has its own...

This paper examines the impact of oil on economic growth in transition economies of the former Soviet Union (FSU) and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). We use oil production and reserves data in a series of panel estimations to show that oil has had strong and robust positive growth effects...