This paper examines whether natural resource dependence has a negative influence on various indicators of institutional quality when controlling for the potential effects of other geographic, economic and cultural initial conditions. Analysis of a panel of countries from 1996 to 2010 indicates...

Inappropriate regulation can influence productivity performance by affecting incentives to invest and adopt new technologies, as well as by directly curbing competitive pressures. Results of a labor productivity growth model for European Union countries suggest that improving the regulatory...

Romania's European Union accession in 2007 has resulted in a substantial reduction of the formal barriers to integration with the European Union Single Market. This study takes stock of the progress by benchmarking product market policies in Romania to those of European Union countries, as...

This paper uses the gravity model to analyze whether the varying export performance of Croatian counties can be explained by their proximity to border gates, ports, and other county-specific characteristics. The analysis finds that longer distances to border gates increase trade frictions...

Integration into global markets can improve the efficiency of the Argentinian economy, providing opportunities for private investment to flourish and for the associated benefits to accrue to consumers. Among many policies that are important for integrating into the global economy, particularly...

This paper explores firm-level heterogeneity to identify the underlying drivers of market power trends in Romania and the implications for competition and economic growth. The results show that the (sales-weighted) average markup in Romania increased by around 15 percent between 2008 and 2017. A...

Convergence of productivity of Czech firms towards peer countries is slow, especially for smaller firms. Czech labor productivity was 68.3 of that in Germany and the productivity gap is in particular large for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). MSMEs (defined as having less than 250...

This paper examines productivity growth in Romania using balance sheet data for a census of Romanian firms in 2011-17. Three measures of productivity are estimated: labor productivity, revenue total factor productivity, and revenue total factor productivity adjusted for markups. Drawing from...

This paper sheds light on key innovation patterns and constraints within a selected set of developing East Asian countries (Cambodia, China, Indonesia, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam). It follows a comprehensive approach about...

This paper describes how different policy distortions have been impeding better integration of Brazil's external and internal product markets and discusses how these distortions have prevented domestic firms from benefiting from multiple sources of efficiency gains. The paper first focuses on...