This study analyzes the effects of directed lending upon total factor productivity and GDP growth in Belarus over the period of 2000-2012. In theory, directed lending can enhance physical capital accumulation and make the access to credit easier, but empirical studies often show that it leads to...

Belarus experienced rapid economic growth in the 2000's, which abruptly came to halt after 2008. The authors found that the major source of growth was capital accumulation, while growth in total factor productivity (TFP) was modest. Moreover, government interventions and controls on the capital...

This paper examines the determinants of births in Belarus in 1996-2007 by using detailed micro data from the Belarusian Household Budget Surveys (BHBS). The literature offered several explanations of the recent trends in fertility in Belarus and in other former Soviet Union (FSU) countries. It...

In the U.S. economy hours and productivity are negatively correlated, and volatility of hours is two times higher than volatility of productivity. In the standard one shock RBC model hours are positively correlated with productivity, and hours are two times less volatile than productivity. This...

It has been hypothesized that the rising obesity rates in many countries are an unintended consequence of anti-smoking policies. However, evidence of a causal effect of smoking on body weight is mixed. Using a large nationally representative survey from Belarus, we estimate the effect of the...

This paper address the issue of assessing inflation persistence in Belarus using quarterly seasonally adjusted data over 1996–2011. To detect multiple structural breaks during the analyzed period, we applied recently developed and practically implemented in OxMetrics software impulse...