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...

Although economists have long studied the impact of bribery on firms' development, the debate continues as to whether bribery ‘greases' or ‘sands' the growth of businesses. For this investigation, we acquired data from the Business Environment and Enterprise Survey conducted by the World...

Assumptions about the democracy promoting qualities of transitional justice measures abound. However the relatively few cross-national impact assessments thus far have yielded mixed results. This paper takes up this empirical question with respect to post-communist transitions. I construct an...

In this study, we employ the World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES) data collected in 2002, 2005, and 2009 for 21,499 firms from 27 Eastern European and Central Asian countries to examine firm-level growth constraints faced by privatized firms versus those faced by the originally (de novo) private...

The EU's post-Communist countries as well as the EU in general are participating in the implementation of the Lisbon Strategy which aims to create an economy of knowledge. The usage of catching up is extremely important in achieving this strategy's goals. Unfortunately, the EU's post-Communist...

The paper evaluates the effects of privatization in the post-communist economies and China. In post-communist economies privatization to foreign owners results in a rapid improvement in performance of firms, while performance effects of privatization to domestic owners are less impressive and...

Major changes have occurred in the structure of former centrally planned economies, including a sharp rise in the share of services in GDP, employment, and international transactions. However, large differences exist across transition economies with respect to services intensity and services...

An extensive program of economic liberalization reforms, even when it generates positive outcomes, does not automatically generate support for further reforms. Societies respond with strong support only after experiencing the effects of reversing these reforms (i.e. corruption, inequality of...