This paper presents major environmental challenges in Bulgarian agriculture, and identifies and assesses specific modes for environmental governance in farming sector, and estimate prospects for changing environmental performance of farms in conditions of EU integration and Common Agricultural...

The 15 newly independent states that emerged from the breakdown of the Soviet Union are now celebrating their 10th anniversary of independence. This paper looks back over the first decade and draws some lessons from the experience made to date. It focuses on the energy-rich states of the...

This paper compiles alternative estimates of underground economies in twenty five transition countries during the transition decade and finds a disturbing lack of convergence between them, calling into question the reliability of GDP figures (which in varying degrees now include non-transparent...

This paper compiles alternative estimates of underground economies in twenty five transition countries during the transition decade and finds a disturbing lack of convergence between them, calling into question the reliability of GDP figures (which in varying degrees now include non-transparent...

In this paper we quantify inequality of opportunity in labor market outcomes in Europe and Central Asia using the Human Opportunity Index (HOI) methodology. Using data from the 2006 Life in Transition Survey we also compare HOI-based measures of inequality with expenditure-based measures and...

After the collapse of socialism, post-Soviet republics reorganized economics curricula, published new textbooks, and trained students and academics in their home countries or in the West. How did these efforts change the quantity and quality of international publications of post-Soviet...

Two decades of transition in the five Central Asian Republics (CARs) have shown that, in the absence of a theoretical framework (roadmap) and political commitment for implementation, borrowed laws and institutions based on the international best practice are useful but not fully effective in...

The quality of institutions is considerable worse in Central Asia than in other transition countries. Based on a panel of 25 transition countries for the period from 1996 to 2005, this paper shows that oil and aid exert a negative influence on institutional development. At the same time,...

We examine the relation between financing patterns and firm growth in transition economies. Using a survey dataset covering over 20,000 firms in 30 Eastern European and Central Asian countries from 2002-2014, we find that firms using formal bank finance grow faster than those financed by...

We investigate the drivers of firm level productivity in catching-up economies by jointly estimating its relationship to innovation and competition using data from the EBRD-WB Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The findings confirm...