Growth empirics with institutional measures is performed for 25 transition countries overthe period 1990-95. Estimation results suggest that (particularly state) institutions aresignificant for growth and, especially, foreign direct investment (FDI), the latter in turnbeing important for the...

The present fiscal difficulties of many countries amplify the call for structural reforms. To provide stylized facts on how reforms worked in the past, we quantitatively review 60 studies estimating the relation between reforms and growth. These studies examine structural reforms carried out in...

In this paper the impact of market reforms on economic growth has been analyzed using the panel data for 26 post-socialist economies over the period between 1989 and 2005. Taking into account the dynamic properties of the data, the concepts of cointegration and equilibrium correction model for...

There are few countries where ‘initial conditions' are as unfavorable as those of Laos. It is a very poor, least developed country. It is landlocked, sharing its international borders with five neighbors. It has the world's highest per capita stock of unexploded ordinance, a legacy of the Indo...

This study explores how initial endowments at the start of transition have shaped reform outcomes and reform trajectories in 27 former communist countries in Europe and Central Asia. Countries of the former Russian Empire that had a large resources sector at the start of transition...

This paper starts by separating the transformational recession (reduction of output in most transition economies in the first half of the 1990s) from the process of economic growth (recovery from the transformational recession) in 28 transition economies (including China, Vietnam and Mongolia)....

Our main interest is the impact of the choice of the speed of economic reform on economic growth. We estimate a system of 3 equations where economic growth, economic reform and FDI are jointly determined. We find that new reforms affect economic growth negatively but attract FDI, whereas the...

There is a consensus among scholars that institutions (i.e. norms and regulations) are country specific. The paper aims to contribute to the debate by examining the type of institutions which have been the most important for growth in transition countries. It employs a new set of the...

The city-state of Singapore is a rare case of market autocracy. The government systematically suppresses political dissent through its courts and legislature, and political power is concentrated almost entirely in the hands of a small governing body: the Cabinet of Ministers. At the same time,...

Utilising panel data for 14 East European transition economies, we find support for the hypothesis that a greater degree of export variety relative to the U.S. helps to explain relative per capita GDP levels. The empirical work relies upon some direct measures of product variety calculated from...