The "big-bang" liberalization of the inefficient Russian economy in 1992 provides a fruitful setting for analyzing the impact of several dimensions of market competition and other factors on enterprise efficiency. We analyze 1992-1998 panel data on 14,961 enterprises covering 75 percent of industrial employment, emphasizing the varied sources, geographic scope, intensity, time path, and surviva...

Asset prices and investment were unusually weak throughout the industrial world during the early 1990s. This paper highlights this stylized fact, and connects it with another: in most of the industrial world, asset markets boomed for several years before collapsing around 1989. The paper suggests that asset market bubbles during the late 1980s may have left the industrial world with an ‘asset m...

This study focuses on the possible impact of the MFA phase-out on the world economy. Starting from analyzing trends in world textile and apparel trade (T&A), the study found that the developing countries were a growing factor in world T&A trade in recent decades. Moreover, using trade data from 91 countries over 37 years, the empirically investigate of the study indicates a strong positive rela...

Current policies in the road transport sector fail to deliver consistent and efficient incentives for greenhouse gas abatement (see companion article by Creutzig et al., in press). Market-based instruments such as cap-and-trade systems close this policy gap and complement traditional policies that are required where specific market failures arise. Even in presence of strong existing non-market ...

When studying real-life market outcomes and evaluating policy interventions, economists like to refer to a hypothetical situation where intertemporal and insurance markets are perfect and complete. In reality, of course, laissez faire economic interactions can hardly supply insurance against the risk of becoming or remaining unemployed, because moral hazard and adverse selection stand in the wa...

Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) make an important & great contribution to increase the Indian economy at best level and are a focus of improving their efficiency and competitiveness. In this research we discuss the development of a project research to investigate the suitability of Six Sigma as an improvement methodology for Indian SMEs in the Indian manufacturing sector. Large scale ...