how to best ensure remuneration for creators in the market for music copyright and its alternatives the focus of this essay is to examine the market for copyrighted works with a particular emphasis on the sound recording market this market is currently in a state of flux some would say disarray due to the ability of the internet to lower transmission costs for both authorized and unauthorized copies with the latter being at this time far more prevalent in this essay we discuss the intent of copyright the role of copying and file sharing and some alternative production consumption schemes meant to strengthen or to replace copyright

structural factors in the economic reforms of china eastern europe and the former soviet union reform in china and russia jeffrey sachs and wing thye woo china s experience does not show that gradual reform is superior to the shock therapy undertaken in eastern europe and the former soviet union eefsu differing performance primarily reflects different economic structures prior to reform china was a peasant agricultural society eefsu was urban and overindustrialized in both jobs in state enterprises were so heavily subsidized that workers refused to move to new industries elsewhere even when productivity in the latter was much higher in eefsu the large state sector impeded structural adjustment curtailing subsidies would have produced many losers who used their power to resist this outcome failure to curtail subsidies then cut off the potential supply of labour and other factors to new emerging firms china s state enterprises have not performed as well as the rest of the chinese economy and do not explain its success rapid growth was possible because the large agricultural sector contained vast surplus labour and did not enjoy subsidies and soft budget constraints once constraints on migration across regions and jobs were removed this labour was available to fuel expansion in new industries unlike the distributional conflict in eefsu in china reallocation of labour allowed all groups to gain in both partial liberalization also unleashed macroeconomic pressures manageable in china because of rapid growth and adequate monetary policy but explosive in much of eefsu because of deeper structural problems and gross monetary mismanagement

beyond the hype intellectual property and the knowledge society knowledge economy this paper explores the debates surrounding whether or not we have now moved into a new knowledge economy andsor knowledge society and if so whether this shift is as significant and as far reaching as the industrial revolution in this possible transformation the place of information communications technologies has been crucial debate has occurred across both economics and sociology with differing emphases as is shown in the ranges of definitions that we review in the paper one consistent factor is the lack of clarity and consistency between them both within and across the disciplines in order to explore the issues that the debates raises in a more grounded way the paper explores them in relation to intellectual property ip and the intellectual commons in the process of innovation growth and economic development the paper is developed through an analysis first of the industrial revolution and the role within this of uncertainty technologies complementarities and elective affinities and the way ip was protected and controlled through patents secrecy being first to the market and copyright the second part of the paper examines definitions of the knowledge economy and society and the role within these of information communication technologies in order to explore whether the ways that ip is protected and controlled have changed in the debate about the knowledge economy and society the role of innovation via human capital with a greater reliance on intellectual capabilities has been emphasized the role of ip thus remains central but is now challenged by the rise of new forms of communication which make its protection harder and move much of the concern with respect to regulation to a global rather than national and local level copyright 2006 the authors journal compilation 2006 blackwell publishing ltd

transition economies performance and challenges i present data and assess the first twelve years of the transition from plan to market transformations have taken place but the income gap between the transition and advanced economies has widened transition countries further east have performed worse than those further west but policies matter all countries carried out quickly type i reforms such as macroeconomic stabilization price liberalization small scale privatization and breakup of state owned enterprises they differed in type ii reforms such as large scale privatization and development of banking and legal systems countries that developed a functioning legal framework and corporate governance have performed better than others

bio cooperation and the benefits of crop genetic resources the case of mexican maize abstract concern for equity and conservation has prompted the creation of bio prospecting contracts for biological resources from less developed countries one potential type of contract is between farmers who provide crop genetic resources and seed companies or agencies that use these resources theoretically bio contracts will reward peasant farmers for preserving genetic resources and balance equities between farmers and seed companies using maize from mexico as a case study this paper concludes that contracting is problematic on both efficacy and equity grounds bio cooperation is presented as an alternative institutional support and licensing agreements that support human capital development are proposed as alternatives

introduction and overview to the special issue on biodiversity conservation access and benefit sharing and traditional knowledge the concept of access and benefit sharing abs in genetic resources as maintained by the convention on biological diversity cbd aims at promoting the conservation of biodiversity and equity between the north and the south at the same time its implementation challenges various disciplines first from an economic point of view designing efficient abs provisions turns to be highly complex given its multi task and multi agent problem structure and given the lack of evidence that the economic benefits drawn from the exploitation of genetic resources will suffice to fund the preservation of biodiversity second from a legal point of view the principles of the cbd are very general their proper implementation requires the design of new intellectual property rights and new liability regimes which challenge the current legal doctrines and have complex interactions with pre existing legal regimes third from the perspective of political and management sciences the implementation of the cbd raises the question of how to design institutional frameworks that enable both democratic decision making taking into account the interests of the diverse stakeholders at the global level and collective learning considering the fact that humanity is dealing with complex problems characterized by numerous dimensions and high uncertainties this special issue assembles a set of papers dealing with these issues and questions c 2005 elsevier b v all rights reserved

anticipated policy and endogenous growth in a small open monetary economy abstract this paper analyzes the effects of a preannounced change in the growth rate of credit in a small open economy the model based on an endogenous growth model introduces the adjustment costs for investment and the role of money in the production function and highlights the dynamic behavior of an open economy we show that an increase in the rate of anticipated credit growth lowers the steady growth rate of capital real money balances and real output we also find that the rate of depreciation of the domestic currency will rise steadily toward its stationary level the anticipated domestic credit growth hence exhibits monetary nonsuperneutrality in both the rate and the level of output in the intermediate and the long run

structural convergence under reversible and irreversible monetary unification abstract we explore endogenous monetary unification in the context of a model in which a country with serious structural distortions and hence high inflation is admitted into a monetary union once its economic structure has converged sufficiently towards that of the existing participants if unification is reversible so that the new entrant can always be forced to leave the union again later convergence stops for a while after the high inflation country has joined with irreversible unification in contrast temporary divergence occurs and unification will be delayed

transition and integration in europe implications for agricultural and food markets policy and trade agreements several central and eastern european countries are on their way to becoming members of the european union agriculture and agricultural policy is an important issue in eu enlargement this paper reviews the changes that have occurred in the agricultural and food sector of the ceecs and draws implications for the impact of eu enlargement on agri food markets and policy first those countries which have reformed most rapidly and most thoroughly are now doing best and their reform efforts have resulted in significant recovery and efficiency improvements second the impact of eastern enlargement will be less dramatic than initially feared although some uncertainty remains the possibility that the accession of the ceecs into the cap will cause a conflict with wto commitments has been reduced but cannot be excluded for some specific commodities depending on the ceec supply evolution however the likelihood of a wto conflict and the impact on the cap will depend more on the outcome of the negotiations in the wto millennium round than on enlargement similarly the impact of enlargement on the eu budget depends mostly on the political decision on the allocation of direct payments to ceec farmers and or of the extent of structural funds for ceecs

exchange rate based stabilizations a literature review the exchange rate based stabilizations erbss that have been undertaken in chronic inflation countries have generated a controversial body of literature regarding the effects of disinflation programs especially those on real consumption and output this survey provides an extensive overview of the literature on erbs the paper covers various empirical studies that have attempted to document the macroeconomic regularities associated with erbs discussing both their strengths and their weaknesses it analyzes diverse theoretical models that have been put forward to replicate the business cycles associated with erbs and sheds light on which models perform better using real data the results suggest that durables incorporated weak credibility and sticky price model proves to be most compatible with the empirical regularities observed in the course of erbs

patterns of transition from plan to market patterns of transition from plan to market martha de melo cevdet denizer and alan gelb hungary s bankruptcy experience 1992 1993 cheryl w gray sabine schlorke and miklos szanyi why and when do governments initiate public enterprise reform jose edgardo campos and hadi salehi esfahani roads land use and deforestation a spatial model applied to belize kenneth m chomitz and david a gray industrial centralization in indonesia j vernon henderson and ari kuncoro guidlines on searching for a dalton improving tax reform an illustration with data from indonesia shlomo yitzhaki and jeffrey d lewis a new data set measuring income inequality klaus deininger and lyn squire

exports inflation and growth abstract this article seeks to identify some of the main determinants of exports and economic growth in cross sectional data from the world bank covering 160 countries for 1985 94 first the linkages between the propensity to export and population per capita income agriculture primary exports and inflation are studied by statistical methods then the relationship between economic growth and some of the above mentioned determinants of exports as well as investment are scrutinized the same way the main conclusion is that in the period under review high inflation and an abundance of natural resources tended to be associated with low exports and slow growth

market reform and mortality in transition economies abstract the striking increase in mortality rates in russia in the early 1990s occurred simultaneously with the government s erratic attempts to introduce market reforms other transition economies such as poland and the czech republic avoided increases in death rates while they implemented rapid and deep reforms is there a link between mortality and the speed or depths of reforms as suggested by other researchers e g sachs 1996 american economic review 86 2 128 233 this paper uses aggregate data on 22 transition economies for 1989 1994 to investigate this question while the relationship between an index of reform progress and death rates is ambiguous death rates in these countries are correlated with measures of reform success such as gdp growth and the inflation rate higher crime rates and higher unemployment rates are also related to larger increases in death rates

the transition to a market economy pitfalls of partial reform we present a theory of a partial economic reform of a planned economy similar to the one that took place in russia since 1988 and in china earlier in such a reform some markets are liberalized in the sense that producers can sell output to whomever they want including private firms at free prices but at the same time must sell to state firms at state prices we show that such a reform can result in a substantial diversion of subsidized inputs away from state firms and toward private firms even when state firms value these inputs more the result may be a reduction of total output the simple analysis sheds light on many consequences of the soviet reform such as breakdown of coordination of production increased state policing of delivery quotas prohibitions of trading cooperatives and opposition to privatization the model also explains why partial reform failed in russia but worked in china

innovation needs patents reform abstract the international patent system demonstrates many failures to adapt to new ways of producing information the coming of antibiotics finally forced it to take account of the shift from individual to corporate invention by establishing new criteria for patentability however these favour industries which can operate a portfolio approach in their r d to the disadvantage of other industries and smaller firms in all industries in complex technologies whose economic importance has been growing rapidly patents are now used as much as a bargaining currency to prevent lock out from use of state of the art components developed by competitors as they are as a stimulus to r d changes which have been proposed to deal with these problems including empirical supporting evidence are discussed these include compulsory expert arbitration of disputes with legal aid for the respondent party in the event of an appeal to the courts an innovation warrant as a supplementary type of protection and shared risk compulsory licensing as a practical way of changing from time to money as the measure of a grant this would give multiple innovators access to inventions as early as possible while maintaining or even improving incentives to invest in invention and innovation

what s in a sign trademark law and economic theory the aim of this paper is to summarize the extant theory as it relates to the economics of trademark and to give some suggestions for further research with reference to distinct streams of literature the proposed line of study inevitably looks at the complex relationship between signs and economics copyright 2006 the authors journal compilation 2006 blackwell publishing ltd

asset pricing higher moments and the market risk premium a note following the work of rubinstein 4 kraus and litzenberger kl 2 derived and tested a linear three moment pricing model finding the additional variable co skewness to explain the empirical anomalies of the two moment capital asset pricing model capm the three moment model was reexamined by friend and westerfield fw 1 with mixed results the purpose of this note is to examine why the market risk premium rm rf may influence tests of asset pricing models with higher moments when skewness is added to a pricing model developed within the usual two fund separation assumptions the market risk premium enters the pricing equation in a nonlinear fashion and is implicit in the estimation of each moment s coefficient unless this nonlinearity is recognized incorrect conclusions regarding the tests of such models may result section i examines the implications of the risk premium nonlinearity while section ii contains a brief summary

copyright and artists a view from cultural economics most of the standard economic literature on copyright ignores a number of aspects that have considerable significance for cultural production and for artists the primary creators of copyright works the supply of which copyright is supposed to stimulate specifically there is little mention in that literature of moral rights no distinction is made between copyright for authors and neighbouring rights for performers the distributional effects of copyright are barely referred to and the question of how much artists earn from copyright is ignored in this article i survey work that relates copyright and cultural economics showing that cultural economics offers another view to the standard economics of copyright moreover the case for government intervention in the arts and heritage made by cultural economists has resonance for the economic rationale of copyright

the process of socialist economic transformation in this paper we consider the reform process in those central and east european countries that have made the decision to move from a more or a less planned socialist system to a private market economy one in which private ownership predominates and most resources are allocated through markets because the reform process is both complex and intertwined with political factors especially the shift towards representative democracy and because there are substantial differences among the reforming countries no single detailed road map can guide the way to the new systems rather the paper sets out general considerations that provide a framework for reform and relates the choices to some initial conditions of the various reforming countries the framework applies also to the soviet union or in the event of its disintegration to its successor states as they move to market systems

reform without losers an interpretation of china s dual track approach to transition this paper develops a simple model to analyze the dual track approach to market liberalization as a mechanism for implementing efficient pareto improving economic reform that is reform achieving efficiency without creating losers the approach based on the continued enforcement of the existing plan while simultaneously liberalizing the market can be understood as a method for making implicit lump sum transfers to compensate potential losers of the reform the model highlights the critical roles of enforcement of the plan for achieving pareto improvement and full liberalization of the market track for achieving efficiency we examine how the dual track approach has worked in product and labor market liberalization in china

a new test of the three moment capital asset pricing model this paper tests the kraus litzenberger 1976 three moment capital asset pricing model using hansen s 1982 generalized method of moments gmm the gmm approach does not impose strong distributional assumptions on the asset returns this is an interest ing issue since there is no obvious multivariate distribution for returns that also exhibits co skewness using monthly stock returns to test the model there is some evidence that systematic skewness is priced

stabilization and growth in transition economies the early experience this paper analyzes the growth and stabilization experience in 26 transition economies in eastern europe the former soviet union and mongolia for the period 1989 1994 inflation rates have declined significantly in most countries following an inflation stabilization program growth resumes after stabilization occurs typically with a lag of about two years reducing inflation thus appears to be a precondition for growth an econometric analysis of the short run determinants of inflation and growth illustrates the key roles of fixed exchange rates improved fiscal balances and structural reforms in spurring growth and lowering inflation and confirms that inflation stabilization programs have been beneficial for growth even after controlling for structural reforms

systematic skewness in asset pricing an empirical examination of the taiwan stock market this paper is an empirical study of asset pricing with the systematic skewness in the pricing model we adopt the fama french three factor model which incorporates the firm size and book to market ratio in asset pricing as the base case and then includes the skewness factor used by harvey and siddique in the pricing model the evidence shows that systematic skewness is significant and might be important in asset pricing when portfolios are formed by industry firm size book to market or momentum strategies when portfolios are constructed by momentum or coskewness strategies lower momentum or lower coskewness portfolios exhibit higher skewness and higher kurtosis when portfolios are grouped by excess returns it is seen that the average excess return is positively correlated with size and coskewness thus the systematic skewness is closely related to firm size and the relationship between systematic skewness and excess return is obscured by the reverse firm size effect

policy reform and growth in post soviet russia in pursuit of its transition from a command to a market economy russia has witnessed enormous regional differences in economic growth rates moreover the implementation of economic reforms has also differed markedly across regions we analyze whether regional differences in reform policies can account for regional differences in growth rates and conclude that to a considerable degree they can most notably we find that regional differences in price liberalization policies exhibit a positive direct correspondence with growth we also find that regional differences in large scale privatization exhibit a positive correspondence with the regional formation of new legal enterprises which in turn exhibits a strong positive correspondence with growth

farmer s rights and genetic conservation in traditional farming systems abstract crop genetic resources are concentrated in some of the world s poorest farming systems these resources have been used by industrial countries without compensating farmers concerns for equity and conservation have led to proposals to protect crop genetic resources as intellectual property this paper argues that conventional intellectual property regulations e g utility patents and plant variety protection should not be used to protect crop genetic resources it suggests that farmers rights as an alternate form of intellectual property rights be used to indirectly compensate farmers by supporting genetic conservation it examines methods of in situ conservation for crop genetic resources

human development and economic sustainability abstract this paper attempts to integrate the concern for human development in the present with that in the future in arguing for sustainable human development it appeals to the notion of ethical universalism an elementary demand for impartiality of claims applied within and between generations economic sustainability is often seen as a matter of intergenerational equity but the specification of what is to be sustained is not always straightforward the addendum explores the relationship between distributional equity sustainable development optimal growth and pure time preference

university research intellectual property rights and european innovation systems this paper surveys the literature on university patenting from the point of view of the economic theory of patents it is argued that patenting knowledge developed by university researchers is paradoxical patents are normally intended to stimulate knowledge development by providing property rights but universities operate also under a different incentive scheme i e they receive public funds to perform socially useful knowledge in the debate surrounding the so called bayh dole act in the usa it has however been argued that patents on university inventions may be necessary to stimulate technology transfer from universities to private firms the first part of the paper addresses two major questions first what is the economic logic of bayh dole and second what were the effects on universities and the knowledge they develop in the second part the paper addresses the issue of whether bayh dole like legislation would be beneficial for european countries in a number of european countries a suggestion has been made that this could enhance knowledge transfer from the public to the private sector using a new database resulting from a survey among patent inventors in six european countries an assessment is given of the degree of university patenting in europe because university researchers are often involved in patented inventions without the university being listed as a patent applicant statistics based on the patent office databases alone often underestimate university patenting in europe the paper ends with a discussion of how this european practice of university patenting affects public private knowledge transfer in europe and how this compares to the effects of the bayh dole act in the usa

economic reforms and human development evidence from transition economies do market oriented economic reforms result in higher levels of human well being this article studies the impact of macro level institutional and infrastructure reforms on the economic educational and health dimensions of human well being among 25 transition economies we use panel data econometrics based on the lsdvc technique to analyse the effects of market oriented reforms on the human development index hdi as a measure of human well being from 1992 to 2007 the results show the complexity of reform impacts in transition countries they show that institutional and economic reforms led to positive economic effect and significant impacts on other dimensions of human development we find some positive economic impacts from infrastructure sectors reforms however not every reform measure appears to generate positive impacts large scale privatizations show negative effects in health and economic outcomes the overall results show the importance of the interaction among different reform measures and the combined effect of these on human development

indigenous knowledge and intellectual property a sustainability agenda the paper argues that the current ways of protecting intellectual property are limited in their scope for recognizing indigenous rights to indigenous knowledge indigenous knowledge is often defined as being holistic and collectively owned and an appropriate protection should allow for maintaining the cultural and physical environment that has generated it after examining the failure of the patent system to recognize indigenous input using examples from the us patent and trademark office the analysis is directed towards alternatives the world s first case of indigenous intellectual accreditation through the partnership between mt romance australian sandalwood company aveda us based multinational cosmetics corporation and the kutkabubba community represented by the songman circle of wisdom is presented the accreditation allows for the indigenous people to be recognized as traditional owners of the land and for their care and knowledge about the sandalwood trees it also gives them a share of the profits made from the contemporary use of the pure sandalwood oil the paper argues that sustainability and indigenous sustainability in particular provides a conceptual framework for a change in the way of protecting intellectual property this implies that appropriate policies should be put in place for businesses to feel responsible towards the community

from bioprospecting to reflexive governance in this paper i evaluate the contribution of new institutional economics to reflexive governance in the field of bioprospecting my hypothesis is that the design of governance arrangements that are both efficient and legitimate necessitates taking into account the reflexivity of the actors on the proposed institutional design in considering this hypothesis i apply current theoretical insights from new institutional economics as developed by oliver williamson and douglas north to the issue of complex contractual relationships in the field of bioprospecting building on these insights i propose some means for ameliorating the current proposals for institutional framing of the contractual relationships d 2005 elsevier b v all rights reserved

timing is everything elections and trade liberalization in the postcommunist world in the wake of the soviet bloc s collapse various postcommunist countries rushed to gain greater access to foreign markets many of them have made substantial progress in liberalizing commerce but the movement toward free trade has been by no means universal one prominent view is that the establishment of democratic institutions has stimulated economic reform in thepostcommunist world the authors conduct one of the first studies on this topic and find that democracies are indeed more likely to liberalize trade than nondemocracies they also find that the electoral calendar has a potent influence on the timing of commercial reform in postcommunist democracies controlling for a range of factors politicians are most likely to reduce trade barriers immediately after voters go to the polls trade liberalization is much less likely to occur at other points in a democracy s electoral calendar and elections have no effect on commercial reform in nondemocracies

do jumps contribute to the dynamics of the equity premium abstract this paper investigates whether risks associated with time varying arrival of jumps and their effect on the dynamics of higher moments of returns are priced in the conditional mean of daily market excess returns we find that jumps and jump dynamics are significantly related to the market equity premium the results from our time series approach reinforce the importance of the skewness premium found in cross sectional studies using lower frequency data and offer a potential resolution to sometimes conflicting results on the intertemporal risk return relationship we use a general utility specification consistent with our pricing kernel to evaluate the relative value of alternative risk premium models in an out of sample portfolio performance application

the optimal speed of transition a general equilibrium analysis we present a benchmark model for the optimal speed of transition from a state owned to a private market economy based on the consumption savings decision in a closed economy we abstract from frictions to focus on the macroeconomic conditions for accumulation of private capital and closure or restructuring of state owned enterprises it is shown that hard budget constraints compensate for too slow speed of enterprise closure but that an excess speed of closure may slow down transition because of output contraction effects this will especially be the case if such a deviation occurs at early stages of transition

women in transition changes in gender wage differentials in eastern europe and the former soviet union under state socialism women fared relatively well in the labor market female male wage differentials were similar to those in the west and female labor force participation rates were among the h

hot hands in mutual funds short run persistence of relative performance 1974 1988 the relative performance of no load growth oriented mutual funds persists in the near term with the strongest evidence for a one year evaluation horizon portfolios of recent poor performers do significantly worse than standard benchmarks those of recent top performers do better though not significantly so the difference in risk adjusted performance between the top and bottom octile portfolios is six to eight percent per year these results are not attributable to known anomalies or survivorship bias investigations with a different previously used data set and with some post 1988 data confirm the finding of persistence

optimal hedge ratio estimation and hedge effectiveness with multivariate skew distributions this article proposes to use the three multivariate skew distributions generalized hyperbolic distribution multivariate skew normal distribution and multivariate skew student t distribution for estimating the minimum variance hedge ratio in a dynamic setting three criteria for measuring hedge effectiveness are employed hedging instrument effectiveness overall hedge effectiveness and relative to optimal hedge ratio effectiveness rhre three portfolios of spot and futures series are formed for empirical analysis the outcomes confirm that the three multivariate skew distributions are more helpful in deciding the minimum variance hedge ratio especially the generalized hyperbolic distribution than the symmetrical normal and student t distributions this outperformance is significant especially at critical market moments and it is indicated by three hedge effectiveness measures this advantage is held without the cost of lowering portfolio return in addition there is speculation possibility exist

arbitrage equilibrium with skewed asset returns the quadratic form of the covariance co skewness model by kraus and litzenberger and arbitrage pricing theory are used for an empirical investigation of market equilibrium with skewed seecurity returns empirical tests similar to the ones in black jensen scholes and gibbons are discussed the empirical estimates give some support to the kraus litzenberger hypothesis on skewness preference however there is some evidence that the tested arbitrage equilibrium is not a complete description of security pricing

growth in transition what we know what we don t and what we should abstract this essay surveys macroeconomic issues that marked the transition from planned to market economy in central and eastern european and former soviet union countries we first establish stylized facts of the transition so far we then critically survey the theoretical literature on transition discussing explanations for the initial output fall and mediumterm issues such as optimal speed of transition disorganization institutions and sectoral reallocation as source of output dynamics we review the empirical literature to assess how well it translates the theoretical models and explains the stylized facts we conclude with suggestions for future research

development aid and growth in transition countries empirical studies normally analyze diverse and heterogeneous groups of countries producing very mixed evidence on the effectiveness of development aid in promoting growth we focus on whether aid promotes economic growth in transitional economies we find that aid on average has had a positive impact on growth for this specific group of countries this result is robust to samples estimators and the use of alternate instruments to address endogeneity aid effectiveness is not conditional on good policy and there is little evidence of non linear growth effects arising from aid

structural adjustment and international trade in eastern europe the case of poland poland andrew berg and jeffrey sachs the polish economic programme is important not only in its own right hut as a key example of the benefits and possible costs of a rapid movement to convertibility this paper proposes an analytical framework and new estimates of the costs and benefits the framework shows that convertibility revolves around the relationship of two nominal variables the money supply and the nominal exchange rate return to convertibility is achieved not mainly through a real depreciation but through a nominal depreciation which helps to bring the overall price level back into line with nominal aggregate demand and particularly with the money supply the new estimates show that the costs a drop in living standards and output are less than commonly believed given the extreme inflationary conditions in 1989 and the shock following the disintegration of cmea trade the loss of output was not caused in any important way by the rapid move to free trade

modern hyper and high inflations since 1947 hyperinflations by cagan s definition in market economies have been rare much more common have been longer inflationary processes with inflation rates above 100 percent per annum based on a sample of 133 countries and using the 100 percent threshold as the basis for a definition of very high inflation episodes this paper examines the main characteristics of such inflations among other things we find that i close to 20 percent of countries have experienced inflation above 100 percent per annum ii higher inflation tends to be more unstable iii in high inflation countries the relationship between the fiscal balance and seigniorage is strong both in the short and long run iv inflation inertia decreases as average inflation rises v high inflation is associated with poor macroeconomic performance and vi stabilizations from high inflation that rely on the exchange rate as the nominal anchor are expansionary

macropolicies in transition to a market economy a three year perspective countries in transition to market economies have had to implement macroeconoimic stabilization programs at the same time that they were engaged in massive changes of their political institutions and the systemic framework of their economies what has been the interaction of stabilization with economic liberalization and deep institutional reform in the countries of eastern europe in particular the relations among initial conditions political developments reform strategies and outcomes experience in eastern europe suggests that when there is a political breakthrough as in the countries under review a radical stabilization liberalization stragety is probably the least risky approach to reform and will not constrain output or structural reform over the medium term even stabilization that is initially successful in containing inflation will later come under pressure because of social policies and the structural transitions impelled by reform several factors are identified that affect the credibility of reforms and lessons are derived for countries that have stabilized and those that yet face this task

the state led transition to liberal capitalism neoliberal organizational world systems and social structural explanations of poland s economic success neoliberals argue that rapid liberalization and privatization can transform postcommunist economies into western style capitalist systems organizational sociologists argue that these policies produce a unique variety of capitalism while world systems theorists argue that they lead to underdevelopment this article advances a social structural alternative in a crucial case poland s relative economic success resulted from prolonged state ownership and an interventionist state employing various industrial policy tools that facilitated efficiency enhancing market oriented restructuring before ushering in beneficial foreign direct investment the resulting capitalist system closely resembles the typical pattern found in most late industrializers

property rights genetic resources and biotechnological change it is well recognized that wild genetic resources the genetic constitutions of plants and animals have substantial social and economic value as repositories of genetic information today genetic information provides direct and indirect inputs into plant breeding programs the development of natural products including drugs and pharmaceuticals and increasingly sophisticated applications of biotechnology 2 recognition of the potential of wild genetic resources in the development of drugs has led the national cancer institute to initiate a massive plant collection project 3 which is a follow up to an earlier 1970s project that sought to identify drugs effective against a variety of cancers and to look at the immune system effects of various drugs it is estimated that 70 percent of the 3 000 species known to have anticancer properties are found in the tropical forests 4 in recent years a number of widely used drugs have been developed from plants including two important anticancer drugs derived from the rosy periwinkle found in tropical madagascar with the recent major breakthroughs in biotechnology the future potential of these resources seems limitless species that have no current commercial application have useful natural chemicals or are as yet undiscovered never

the collapse and recovery of the capital share in east germany after 1989 after the 1990 unification east germany s capital income share plunged to 15 2 in 1991 then increased to 37 4 by 2015 to account for these large changes in the capital share i model an economy that gains access to a higher productivity technology embodied in new plants as existing low productivity plants decrease production the capital share varies due to the nonconvex production technology plants require a minimum amount of labor to produce output two policies transfers and government mandated wage increases have opposite effects on output growth but contribute to lowering the capital share early in the transition jel e20 e25 o11

the perils of polarization economic performance in the postcommunist world perhaps the most striking feature of the postcommunist transformation is the tremendous variation in rates of economic growth across countries to account for these differences this article develops an alternative to the j curve and partial reform views that currently dominate discussions of the politics of economic reform this approach treats economic performance as a political struggle between ex communist and anticommunist factions engaged in a war of attrition over economic and political resources using a pooled time series analysis of economic growth across twenty five postcommunist countries for the period 1990 98 it finds that political polarization between ex communist and anticommunist factions has had a devastating effect on economic growth where these competing factions have had roughly equal power and have struggled over the economic rules of the game as in bulgaria or ukraine economic growth has been slow in contrast where either ex communist or anticommunist factions have dominated the political scene as in estonia or uzbekistan economic performance has been much better in addition economic growth has followed the electoral calendar in polarized countries as elections approach and the odds of a change in economic policy increase growth rates have plummeted in polarized countries these findings have implications for studies of the postcommunist transformation the political business cycle and the politics of economic reform more generally

theoretical foundations of emerging economy business research in probing theoretically into central and eastern europe transactions resources and institutions we outlined the contributions of research in central and eastern europe cee to theoretical debates in business research in this retrospective we reflect upon the evolution of the field over the past decade with the fading impact of cee s distinct shared history we suggest that cee best be analyzed as emerging economies rather than as a distinct geographic entity emerging economy business research is converging on common themes and shared theoretical ideas while identifying critical variations that constrain generalizations among and beyond emerging economies this research thus highlights the need to develop a better understanding of the boundary conditions of scholarly theories of business knowledge over the past decade the institution based view has emerged from distinct intellectual traditions in institutional economics organizational theory and the analysis of business government bargaining research in these converging lines of theorizing places contextual variations at the center of explanations of business phenomena around the world we suggest that the institution based view is evolving toward a paradigm and offer suggestions on how to advance this research agenda further in particular by exploring how firms engage with different sets of potentially conflicting institutions at multiple levels and locations