Il primo capitolo sviluppa un modello di gioco strategico di voto costoso per due candidati dove il processo elettorale può essere illecitamente influenzato da uno dei due. Si assume che vi sono due tipi di meccanismi di frodi elettorali: incidenza diretta sui costi di voto o probabilita’ di pivotality. Si dimostra che la frode può effettivamente aumentare l’affluenza. Per assicurare la vittoria al margine, l’affluenza degli elettori che sostengono entrambe le alternative sono aumentate rispetto ai casi senza frodi. Nel secondo capitolo si stima l'effetto delle frodi elettorali sull'affluenza analizzando un panel di elezioni a livello nazionale in più di 130 paesi dalla fine del 1970. Controllando per una serie di importanti variabili di sistema politico e socioeconomico otteniamo che le frodi a livello intermedio , ceteris paribus , deprimono l'affluenza di circa 3-4 punti percentuali , mentre interventi a livello elevato non hanno alcun effetto significativo. Il terzo capitolo riguarda dinamiche di protezione dei diritti di proprietà nelle economie in transizione che possono influenzati da parte del governo non benevolente. Possiamo osservare dinamiche positive dei diritti di proprietà se un governo e’ relativamente più efficiente ad estrarre rendite dalla redistribuzione del PIL piuttosto che dai pagamenti diretti degli agenti che se ne appropriano, anche con una moderata pressione politica. / In the first chapter a costly strategic voting game over two candidates is modeled and electoral process can be illicitly influenced by one of two candidates. Fraud mechanisms are assumed to be of two types: affecting directly voting costs or pivot probabilities. It is demonstrated that fraud may actually increase turnout. In particular, if it is of a magnitude to ensure a victory at the margin, then participation rates of voters sustaining both alternatives are increased compared to no fraud situation. In the second chapter we estimate the effect of electoral fraud on turnout by analyzing a panel of national level elections in more than 130 countries since the end of 1970s. Controlling for a set of important institutional, political system and socio-economic variables we obtain that medium fraud, ceteris paribus, depresses turnout by around 3-4% points, whereas high fraud has no significant effect. The third chapter deals with dynamics of property rights protection in transition economies, which can be influence by non-benevolent government. Whenever a government is relatively more efficient in extracting private rents from GDP redistribution rather than from direct payments of appropriating agents, positive dynamics in property rights protection can be observed, even with moderate political pressure.

Martin Ravallion ("Why Don't We See Poverty Convergence?" American Economic Review, 102(1): 504-23; 2012) presents evidence against the existence of convergence in global poverty rates despite convergence in household mean income levels and the close linkage between income growth and poverty reduction. We show that this finding is driven by a specification that demands more than simple convergence in poverty headcount rates and assumes a growth elasticity of poverty reduction, which is well-known to accelerate with low initial poverty levels. If we motivate the poverty convergence equation using an arguably superior growth semi-elasticity of poverty reduction, we find highly significant and robust evidence of convergence in absolute poverty headcount ratios and poverty gaps. Relatedly, we show that the results in Ravallion (2012) are driven by the special income growth and poverty dynamics in Central and Eastern European transition economies that started with low initial poverty rates and thus observed a high elasticity of poverty reduction. Once we control for their abnormal poverty dynamics, we again find robust evidence of global convergence in poverty, even in the original specification by Ravallion (2012). (authors' abstract) / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

Cette thèse se compose de trois chapitres. Le premier chapitre analyse l'impact de la structure actionnariale et des réformes mises en œuvre dans les années 2000 sur l'efficacité des banques commerciales au Vietnam. Les résultats montrent que l'efficacité diffère selon le type de structure actionnariale ; les banques d'État ont des niveaux d'efficacité plus bas en comparaison avec les banques privées et les banques avec des actionnaires étrangers. Depuis la mise en œuvre de règles minimales de fonds propres plus strictes, la capitalisation des banques a également été un moteur important de l'efficacité de la banque. Le deuxième chapitre traite de la façon dont les banques au Vietnam fixent leurs marges d'intérêt avec un accent particulier sur la structure actionnariale des banques et la réglementation des taux d'intérêt par la banque centrale. Les résultats montrent que seules les banques privées et publiques transfèrent leurs coûts opérationnels à leurs clients. La capitalisation bancaire qui reflète l'aversion au risque des banques est un déterminant significatif pour les banques étrangères et d'Etat uniquement en cas de réglementation des taux d'intérêt; ces banques ont tendance à répercuter le coût élevé du capital sur les clients. Nous montrons aussi que, en l'absence de contrôle des taux d'intérêt, les banques étrangères fixent des marges plus élevées quand elles prennent un risque de crédit plus élevé alors qu'en présence de la réglementation des taux d'intérêt les banques privées font face à un risque de crédit plus élevé sans pouvoir augmenter leur marge en conséquence. Le dernier chapitre étudie l'impact de la politique monétaire et des conditions économiques sur les prêts bancaires pour les différents niveaux de capitalisation des banques. Les résultats indiquent que tous les types de chocs de politique monétaire ont un effet négatif sur les prêts, mais que l'augmentation de la liquidité bancaire conduit à une réduction plus faible de la croissance des prêts. Enfin, les banques dont la capitalisation est plus faible sont moins influencées par le cycle économique. / This dissertation is composed of three chapters. The first chapter analyzes the impact of ownership structure and the reforms implemented in the mid 2000's on the efficiency of commercial banks in Vietnam. The results show that the efficiency differs depending on ownership type; state-owned banks have the lowest efficiency levels in comparison with private banks and banks with foreign shareholders. Since the implementation of more stringent minimum capital rules, bank capitalization has also been an important driver of bank efficiency. The second chapter discusses how banks in Vietnam set their interest margins with a particular focus on bank ownership and interest rate regulation by the central bank. The results show that only private and state-owned banks transfer their operational costs to their clients. Bank capitalization which reflects bank risk aversion is a significant determinant for foreign and state owned banks only in presence of interest rate regulation; these banks tend to pass the high capital cost to customers. We also show that, in absence of interest rate control, foreign banks set higher margins when they take higher credit risk while in presence of interest rate regulation private banks cope with higher credit risk without being able to raise their margin accordingly. The last chapter investigates the impact of monetary policy and economic conditions on bank lending for different levels of bank capitalization. The results indicate that all types of monetary policy shocks have a negative effect on lending but that an increase in bank liquidity leads to a lower reduction in loan growth. Finally, banks with lower capitalization are less influenced by the business cycle.

The present paper provides first empirical evidence on the relationship between market size and the number of firms in the healthcare industry for a transition economy. We estimate market-size thresholds required to support different numbers of suppliers (firms) for three occupations in the healthcare industry in a large number of distinct geographic markets in Slovakia, taking into account the spatial interaction between local markets. The empirical analysis is carried out for three time periods (1995, 2001 and 2010) which characterise different stages of the transition process. Our results suggest that the relationship between market size and the number of firms differs both across industries and across periods. In particular, we find that pharmacies, as the only completely liberalised market in our dataset, experience the largest change in competitive behaviour during the transition process. Furthermore, we find evidence for correlation in entry decisions across administrative borders, suggesting that future market analysis should aim to capture these regional effects.

This paper investigates IT value creation in transition and developed economies in Central and Eastern Europe. Using absorptive capacity theory and data envelopment analysis, we view business process transformation in ERP adoption as an economic production process. Data analysis suggests that the "sum of history" shapes adoption performance of firms, meaning that transition economies may suffer from less developed absorptive capacities in regard to IT and therefore face a greater challenge in ERP utilisation.

Magister Legum - LLM

This thesis investigates the impact of social determinants on life expectancy in 16 transition economies from 1995 to 2012 by a panel data regression analysis. The regression result suggests that, air quality, coverage for tertiary education, spending in health care have statistically positive associations with life expectancy. To be specific, 1 microgram per cubic meter reduction in PM 2.5 air pollution(mean annual exposure) is associated with a gain of 2.16 months of life expectancy at birth. 100 dollars increase in health expenditure per capita is associated with a gain of 2.4 months of life expectancy at birth. 10% points increase in the gross enrolment ratio for tertiary school is associated with a gain of 3.6 months of life expectancy. But the proxy variable of democracy(Unified Democracy Sores), Economic Freedom and out-of-pocket health expenditure are not significant factors of life expectancy.

The transition from communism to capitalism at the end of the last century was one of the most significant events in the world economy since industrialization. During the latter part of the 1980s, people the Central and Eastern European countries and former Soviet Republics opted for a change from highly distorted command economic system to a market driven economic system. Privatization and liberalization policies led to major changes in the commodity mix and volume of agricultural production, consumption and trade. However, the changes and the impacts varied among countries as they followed different transition strategies. This study investigated the impact of market liberalization on the agricultural sector, as well as how the inter-sectoral linkages among the agricultural, industrial and service sectors responded in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary using time-series analysis. The study estimated an econometric model that incorporates the linkages among the sectors using a Vector Error Correction Model. The procedure identified long-run and short-run relationships for each country. The results showed that a sector can have a negative linkage to other sectors in the short-run; however, that does not mean that the linkage will be negative in the long-run. Impulse response functions were constructed to determine how a system reacts to a shock in one of the endogenous variable in a model. The study explored how a shock in the agricultural sector was absorbed by the other sectors in the economy, and how a shock in the other sectors was absorbed by the agricultural sector, in all four countries. The responses reflected how the variables are interrelated within a country, and how the shocks are transferred through different linkages over a long period of time. Such dynamic analysis was used to identify the total impacts of different policy alternatives.

Efter upplösningen av Sovjetunionens starka maktkontroll över sina satellitstater den 9:e november 1989, kunde de Centrala och Östeuropeiska länderna (förkortning CEEC på engelska) påbörja sin övergång till marknadsekonomi. Sättet att närma sig en fri marknad är indelat i två olika tillvägagångssätt – chockterapi och gradualism. Den förstnämda metoden genomförs med fokus på snabbhet och en samverkande engångsförvandling av de ekonomiska sektorerna medan den sistnämnda beaktar en grad- och stegvis omvandling. Omvandlingsprocessen i sig består av flera variabler, exempelvis privatisering av statligt ägd egendom, makroekonomisk stabilitet samt liberalisering av priser och handel. Beroende på vilken metod som valdes genomfördes de ovan nämnda variablerna vid olika tidpunkter och med varierande hastighetsgrad. Åsikterna bland ekonomer rörande vilken metod som uppnått bäst resultat är omdebatterad. Följaktligen är syftet med denna uppsats att undersöka vilken av omvandlingsmetoderna som har uppnått högst BNP per capita tillväxt i de valda CEEC under perioden 1992-2003. Tio CEEC valdes ut för att få en rättvis delning mellan de två tillvägagångssätten, med tillhörande fem länder i varje grupp. Därtill valdes fem referensländer ut, för att i en grafisk analys kunna relatera utvecklingen i omvandlingsländer till redan etablerade marknadsekonomier. De erhållna resultaten visar att val av tillvägagångssätt inom omvandlingsprocessen inte har någon signifikant inverkan på BNP per capita utvecklingen. Ländernas grundförutsättningar samt i vilken ordning variablerna implementerades visar sig troligen ha större inverkan på BNP per capita tillväxten. Dessutom visar de empiriska resultaten klara indikationer på att det finns en skillnad mellan CEEC och referensländerna. / After the resolution of the Soviet Unions strict control over its satellite with beginning on the 9th of November 1989, the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) began their transition towards a market economy. How to approach the economic system of a free market has been divided into two major policies – shock therapy and gradualism. The first policy is implemented with speed and one-shock change within the economic sectors as a focus while the second constitutes of slow and gradual implementations. The transformation process in itself consists of several variables, for e.g. privatization of state-owned properties, macroeconomic stabilization and liberalization of prices and trade. Depending on what policy chosen, the variables were implemented at different times and with different speed. The views among economists regarding which of the two models that achieve the best result when transforming differs widely. Hence, the purpose of this thesis is to investigate which of the two models that have had the best effect upon the GDP per capita growth in the chosen CEEC. Ten CEEC were picked to have a fair representation for each policy, with five countries representing each policy group and the years measured were 1992-2003. In addition, for a graphical analysis to be performed and to distinct CEEC from already established market economies, five reference countries were included. The results obtained indicate that the policy choice has no impact on average GDP per capita growth. Instead we concure with earlier research that claim that preconditions and sequential order of the market reforms have a larger impact on GDP per capita growth. Additionally, empirical results indicated that there is a significant difference in the GDP growth over the last decade between our CEEC and the reference countries.

<p>Efter upplösningen av Sovjetunionens starka maktkontroll över sina satellitstater den 9:e november 1989, kunde de Centrala och Östeuropeiska länderna (förkortning CEEC på engelska) påbörja sin övergång till marknadsekonomi. Sättet att närma sig en fri marknad är indelat i två olika tillvägagångssätt – chockterapi och gradualism. Den förstnämda metoden genomförs med fokus på snabbhet och en samverkande engångsförvandling av de ekonomiska sektorerna medan den sistnämnda beaktar en grad- och stegvis omvandling. Omvandlingsprocessen i sig består av flera variabler, exempelvis privatisering av statligt ägd egendom, makroekonomisk stabilitet samt liberalisering av priser och handel. Beroende på vilken metod som valdes genomfördes de ovan nämnda variablerna vid olika tidpunkter och med varierande hastighetsgrad. Åsikterna bland ekonomer rörande vilken metod som uppnått bäst resultat är omdebatterad. Följaktligen är syftet med denna uppsats att undersöka vilken av omvandlingsmetoderna som har uppnått högst BNP per capita tillväxt i de valda CEEC under perioden 1992-2003. Tio CEEC valdes ut för att få en rättvis delning mellan de två tillvägagångssätten, med tillhörande fem länder i varje grupp. Därtill valdes fem referensländer ut, för att i en grafisk analys kunna relatera utvecklingen i omvandlingsländer till redan etablerade marknadsekonomier. De erhållna resultaten visar att val av tillvägagångssätt inom omvandlingsprocessen inte har någon signifikant inverkan på BNP per capita utvecklingen. Ländernas grundförutsättningar samt i vilken ordning variablerna implementerades visar sig troligen ha större inverkan på BNP per capita tillväxten. Dessutom visar de empiriska resultaten klara indikationer på att det finns en skillnad mellan CEEC och referensländerna.</p> / <p>After the resolution of the Soviet Unions strict control over its satellite with beginning on the 9th of November 1989, the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) began their transition towards a market economy. How to approach the economic system of a free market has been divided into two major policies – shock therapy and gradualism. The first policy is implemented with speed and one-shock change within the economic sectors as a focus while the second constitutes of slow and gradual implementations. The transformation process in itself consists of several variables, for e.g. privatization of state-owned properties, macroeconomic stabilization and liberalization of prices and trade. Depending on what policy chosen, the variables were implemented at different times and with different speed. The views among economists regarding which of the two models that achieve the best result when transforming differs widely. Hence, the purpose of this thesis is to investigate which of the two models that have had the best effect upon the GDP per capita growth in the chosen CEEC. Ten CEEC were picked to have a fair representation for each policy, with five countries representing each policy group and the years measured were 1992-2003. In addition, for a graphical analysis to be performed and to distinct CEEC from already established market economies, five reference countries were included. The results obtained indicate that the policy choice has no impact on average GDP per capita growth. Instead we concure with earlier research that claim that preconditions and sequential order of the market reforms have a larger impact on GDP per capita growth. Additionally, empirical results indicated that there is a significant difference in the GDP growth over the last decade between our CEEC and the reference countries.</p>