Growth in Transition: What We Know, What We Don't, and What We Should

This essay surveys macroeconomic issues that marked the transition from centrally planned to market economy in Central and Eastern European and former Soviet Union countries. We first establish a set of stylized facts of the transition so far, namely: (1) output fell, (2) capital shrank, (3) labor moved, (4) trade reoriented, (5) the structure changed, (6) institutions collapsed, and (7) transition costs. We then critically survey the theoretical literature on transition, discussing various explanations for the initial output fall as well as medium term issues, such as optimal speed of transition, disorganization, institutions and sectoral reallocation as a source of output dynamics. Last, we review the empirical literature to assess how well it translates the theoretical models and explains the stylized facts. The essay concludes with a succinct list of suggestions for future research.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39854/3/wp470.pd

Firm Performance and the Political Economy of Corporate Governance: Survey Evidence for Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia

Using survey data for 220 traditional manufacturing firms over 7 years of transition and 4 CEE countries, we find firms that produced for the EU market under planning consistently outperform those that produced for the CMEA market. Within the previously CMEA market, the best firms were selected to outside privatisation and outperformed insider/state owned firms. Outside privatisation was resisted in EU oriented firms and ownership was found to have no effect on performance. We argue that insider/state ownership in previously CMEA and EU markets builds up political support for the market system during its initial stages, ensuring its long-term success.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39722/3/wp338.pd

Rethinking Marketing Programs for Emerging Markets

We point to a fundamental inconsistency in the emerging market strategies of multinational firms. On the one hand, they seek billions of new consumers in the emerging markets of China, India, Indonesia, and Latin America; on the other, their marketing programs are scarcely adapted for these markets. The result is low market penetration, low market shares, and poor profitability. These multinationals are trapped by their own devices in gilded cages, serving the affluent few and ignoring the potential of billions of new consumers that attracted them in the first place. In this paper, we propose that, in order to attract billions of new consumers, the marketing programs of multinationals need to be rethought from the ground up. We identify three key factors that characterize emerging markets: (1) low incomes, (2) variability in consumers and infrastructure, and (3) the relative cheapness of labor, which is often substituted for capital. We draw on numerous case studies from around the world to illustrate how to incorporate these realities into marketing programs. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of such an approach for the multinational's core strategic assumptions.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39704/3/wp320.pd

Growth in Transition: What We Know, What We Don't, and What We Should

This essay surveys macroeconomic issues that marked the transition from centrally planned to market economy in Central and Eastern European and former Soviet Union countries. We first establish a set of stylized facts of the transition so far, namely: (1) output fell, (2) capital shrank, (3) labor moved, (4) trade reoriented, (5) the structure changed, (6) institutions collapsed, and (7) transition costs. We then critically survey the theoretical literature on transition, discussing various explanations for the initial output fall as well as medium term issues, such as optimal speed of transition, disorganization, institutions and sectoral reallocation as a source of output dynamics. Last, we review the empirical literature to assess how well it translates the theoretical models and explains the stylized facts. The essay concludes with a succinct list of suggestions for future research.Economic Growth, Transition Economies

Markets, Human Capital, and Inequality: Evidence from Rural China

Market reforms are generally credited with the rapid growth enjoyed by China's rural sector. This growth has not been without some cost, however, as inequality has also increased. Estimates suggest that the Gini rose from less than 0.20 to over 0.40 during this period. In this paper we go behind these numbers to explore the nature and causes of this inequality. To begin, we find that a considerable share of rural inequality is driven by local differences in household incomes, as opposed to regional income differences, that have been the focus of the previous literature. We then examine inter-household income differentials at the village level, exploring the links between education, market development, non-agricultural employment, and household income. To address these questions, we draw on a recently collected data set from Northeast China, that was collected by two of the authors in collaboration with Chinese colleagues in Hebei and Liaoning provinces in 1995. For purposes of comparison, we also draw on the Chinese Health and Nutrition Survey. We find that indeed, increasing rates of return to education and unevenly developed non-agricultural business opportunities contribute to the high levels of inequality in the countryside. Of most interest, however, is the implication that simultaneous improvements in educational attainment and off-farm market-development would allow more households to share in the rapid growth in rural China.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39682/3/wp298.pd

Firm Performance and the Political Economy of Corporate Governance: Survey Evidence for Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia

Using survey data for 220 traditional manufacturing firms over 7 years of transition and 4 CEE countries, we find firms that produced for the EU market under planning consistently outperform those that produced for the CMEA market. Within the previously CMEA market, the best firms were selected to outside privatisation and outperformed insider/state owned firms. Outside privatisation was resisted in EU oriented firms and ownership was found to have no effect on performance. We argue that insider/state ownership in previously CMEA and EU markets builds up political support for the market system during its initial stages, ensuring its long-term success.firm performance, political economy, privatisation and demand shocks

The Global Spread of Stock Exchange, 1980-1998

Nations opened local stock exchanges at a rapid pace during the late 1980s and 1990s, creating a channel for investment capital from wealthy industrial nations to "emerging markets" as well as a mechanism for institutional change in local economies. This study examines the local and global processes by which exchanges spread, examining all nations "at risk" during the 1980s and 1990s. We find that local factors influencing the creation of stock exchanges included the size of the economy (overall and relative to population size); the legacy of colonialism; and a recent transition to multi-party democracy. Global factors associated with creating exchanges included levels of prior investment by multinationals; IMF "structural adjustment" aid; centrality in trade flows; and regional "contagion." In contrast to prior work in financial economics, we find no evidence for the influence of legal tradition, and contrary to the implications of dependency theory, we find no sign that foreign capital penetration affects the creation of exchanges. We also find no consistent evidence for the influence of stock exchanges on inequality or human development at the national level, above and beyond their effect on economic and population growth. The results indicate that globalization is usefully construed as a process analogous to institutional diffusion at the organization level.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39725/3/wp341.pd

On-board processing for future satellite communications systems: Satellite-Routed FDMA

A frequency division multiple access (FDMA) 30/20 GHz satellite communications architecture without on-board baseband processing is investigated. Conceptual system designs are suggested for domestic traffic models totaling 4 Gb/s of customer premises service (CPS) traffic and 6 Gb/s of trunking traffic. Emphasis is given to the CPS portion of the system which includes thousands of earth terminals with digital traffic ranging from a single 64 kb/s voice channel to hundreds of channels of voice, data, and video with an aggregate data rate of 33 Mb/s. A unique regional design concept that effectively smooths the non-uniform traffic distribution and greatly simplifies the satellite design is employed. The satellite antenna system forms thirty-two 0.33 deg beam on both the uplinks and the downlinks in one design. In another design matched to a traffic model with more dispersed users, there are twenty-four 0.33 deg beams and twenty-one 0.7 deg beams. Detailed system design techniques show that a single satellite producing approximately 5 kW of dc power is capable of handling at least 75% of the postulated traffic. A detailed cost model of the ground segment and estimated system costs based on current information from manufacturers are presented

Rethinking Marketing Programs for Emerging Markets

We point to a fundamental inconsistency in the emerging market strategies of multinational firms. On the one hand, they seek billions of new consumers in the emerging markets of China, India, Indonesia, and Latin America; on the other, their marketing programs are scarcely adapted for these markets. The result is low market penetration, low market shares, and poor profitability. These multinationals are trapped by their own devices in gilded cages, serving the affluent few and ignoring the potential of billions of new consumers that attracted them in the first place. In this paper, we propose that, in order to attract billions of new consumers, the marketing programs of multinationals need to be rethought from the ground up. We identify three key factors that characterize emerging markets: (1) low incomes, (2) variability in consumers and infrastructure, and (3) the relative cheapness of labor, which is often substituted for capital. We draw on numerous case studies from around the world to illustrate how to incorporate these realities into marketing programs. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of such an approach for the multinational's core strategic assumptions.marketing, emerging market consumers, consumer behavior, multinationals