Does foreign ownership matter?

The paper both compares productivity of Russian firms that have foreign direct investments with productivity of fully domestically owned firms and analyses spillovers from foreign‐owned firms to domestic firms. Foreign firms are found to be more productive than domestic ones, but productivity of the former is negatively affected by slow progress of reforms in the regions where they operate. It is also found that there are positive spillovers from foreign‐owned firms to domestic firms in the same industry, but negative effects on domestic firms that are vertically related to foreign‐owned firms. The stock of human capital in regions where foreign firms operate is one of the factors which help domestic firms to benefit from the entry of foreign firms.     

Network modeling approaches for calculating wholesale NGA prices: A full comparison based on the Greek fixed broadband market

According to the European Commission Recommendation for setting copper and fiber wholesale prices where cost orientation is imposed as a remedy, National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs) should adopt a Bottom-UP Long-Run Incremental Cost Plus (BU LRIC+) costing methodology that estimates the current cost that a hypothetical efficient operator would incur to build a modern efficient Next Generation Access (NGA) network. The starting point of modeling an efficient operator investing in NGA networks is the network modeling approach. In this paper, we compare the most widely adopted network modeling approaches in terms of wholesale fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) prices. In particular, the modified scorched node approach is compared to the extreme cases of the scorched node and the scorched earth approaches. The comparison between the aforementioned scenarios sheds light on the impact of each approach on the wholesale FTTH prices. The main finding of this paper is that the scorched earth approach leads to a maximum of 10% reduction in the short-term access prices compared to the most inefficient scorched node approach, whereas further extending its optimizations by optimizing the number of central offices, both the short-term and long-term wholesale price reductions are quite significant (more than 20%) regardless of service speeds. Consequently, NRAs should consider a geographically differentiated modeling approach when regulating the wholesale market by adjusting the level of scorching in each area and network segment according to the investment plans of telecom operators. An appropriate variation of the modeled network operator's efficiency is expected to more accurately represent the costs of a reasonably efficient operator based on the real market conditions and a forward-looking perspective. These findings provide valuable information to both network operators and telecom regulators.     

The end of economic transition

The transition from plan to market was the largest natural experiment in economics ever. Now, 20 years from the start of transition, all former socialist countries are market economies at the middle stage of economic development, and convergence with neighbours, if not with the developed world, is largely achieved. With hindsight, it is clear that economists have spent too much time debating proper sequencing of reforms and the fine‐tuning of reform packages. At the same time, the magnitude of the output and consumption fall in some countries was vastly underestimated, while the benefits of reforms have taken longer to materialize than expected. Successful practitioners of reform praise perseverance during and after the initial setbacks and willingness to make political compromises. At the conclusion of the natural experiment, transition economics has all but vanished as an academic discipline, although it played a crucial role in the formation of modern political economics.     

Political and Legal Factors of Economic Growth in Russian Regions

The authors propose some new approaches in order to evaluate formally regional specifics of political and legal culture and institutes' impact on the dynamics of economic development of the regions and on the regions' investment climate. They demonstrate using a model that the influence of institutional factors, including some indicators for the basic individual rights maintenance in the regions, on economic growth is significant.     

MRSA – was ist zu tun?

Zusammenfasung  Ausbreitung verhindern — Methicillin-resistente Staphylococcus aureus-St?mme (MRSA) treten weltweit auf. Sie verursachen schwere nosokomiale Infektionen und sind im besonderen Ma?e therapieresistent. Obwohl dieses Problem seit Jahren diskutiert wird, besteht nach wie vor gro?e Verunsicherung, wie eine übertragung vermieden werden kann.