This policy paper looks at who are women in Belarus’ business, are there any gender differences that impact on the effectiveness and successfulness of business. The study also analyses the external and internal factors that impede business development and motives to enter business. The main barriers that face women entrepreneurs are related to the quality of the functioning entrepreneurial ecosystem. However, equally important role is played by the preservation of the traditional division of social roles in terms of household work and childcare sharing. As the results show, the majority of female business owners no longer perceive as a norm the current state of affairs.

We present new causal estimates of firm-value benefits generated by political connections. Our identification strategy uses sudden deaths of U.S. Representatives and Senators as a source of exogenous variation.

This article is based on a panel discussion on the future of transition countries 25 years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. All the contributors have long professional and personal experience of various aspects of the transition process so far and provide different perspectives on what to expect for the region in the future.

The quality of institutions is a major factor in the success or failure of nations and a fundamental source of differences in per capita income between countries. This work is devoted to the analysis of the definition of institutions and studies their impact on the economic development of developed and developing countries. The state of institutional development in Belarus for 1996-2015 is assessed, and the directions of further development of institutions based on the experience of other countries are considered.