News

Vyacheslav Dombrovsky's new blog at the public policy portal www.politika.lv is available here

"Subversion of Democracy?"

Vyacheslav Dombrovsky’s new article at the public policy portal www.politika.lv is available here 

New research on politically-connected firms and the effect of campaign contributions

Vyacheslav Dombrovsky’s papers “Campaign Contributions and Firm Performance: The ‘Latvian Way’” and “Do Political Connections Matter? Firm-level Evidence from Latvia” are available for download from the Social Science Research Network.

Can competition be successfully engineered in telecoms markets?

On 4th June 2008 the TeliaSonera Institute at SSERiga and BICEPS hosted a conference on the theme of promoting competition in telecoms markets. Speakers included two of Europe’s leading authorities in this area: Martin Cave, Director of the Centre for Management under Regulation, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, who addressed the theme of competition in new generation networks and Mats Bergman, from Uppsala University who considered the application of competition law in telecoms.

For the full programme click here

For the presentations click here

People and events

Vyacheslav Dombrovsky has returned to BICEPS and SSERiga after spending the autumn semester of 2007 as a Visiting Fulbright Scholar at the Center for Study of Public Choice at George Mason University (USA). He was located at Buchanan House, named after GMU’s James Buchanan who received the 1986 Nobel Prize in economics for ‘his development of the contractual and constitutional bases for the theory of economic and political decision-making’. While at the Center, Vyacheslav continued his investigation of the effects of political connections in Latvia.

For a picture click here

Olga Rastrigina: 2008 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) planning meeting

In January 2008 BICEPS research fellow Olga Rastrigina visited Babson College, MA, USA, where she represented the Latvian GEM team at the annual GEM meeting. On the first day of the meeting Olga participated in a Doctoral and Junior Faculty workshop devoted to research on GEM data. Over the next days of the meeting the GEM 2007 Global Report was launched, the accomplishments of the past year were discussed and new activities for the 10th round of GEM in 2008 were planned. One of the new initiatives this year is a special focus on Education and Training.

BICEPS session at the All China Economics (ACE) conference in Hong Kong

BICEPS organized a session “Labour Markets, Migration, Entrepreneurship” at the 2nd All China Economics International Conference that took place on December 12-14, 2007 at the Hong Kong City University. The conference was attended by around 400 people from all over the world. The session was chaired by BICEPS Director Alf Vanags and two BICEPS research fellows presented their research there. Olga Rastrigina presented her paper “Family Interactions in the Making of Entrepreneurs in Latvia”, and Zane Cunska presented her paper “Mobility of Student Population: Regional Perspective in Latvia”.

Knowledge based entrepreneurship

The second RICAFE conference was hosted by BICEPS and the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga on the 5th and 6th of October. Scholars from top universities in Europe, United States, and other countries converged in Riga to discuss the financing of innovative firms, determinants of knowledge-based entrepreneurship, the role of venture capital funds, and other topics. The conference included a policy panel with representatives from the academic community, policy-making, and the business sector. The European Commission, DG Research, sponsors the RICAFE2 research programme.

For details about the RICAFE research programme, click here (www.lse.ac.uk/ricafe)

For RICAFE programme click here

For presented papers click here

Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM)

The Latvia 2006 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) report was presented Vyacheslav Dombrovsky and Olga Rastrigina on June 19th. The survey showed that Latvia is quite reasonably entrepreneurial as compared with other European countries and that Latvia’s entrepreneurs were reasonably innovative. The report is available in both English and Latvian.

Download the report: English / Latvian

Inflation in Latvia: Causes, Prospects and Consequences

The Report was presented on June 7th by Morten Hansen, SSE Riga and Alf Vanags, BICEPS. Märten Ross, Deputy Governor, Bank of Estonia, and Lars Christensen, Head of New Europe Research, Danske Bank were discussants.

Download the report