Barter and Non-Monetary Transactions in Transition Economies: Evidence from a Cross-Country Survey

Wendy Carlin (), Steven Fries, Mark Schaffer () and Paul Seabright

No 4, CERT Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Reform and Transformation, Heriot Watt University

Abstract: This paper reports the findings of a survey of more than 3,000 firms in 20 transition countries. It shows that barter and other non-monetary transactions (including the use of bills of exchange, debt swaps, barter chains, and the redemption of debt in goods) are an important phenomenon in Russia and Ukraine. Contrary to what is commonly believed they are not negligible in Central and Eastern Europe. The causes and consequences vary significantly between countries, but several conclusions emerge strongly. First, barter and other non-monetary transactions are associated in all countries with financing difficulties for firms. They appear to be helping to assure liquidity in an environment in which contract enforcement (including tax enforcement) is uncertain. Secondly, the use of these mechanisms is not significantly related to the restructuring and performance of firms that use them in most countries except Russia. Thirdly, in Russia and Ukraine the nature of non-monetary transacting is importantly different from elsewhere. It is much more associated than elsewhere with market power and limited trading networks. It is also more costly in terms of restructuring and performance. Firms that barter are less likely to improve their existing products, probably because barter enables them to dispose of otherwise unsaleable goods. They are also more likely to engage in internal reorganisation of a kind designed purely to service existing barter chains. Internal reorganisation is strongly associated with improved performance for firms that do not barter, but is unrelated to performance for firms that do. Overall, in Russia and to a lesser extent in Ukraine (but not elsewhere) the findings are consistent with the hypothesis that economic disorganisation, in the sense of Blanchard & Kremer (1997), means that barter and other non-monetary transactions are both more likely to occur and more damaging when they do occur.

Date: 2000
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www2.hw.ac.uk/sml/downloads/cert/wpa/2000/dp0004.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hwe:certdp:0004

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CERT Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Reform and Transformation, Heriot Watt University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Colin Miller ().