The paper documents stylized facts about Belarusian business cycle based on aggregate and industry data and puts it into an international content. First, the aggregate fluctuations in Belarus are mostly driven by the wedge, which resembles a time-varying investment tax. Second, the fluctuation in relative prices of an industry is typically more important than volume fluctuation. Furthermore, the impact of price fluctuations is partially o@ffset by volume fluctuation. Third, the aggregate cycle is smoother than the industry-specific one. In particular, agriculture, construction and finance experience a very sharp drop in a recession.

Little knowledge exists on difference in innovation behavior of men and women leading the SMEs in transition countries. This paper estimates whether there is a gender gap in SMEs innovation actions. Results show that propensity to innovate is higher among female owners and this finding preserves for 5 measures of innovativeness. Thus, female involvement in business might be beneficial for the innovative sustainable development of economy. Estimation of the gap in performance of implemented innovations did not reveal any strong prevailing gender in terms of efficiency.

We challenge the view that equity market timing always benefits shareholders. By distinguishing the effect of a firm's equity decisions from the effect of mispricing itself, we show that market timing can decrease shareholder value. Additionally, the timing of equity sales has a more negative effect on existing shareholders than the timing of share repurchases. Our theory can be used to infer firms' maximization objectives from their observed market timing strategies. We argue that the popularity of stock buybacks and the low frequency of seasoned equity offerings are consistent with managers maximizing current shareholder value.

This paper analyzes the concepts, causes and main characteristics of depressed regions and evaluates the level of depressed regions (districts) of Belarus using system of socio-economic indicators.

This survey discusses recent contributions to the quantitative literature on unsecured consumer debt and default, and some ongoing challenges for the literature.