"Anders als in den westlichen Industriestaaten stehen in den RGW-Ländern die Regelungen des Übergangs in den Ruhestand völlig unter dem Eindruck daß Arbeitskräftemangel herrsche. Sowohl die Anwendung der flexiblen Altersgrenze wie auch die Erhöhung materieller Anreize zur Fortsetzung der...

Mehr als 20 Jahre nach dem Zusammenbruch des Sozialismus im gesamten Mittelost- und Osteuropa ist es Zeit für eine Zwischenbilanz. Es handelt sich um eine stürmische Periode, die als Übergang zwischen den denkbar gegensätzlichen Wirtschafts- und Gesellschaftsordnungen in Ost und West...

This paper – based on a report by a Task Force established by the International Relations Committee (IRC) of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) – reviews macroeconomic and financial stability challenges for acceding (Bulgaria and Romania) and candidate countries (Croatia and...

We look at the differences in regional unemployment rates in six major transition countries and their persistence over time. We analyse the role various adjustment mechanisms play. While movement out of the labour force seems to be one consequence in many regions with high relative unemployment,...

Using Bulgarian Integrated Household Surveys for 1995, 1997 and 2001 this paper explores determinants of labor force status – not working, public sector employment, private sector employment and self-employment – and earnings for each of the three employment sectors. We find that while...

This paper exploits the rapid rise in self-employment rates in post-communist Eastern Europe as a valuable ?quasi-experiment? for understanding the sources of entrepreneurship. A relative demand-supply model and an individual sectoral choice model are used to analyze a 1993 survey of 27,000...

The countries concerned in this paper are either in the process of negotiations for EU accession (Bulgaria and Romania) or under a review process for opening such negotiations (Turkey). Therefore we will take the EU-requirements concerning the labour market as a benchmark against which the...

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the international competitiveness of the Turkish economy and the structure of specialisation in foreign trade in comparison with the five EU candidate countries Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Rumania, Poland and the EU/15. This research work...