This study attempts to explain why the transition to a market economy is skill-biased. It shows unequivocal evidence on increased skill wage premium and supply of skills in transition economies. It examines whether similar skill–favoring shifts in the Russian and U.S. economies are driven by...

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...

How did post-communist transformations affect people's perceptions of their economic and political systems? We model a pseudo-panel with 89 country-year clusters, based on 13 countries observed between 1991 and 2004, to identify the macro and institutional drivers of the public opinion. Our main...

This paper is dedicated to the relation between market development and democracy. We distinguish contexts and preferences and ask whether it is true that the demand for democracy only emerges after a certain degree of market development is reached, and whether, conversely, democratization is...

This paper looks behind the standard, publicly available employment and unemployment statistics that studies of transition economy labor markets have typically relied upon. We analyze microdata on detailed labor force survey responses in Russia, Romania, and Estonia to measure nonstandard,...

This study surveys the development of the East German labor market after the unification of Germany. We explain that in the last decade, East Germans were faced with very high levels of joblessness that considering labor market exits and active labor market policy, are only partly reported as...

The paper studies the determinants of labor force participation by East German women after unification. To isolate the role of preferences on labor force participation from individual characteristics, we develop a panel data model that simultaneously explains participation, employment and wages....

It has been shown that higher levels of subjective well-being lead to greater work productivity, better physical health and enhanced social skills. Because of these positive externalities, policymakers across the world should be interested in attracting and retaining happy and life-satisfied...

China has achieved tremendous economic progress in the last three decades, but there is much work to be done to make the economy resilient to large shocks, ensure the sustainability of its growth, and translate this growth into corresponding improvements in the economic welfare of its citizens....

This paper examines whether the introduction of corporate governance (CG) reforms in general and that of transparency and disclosure (T&D) rules in particular can necessarily boost firm performance. Existing literature suggests that CG reforms can boost performance because it can resolve the...