This paper uses two representative household budget surveys from the Kyrgyz Republic to analyze factors influencing participation and returns from different types of nonfarm activities in 2005 and 2006. Nonfarm activities are found to be most important for the poor, who are pushed out of...

The choice of a university career has a major saying in the future earnings and career opportunities of the individuals. In turn, prospective university students make their decisions mainly motivated by expectations of future rewards. Hence, understanding career choices requires, first, to be...

The economic reality of the 1990s in Europe forced the labour markets to become more flexible. Using a consistent comparative dataset for 14 European countries, the European Community Household Panel (ECHP), we explore the evolution and the cross-national differences in earnings mobility across...

The concerns regarding the economic insecurity stemming from earnings instability have been gaining momentum in the contemporary political discourse. If earnings instability is as a proxy for risk, for risk-averse individuals, increasing earnings instability bears substantial welfare costs....

During the 1980s and 1990s "Active labour" market reforms opened up labour markets in Europe, making them more flexible without putting in jeopardy the essence of the social security protection model. Countries that went furthest in such "active labour" market reforms such as the UK, the...

There has been an ongoing debate among researchers, policy-makers and development partners in low-income countries on whether and to what degree non-contributory social transfers should be targeted to the poor or paid out universally to every citizen or to all citizens in a particular category....

This study estimates the rates of return (RoR) of non-contributory social transfer programmes in Cambodia using household data and going beyond standard cost efficiency analyses by developing a dynamic micro simulation. It shows that social protection promotes equitable economic growth by...

Since the end of 2007, countries in Central Asia have been struck by two major consecutive shocks: the food and fuel price increase in 2007-08, and the global economic and financial crisis that began at the end of 2008. Households, both poor and not poor, are directly and adversely affected by...

This paper asks: what can governments of new member states do to encourage MNEs to invest in R&D? There are two types of MNE R&D. Innovation can be undertaken in order to adapt its existing products and services to local stimuli. This is 'demand-driven R&D'. Innovation can also be in stand-alone...

Informal payments for health care are common in most former communist countries. This paper explores the demand side of these payments in Albania. Using tobit and Heckman selection models we control for individual determinants of informal payments in outpatient and inpatient health care....