We use micro data from the Romanian Labor Force Survey to analyze the effect of the restructuring process on the Romanian labor market. We identify the reallocation mechanisms at work in the Romanian labor market, and we analyze the way personal characteristics influence inviduals' ability to...

In this project, we employ data from the Chinese population censuses of 1982, 1990, and 2000 to examine reform-era changes in the patterns of male and female labor force participation and in the distribution of men’s and women’s occupational attainment. Very marked patterns of change in...

In this paper we use unit roots/cointegration analysis and time varying parameters procedure to test for a common growth path in the ex-communist block, both pre- and post-reform. We test whether there has been convergence within the block and between the block as a group and the West....

The development of a vibrant private sector has been one of the key failures of the transitional period in Russia. This paper develops a theoretical and empirical model of individual labor supply behavior under uncertainty, and estimates this model using data from the Russian Longitudinal...

We estimate selection and sorting effects on the evolution of the private return to schooling for college graduates during China’s reform between 1988 and 2002. We pay special attention to the changing role of sorting by ability versus budget-constraint effects as China’s education policy...

In transition economies, there may be a significant mismatch between the types of skills that workers possess and the types of skills that the new economy demands. We consider this problem of human capital mismatch along the dimensions of training type (holding the level) and occupation. We...

In spite of ongoing dramatic changes in labor market structure, transitional economies display rather low worker flows across sectors and occupations. Such low mobility can be explained by low returns to job changes as well as by market segmentation in the allocation of job offers. We develop an...

This paper departs from John Roemer's theory of equality of opportunities. We seek to determine what part of observed outcome inequality may be attributed to differences in observed 'circumstances', including family background, and what part is due to 'personal efforts'. We use a...

The transition from centrally planned to market economy involves a process of massive occupational change that has been largely neglected in the literature. This paper investigates this process using data from the 1995 Estonian Labour Force Survey. We find that between 35 and 50 percent of wage...

We find that productivity gains in tradables cause an appreciation of the real exchange rate via both tradable and nontradable prices in the CEE-5 and have no affect in the Baltic countries, while they lead to a depreciation of the real exchange rate of tradables in OECD economies that...