In Africa’s least developed countries (LDCs), escape from poverty and convergence to living standards of more advanced economies depends critically on structural transformation and the emergence of productive entrepreneurship that would accelerate growth and job creation. So far, however,...

We analyse the unemployment benefit regime change that occurred in Poland in December 1991 using data from the Polish Labour Force Survey. Before December 1991, the entitlement period to unemployment benefits was unlimited. Thereafter, it was reduced to 12 months (with a few exceptions). Using...

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...

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...

Recent evaluations of active lab or market policies are not very optimistic about their effectiveness to bring unemployed back to work. An important reason is that unemployed get locked-in, that is they reduce their effort to find a regular job. This paper uses an administrative dataset from the...

This paper estimates causal effects of two Polish active labor market policies - Training and Intervention Works - on employment probabilities. Using data from the 18th wave of the Polish Labor Force Survey we discuss three stages of an appropriately designed matching procedure and demonstrate...

This paper analyzes the effects of Slovenian public works on employability of the participants during 1992-1996. It shows that immediately upon the completion, the program helps the participants to find a job, but in the longer run, the positive effect is dissipated and the impact becomes...

This paper provides micro-econometric evidence on the effectiveness of Active Labor Market Policies (ALMP) in Poland. We sketch the theoretical framework of matching estimators as a substitute for randomization in labor market programs. Using retrospective data from the 18th wave of the Polish...

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 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...