Rising wage inequality in the U.S. and Britain and rising continental European unemployment have led to a popular view in the economics profession that these two phenomena are related to negative relative demand shocks against the unskilled, combined with flexible wages in the Anglo-Saxon...

In most countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, the transition to market led to the emergence of a private sector and open unemployment. The Belarusian labor market is characterized by low official unemployment, combined with a low share of the private...

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...

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 analyses the emergence of the informal economy in the environment characterised by non-competitive labour markets with wage bargaining. We develop a simple extension of the standard search model à la Pissarides (2000) with formal and informal sectors to show how a government’s...

Foreign investors are expected to contribute to economic development through a variety of channels. However, many foreign investment operations are small, and almost insignificant in their impact on the local environment. An important indication of the potential contribution of foreign investors...

This paper examines the determinants of wage pressure in large companies, including ownership characteristics and the impact of regional labour markets. By using a panel of 329 Polish largest firms during the period 1997- 2001, we find evidence of rent sharing activities, however there is also...

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...

This paper examines within-industry variation in labor productivity at the beginning of Russia's transition process in 1992, as well as regional variation in the percentage of firms that exhibit below industry average labor productivity. The main hypothesis is that industries and regions where a...

We examine levels and trends of labor market outcomes for women in the 1990’s using household survey data for 18 Latin American countries covering several years per country. The outcomes we analyze include labor force participation rates, the distribution of employment of women across sectors...