This paper examines the relationship between differences in civil society development under communism and divergence in the nature and pace of political and economic reform and transformation after 1989. We put together a unique data set on dissident activities for the 27 former centrally...

Both in the UK and in the US, we observe puzzling gender asymmetries in the propensity to outmarry: Black men are substantially more likely to have white spouses than Black women, but the opposite is true for Chinese: Chinese men are half less likely to be married to a White person than Chinese...

Does migration facilitate regional adjustment to idiosyncratic shocks? The evidence from post-communist economies indicates that the efficacy of migration in reducing inter-regional unemployment and wage differentials has in fact been rather low. High wages appear to encourage - and, similarly,...

In this paper, I analyse the development of inter-regional mobility in the Czech Republic during the transition from central planning to a market economy. I show that while the intensity of migration is low and has even fallen during the transition, regional disparities in unemployment rates and...

We argue that econometric analyses based on transition countries’ data can be vulnerable to structural breaks across time and/or countries. We demonstrate this argument by identifying structural breaks in growth regressions estimated with data for 25 countries and 16 years. Our method allows...

The gravity model of trade is utilized to assess the impact of disintegration on trade. The analysis is based on three recent disintegration episodes involving the former Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. The results point to a very strong home bias around the time of disintegration,...

How does implementing harsh economic reforms influence voting behaviour? And how do the patterns of political support change over the course of transition? We analyse these issues using data from a sequence of 11 opinion surveys conducted in the Czech Republic between 1990-98. We find that -...

This Paper explores interactions between growth, economic liberalization and democratization during transition. The results can be summarized as follows: (1) Liberalization has a strong positive effect on growth during transition. This holds also when controlling for possible endogeneity of...

This Paper analyses the effect of the introduction of managerial incentives and new human capital on enterprise performance after privatization in the Czech Republic. We find weak evidence for the presence of managerial incentives: only in 1997, three to four years after privatization, does poor...

Recent Eurobarometer survey data are used to document and explain the stock of social capital in 27 European countries. Social capital in Central and Eastern Europe – measured by civic participation and access to social networks – lags behind that in Western European countries. Using...