The main questions addressed in this paper are: First, how did labour markets in the Visegrad countries react to the breakdown of a command economy and the transformation to a market economy? Second, which way ahead is likely, or to put it differently, what should be done now to improve...

Evidence from a range of countries suggests the existence of a "wage curve" -an inverse relation between earnings of individual workers and the rate of unemployment in the region in which they live. If such a relation does exist it has important implications for labour market theory and policy....