This paper looks at how individual preferences for the allocation of government spending change along the life cycle. Using the Life in Transition Survey II for 34 countries of Europe and Central Asia, we find that older individuals are less likely to support a rise in government outlays on...

A common finding of the migration literature is that migrants are more likely to choose self-employment upon return to their origin countries than non-migrants. This has led to the belief that return migration stimulates entrepreneurship in source countries and hence supports economic...

I examine the incidence and determinants of the gender income gap in Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Serbia, Tajikistan, and Ukraine using recent household data based on an identical survey instrument across countries. Four main results are established, using a range of estimators, including...

Despite the growth of alcohol consumption and international migration in many developing countries, the links between the two remain underexplored. We study the relationship between emigration of household members, receiving remittances (migrant monetary transfers), and alcohol consumption of...

This paper offers a first comprehensive study of the relationship between labor market institutions and policies and labor market performance in the countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, which in the last two decades experienced radical economic and institutional transformations. Based...

This paper summarizes the evolution of labor markets and labor market institutions and policies in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe as well as of Central Asia over the last two decades. The main focus is on the evolution of labor market institutions, which are among candidate...

Transition to the market economy in ECA opened up a range of potential opportunities for young people. It has also raised a series of challenges. Youth unemployment and joblessness have emerged as serious problems with the potentially very high costs. Formal Education and Training systems have...

This paper summarizes the micro - level survey evidence from Central Asia generated and analyzed between 1991 and 2012. We provide an exhaustive overview over all accessible individual and household - level surveys undertaken in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan -...

Using 2005 firm level data for 26 ECA countries, this paper estimates performance gaps between male- and female-owned businesses, while controlling for their location by industry and country. We find that female entrepreneurs have significantly smaller scale of operations (as measured by sales...

Employing novel household survey data, this paper examines how rainfall variability and mean temperature affect individual labor supply in Uzbekistan, a highly traditional lower-middle-income country in Central Asia. The findings suggest that rainfall variability induces the reallocation of...