Using panel district level data from the Czech and Slovak Republic in the 1990s, we find that the exceptionally low unemployment rate in the Czech Republic as compared to Slovakia and the other CEE economies has been brought about principally by the following phenomena in the Czech Republic: (1)...

Under communism, workers had their wages set according to a centrally-determined wage grid. In this paper we use new micro data on men to estimate returns to human capital under the communist wage grid and during the transition to a market economy. We use data from the Czech Republic because it...

In this paper, we use 1991-2005 panel data on the unemployed, vacancies, inflow intounemployment, and outflow from unemployment in five former communist economies and inthe western part of Germany (a benchmark western economy) to examine the evolution ofunemployment together with that of inflows...

The paper tests three hypotheses about the causes of unemployment in the Central-East European transition economies and in a benchmark market economy (Western part of Germany). The first hypothesis (H1) is that unemployment is caused by inefficient matching. Hypothesis 2 (H2) is that...

We use rich firm-level data and national input-output tables from 17 countries over the 2002-2005 period to test new and existing hypotheses about the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the efficiency of domestic firms in the host country (i.e., spillovers). We document that backward...

Our estimates, based on large firm-level and industry-level data sets from eighteen countries, suggest that FDI and trade have strong positive spillover effects on product and technology innovation by domestic firms in emerging markets. The FDI effect is more pronounced for firms from advanced...

Economic development implies that the efficiency of firms in developing countries is approaching that of firms in advanced economies. We examine the extent of this convergence in the Czech Republic and Russia, economies that represent alternative models of implementing development policies,...

Globalization brings opportunities and pressures for domestic firms in emerging markets to innovate and improve their competitive position. Using data on firms in 27 transition economies, the authors test for the effects of globalization through the impact of increased competition and foreign...

Senegal is in a long-term economic crisis. Senegalese industry suffers from a highly adversarial system of industrial and labor relations, excessive government regulations in some areas and inadequate government support in others, and many misperceptions about the ethnically diverse labor force...

Economic development implies that the efficiency of firms in developing countries is approaching that of firms in advanced economies. We examine the extent of this convergence in the Czech Republic and Russia, economies that represent alternative models of implementing development policies,...