This paper analyzes whether the propensity to secede by subnational regions responds mostly to differences in income per capita or to distinct identities. We explore this question in a quantitative political economy model where people's willingness to finance a public good depends on their...

We provide the first experimental evidence about ethnic discrimination in the labor market in Georgia. We randomly assign Georgian and non-Georgian, male and female, names to similar resumes and apply for jobs as advertised in help-wanted web sites in Georgia. We find that gender has no effect...

We study the effect of exposure to communism (EC), a political-economic regime based on collectivist planning, on preferences for family supports, which we refer to as 'informal family insurance'. We exploit both cross-country and cohort variation in EC in a large sample of Central and Eastern...

This paper presents and discusses new data on employment protection legislation (EPL) in the successor states of the former USSR - the CIS and Baltic states - over 25 years from 1985 to 2009. We use the OECD methodology (OECD EPL, version II) for assessing the strictness of national labor laws...

Political and economic transition is often blamed for Russia's 40% surge in deaths between 1990 and 1994 (the "Russian Mortality Crisis"). Highlighting that increases in mortality occurred primarily among alcohol related causes and among working-age men (the heaviest drinkers), this paper...

This study answers the open question of whether workers respond to financial incentives in a command economy. To do this, I evaluate pension reforms in Soviet Russia in 1964 and 1969 that allowed pensioners to receive a greater share of their pensions if they worked, resulting in a progressive...

Both Western and Soviet estimates of GNP growth in the USSR indicate that GNP per capita grew in every decade - sometimes rapidly - from 1928 to 1985. While this measure suggests that the standard of living improved in the USSR throughout this period, it is unclear whether this economic growth...

On the basis of the German Socio-Economic Panel 2002 and the Dutch Social Position and Use of Provision Survey 2002, we investigate the importance of characteristics related to immigration for the labour market position of Turkish immigrants. We use regression techniques to correct for...

We analyse benefit-entitlement effects and the likely impact of the recent reform of the unemployment compensation system on the duration of unemployment in Germany on the basis of a flexible discrete-time hazard rate model estimated on pre-reform data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP)....

On the basis of three micro datasets, the German Socio-Economic Panel 2002, the Dutch Social Position and Use of Provision Survey 2002 and the Dutch Labour Force Survey 2002, we investigate the labour market position of Turkish immigrants in Germany and the Netherlands. We compare labour market...