We look at the differences in regional unemployment rates in six major transition countries and their persistence over time. We analyse the role various adjustment mechanisms play. While movement out of the labour force seems to be one consequence in many regions with high relative unemployment,...

Using large firm-level data sets from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary, we show that the wage behavior of firms changed considerably as these economies launched their transitions to a market system. We find evidence of worker sharing in their enterprise rents and losses at the...

Income inequality can be measured at different levels of aggregation such as global, continental, international and national levels. Here we consider income inequality at the national level but the focus is on the within country regional inequality. Regional inequality in income distribution in...

In this paper, we present a comparative analysis of employment determination in four transition economies as they move from central planning to a market economy in the early 1990s. We use firm level panel data sets from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia to estimate dynamic...

This paper provides micro-econometric evidence on the effectiveness of Active Labor Market Policies (ALMP) in Poland. We sketch the theoretical framework of matching estimators as a substitute for randomization in labor market programs. Using retrospective data from the 18th wave of the Polish...

This paper exploits the rapid rise in self-employment rates in post-communist Eastern Europe as a valuable ?quasi-experiment? for understanding the sources of entrepreneurship. A relative demand-supply model and an individual sectoral choice model are used to analyze a 1993 survey of 27,000...

We study worker turnover in a transition economy to investigate to what extent the length of time a worker has been employed by a firm shapes the turnover process. Using data from the Polish Labor Force Survey and The Russian Longitudinal Monitor Survey we compare the pattern of turnover with a...

This paper studies regional unemployment inequality in Poland. We find that higher unemployment regions are those experiencing greater change in industrial structure. We also find high unemployment regions are those with higher inflow rates to unemployment rather than longer spells of...

We present a new and simple empirical methodology to identify relative wage rigidity dynamics. The methodology is applied to data from the Polish Labour Force Survey for the period 1994 to 1998. We estimate ceteris paribus changes in relative wage and unemployment differentials for various...

This paper seeks to document and analyse changes in the distribution of wages and employment in the transition countries since the collapse of communism. Most countries experienced an increase in wage inequality during the initial shock of the transition. Proximate causes of this increase seem...