In this paper I examine the evolution of labor relations institutions during the initial phase of marketization in Poland, Hungary. and Czechoslovakia and develop a model of changing support for reforms during the transition to a market economy. I find surprising stability in labor institutions...

Based on matching household surveys for three central European countries, Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland, we explore the determinants of household saving rates in transition economies. We find savings rates to increase strongly in relative income and to be significantly higher for households...

While output declined in virtually all transition economies in the initial years, the speed and extent of the recovery that followed has varied widely across these countries. The contrast between the more and less successful transitions, the latter largely in the former Soviet Union, raises many...

This paper reviews workforce participation in strategic decisions - those that affect the basic direction of the company - when workforce interests are represented collectively through unions. We consider the problem of corporate governance and review the rationale for what we term strategic...

This paper contrasts International Social Science Programme (ISSP) surveys for Hungary, supplemented with related survey data for East Germany, Poland, and Slovenia, with ISSP data for Western countries, to examine the extent to which workers in traditionally communist societies differ in their...

We use book translations as a new measure of international idea flows and study the effects of Communism's collapse in Eastern Europe on these flows. Using novel data on 800,000 translations and difference-in-differences approaches, we show that while translations between Communist languages...

We have conducted the first survey on management practices in transition countries. We found that Central Asian transition countries, such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, have on average very poor management practices. Their average scores are below emerging countries such as Brazil, China and...

This paper examines alternative hypotheses concerning the determinants of success in the transition from Communism to the market. In particular, we look at whether speed of privatization, legal institutions or initial conditions are more important in explaining the growth of the transition...

Workers who hold a firm's stock make decisions other than those that pure capital owners would make, but there exist institutions and compensation packages that will generally lead workers to favor efficient firm decisions. Workers care about their firm-specific rents and may seek shares in...

This study investigates the impact of union organization on the wages and labor practices of establishments newly organized in the 1980s using a research design in which establishments are 'paired' with their closest nonunion competitor. There are two major findings. First. unionism had only a...