Differences in regional unemployment in post-communist economies are large and persistent. We show that within-country regional variation in inherited human capital in four such economies explains the bulk of regional variation in unemployment; we explore potential explanations. Our evidence...

Small start-up firms are the engine of job creation in early transition. We ask about differences in their growth across two different transition economies: Estonia, which experienced rapid destruction of pre-existing firms, and the Czech Republic, which reduced the old sector gradually. We find...

Disposable income inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient and using the "Family Budget Survey" data, increased very little, and by a similar amount, from 1989 to 1993 in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. This surprising result is examined with an analysis of changes in the channels of...