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...

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...

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...