The paper studies determinants of internal migration in Russia. Using panel data on gross region-to-region migration flows in 1992-99, we estimate the effect of economic, political and social factors. Although overall migration is rather low, it turns out that its intensity does depend on...

I analyze the patterns of migration by testing the influence of traditional economic and amenity factors and of housing market reform on the direction of migration flows. I improve on the few previous studies of Russian migration during transition by analyzing gross flows rather than net flows...

How valuable are the education and skills acquired under socialism in a market economy? This paper uses data for about 3 million Hungarian wage earners, from 1986 to 1998, to throw light on this question. We find that returns to schooling reach 10 percent early on and remain at this high level....

Transition economies have an initial condition of high human capital relative to living standards. I explore the possible implications of this key fact by surveying and adapting literature on growth and inequality. I focus especially on the long run and policy options.

In January 2001 the Hungarian government increased the minimum wage from Ft 25,500 to Ft 40,000. One year later the wage floor rose further to Ft 50,000. The paper looks at the short-run impact of the first hike on small-firm employment and flows between employment and unemployment. It finds...

This paper analyses Russian city growth during the command and transition eras. Our main focus is on understanding the extent to which market forces are replacing command forces, and the resulting changes in Russian city growth patterns. We examine net migration rates for a sample of 171 medium...

Does migration facilitate regional adjustment to idiosyncratic shocks? The evidence from post-communist economies indicates that the efficacy of migration in reducing inter-regional unemployment and wage differentials has in fact been rather low. High wages appear to encourage, and, similarly,...

This study evaluates the impact of high-skilled immigrants on US technology formation. We use reduced-form specifications that exploit large changes in the H-1B visa program. Higher H-1B admissions increase immigrant science and engineering (SE) employment and patenting by inventors with Indian...

In this paper, I analyze the development of inter-regional mobility in the Czech Republic during the transition from central planning to a market economy. I show that the intensity of migration is low and even has fallen during the transition regional disparities in unemployment rates and...

Labor markets are the most important mediator of German unification and wages are a central indicator of its progress. Starting from the observation that a wage differential between two workers can arise either because workers have different endowments of human capital characteristics or...