A large number of countries have recently experienced competitive shocks: sudden increases in the role that market forces play in determining the evolution of various industries. In this paper, we study the implications of Poland's competitive shock for three elements of the structure of that...

This paper explores the determinants of job search behavior, search intensity and choices of search methods of the unemployed workers in transitional Russia. We use pooled data from rounds 5-9 of the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) to estimate the effects of socio-economic factors...

Decentralization can complement market liberalization by strengthening incentives of agents to exploit local information in response to market signals. In China, however, banks centralized lending authority following financial reforms in the mid-1990s. We offer a new theory of financial...

One potential impact of the looming EU accession of Central European economies is unemployment hysteresis working through long-term unemployment (LTU). In this paper, we explore the mechanisms of LTU by providing a detailed description of the recent rise in Czech LTU following the recession of...

We propose a micro-econometric investigation into the relation between subjective life satisfaction and income distribution, using a balanced panel survey of the Russian population (RLMS), running from 1994 to 2000, including 4096 individuals. We show that in the context of the Russian very...

This paper estimates causal effects of two Polish active labor market policies - Training and Intervention Works - on employment probabilities. Using data from the 18th wave of the Polish Labor Force Survey we discuss three stages of an appropriately designed matching procedure and demonstrate...

The privatization process in Eastern Europe is not irreversible. Future governments may want to (partially) expropriate successful private firms in order to subsidize unsuccessful ones. We use a simple median voter model to predict the policy of future governments. It is shown that there will be...