An employer-based sample of over 660,000 Czech and 260,000 Slovak workers is used to estimate the benefits of education in 1995 to 1997. By 1997 education of all types had become substantially more highly rewarded in both countries than it was either under communism or in the early years of the...

This paper uses individual-level data to characterize economy-wide job creation and destruction during periods of massive structural adjustment. We contrast the gradualist Czech and the rapid Estonian approach to the destruction of the communist economy to provide evidence on selected...

Small start-up firms are the engine of job creation in early transition and yet little is known about the characteristics of this new sector. We seek to identify patterns of job growth in this sector in terms of niches left from central planning and ask about differences in job creation across...

We measure the importance of candidate characteristics listed on ballots for a candidate's position on a slate, for preferential votes received by a candidate, and, ultimately, for getting elected. We focus on the effects of gender, various types of academic titles, and also several novel...

This paper examines the gender gaps in employment and wages among top- and lower-level managerial employees in a recent sample of Czech firms. Unlike the existing analyses of managerial gender pay gaps, we acknowledge the adverse consequences of the low and uneven representation of women for the...

One's position in an alphabetically sorted list may be important in determining access to rationed goods or oversubscribed public services. Motivated by anecdotal evidence, we investigate the importance of the position in the alphabet of the last name initial of Czech students for their...

Transition countries are in the process of introducing Western-type anti-discrimination policies aimed at reducing the gender wage gap. Each of these policies affects a different part of the gap. In this paper, large matched employer-employee data sets from the Czech Republic and Slovakia are...

We consider the growing theoretical literature on the optimum speed of transition (OST) and explore its validity using micro data from a transition economy. First, we ask whether the OST theories focus on the empirically most important job and worker reallocation flows. Second, we examine the...

The Czech and Slovak Republics - until 1993 two parts of former Czechoslovakia - offer a unique reform comparison. Even though Slovakia faced higher unemployment since early transition and it was subject to greater reform failures, the two countries experienced similar macroeconomic paths over...

An employer-based sample of over between 200,000 and 300,000 Czech and 50,000 to 100,000 Slovak workers is used to estimate returns to various forms of human capital between 1995 and 1997 (to be extended to 1998). By 1997 education of all types had become substantially more highly rewarded in...