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...

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 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...

Compared to men, women, even financial professionals, exhibit higher risk aversion. We exploit random assignment of clients to banking advisors (‘private bankers') in a large Czech bank to study the effects of advisor gender on the probability of mortgage issuance and on the probability that a...

Do women perform worse than equally able men in stressful competitive settings? We ask this question for competitions with a high payoff - admissions to tuition-free selective universities. With data on an entire cohort of Czech students graduating from secondary schools and applying to...

Does foreign ownership improve corporate performance or do foreign firms merely select more productive targets for takeover? Do workers benefit from foreign acquisitions? We answer these questions based on comparing the before/after change in several performance indicators of Czech firms subject...

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...

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...

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...