Why do workers change occupations? This paper investigates occupational mobility and its determinants following a large unexpected shock (communism's collapse in 1989.) Our calculations show that from 1989 to 1995 between 35 and 50 percent of Estonian workers changed occupations (classified at...

Why do workers change occupations? This paper investigates occupational mobility and its determinants following a large unexpected shock (communism's collapse in 1989.) Our calculations show that from 1989 to 1995 between 35 and 50 percent of Estonian workers changed occupations (classified at...

The transition from centrally planned to market economy entails a massive process of occupational change that has been largely neglected in the literature. This paper fills this void by providing a detailed description of this process and by investigating its determinants and consequences. Using...

We analyse women's weekly probabilities of leaving unemployment in the Czech and Slovak Republics (CR and SR) in order to investigate three questions: 1) Why are unemployment rates much lower in the CR than the SR?; 2) Does the unemployment compensation scheme (UCS) substantially lengthen...

We analyze women's weekly probabilities of leaving unemployment in the Czech and Slovak Republics (CR and SR) in order to investigate three questions: 1) Why are unemployment rates much lower in the CR than the SR? 2) Does the unemployment compensation scheme (UCS) substantially lengthen...

We investigate the remarkably short unemployment spells in the Czech Republic compared to Slovakia and other Central and East European economies. We estimate hazard functions and find that 40 to 50 percent of the difference in unemployment durations between the two republics is accounted for by...

As part of a more general process of employment reallocation from less to more productive employers, jobto- job flows tend to be beneficial for productivity and for workers. Thus, when this rate slows, it is important to understand why. In the US, for example, the job-to-job flow rate is now at...

One of the most important long-run trends in the U.S. labor market is polarization, defined as the relative growth of employment in high-skill jobs (such as management and technical positions) and low-skill jobs (such as food-service and janitorial work) amid the concurrent decline in...

We examine the matching process using monthly panel data for local labour markets in Sweden. We find that an increase in the number of vacancies has a weak effect on the number of unemployed workers being hired: unemployed workers appear to be unable to compete for many available jobs. Vacancies...

This paper measures the job-search responses to the COVID-19 pandemic using realtime data on vacancy postings and ad views on Sweden's largest online job board. First, the labour demand shock in Sweden is as large as in the US, and affects industries and occupations heterogeneously. Second, the...