How does the relationship between earnings and schooling change with the introduction of comprehensive economic reform? This paper sheds light on this question using a unique data set and procedure to reduce sample selection bias. Our evidence is from consistently coded, non-retrospective data...

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....

An alleged achievement of socialism was gender equality in the labour market. Has its collapse shattered this accomplishment? The theoretical literature and attendant empirical evidence are inconclusive. Using data for 2.9 million wage earners in Hungary we find that the male-female difference...

Although recent research has repeatedly found a negative association between investment and political instability, the existence and direction of causality between these two variables has not yet been investigated. This paper empirically tests for a causal and negative long-run relationship...

This book is a result of the 5th Biennual Conference of the European Association for Comparative Economic Studies "Economies in Transition and the Variety of Capitalisms: Features, Changes, Convergence" held in Varna, Bulgaria, 10-12 September 1998. It includes 28 papers from all discussed...

This paper examines both the determinants and the effects of changes in the rigidity of labor market legislation across countries over time. Recent research identifies the origin of the legal system as being a major determinant of the cross-country variation in the rigidity of employment...

In their survey of the literature on ethnic fractionalization and economic performance, Alesina and La Ferrara (2005) identify two main directions for future research. One is to improve the measurement of diversity and the other to treat diversity as an endogenous variable. This paper tries to...

Crises beget reforms is a powerful hypothesis. But which type of crises - economic or political - are the main drivers of structural reforms? To answer this question, we construct measures of labour market and trade liberalisation and the two types of crises for a panel of about 100...