The migration of skilled individuals from developing countries has typically been considered to be costly for the sending country, due to lost investments in education, high fiscal costs and labour market distortions. Economic theory, however, raises the possibility of a beneficial brain drain...

We analyze a large stratified random sample of firms that provide us with measures of performance and each firm’s top manager’s perception of the severity of business environment constraints faced by his/her firm. Unlike most existing studies that rely on external and aggregated proxy...

This paper uses large multi-country datasets on educational scores – namely PISA and TIMSS – to examine the factors associated with educational outcomes. In particular, it distinguishes between individual and family background factors and those emanating from the school or institutional...

Soviet era firms provided generous social benefits, including health and child care. Despite recent cuts, firm survey data show that benefits have remained a major component of total compensation. With benefits largely firm-specific and firms dominated by insiders, continuing attachment of...

We study selection and labour market outcomes among Ukrainian migrants using unique data from a survey conducted in Ukraine in August – October 2011. We find that migrants are positively selected in terms of age and education. Yet, this is not associated, as might be expected, with their...

The paper uses a unique survey of recruitment firms to look at how Russian firms perceive the supply of skills in the labour market and how well those skills match to their demand for labour. Firms invest significant amounts of time in search to fill vacancies and search time is unambiguously...

It is widely accepted that the costs of under-pricing energy are large, whether in advanced or developing countries. This paper explores how large these costs can be by focussing on the size of the external effects that energy subsidies in particular generate in two important sectors –...

The paper looks at the effects of employment concentration on resource allocation with a particular focus on one-company towns in Russia defined as towns where a single company accounts for a significant share of total employment of the locality. Empirical analysis of firms' production functions...