The explosion of informal entrepreneurial activity during Mongolia's transition to a market economy represents one of the most visible signs of change in this expansive but sparsely populated Asian country. To deepen our understanding of Mongolia's informal sector during the transition, the...

The remarkable performance of the Irish economy in recent years has attracted much attention. Within a 10-year period the economy went from an 18 percent unemployment rate to nearly full employment, while the ratio of debt to GDP fell from 120 percent to less than 50 percent. Inevitably, this...

The authors present a political economy model in which policy is the outcome of an interaction between three actors: government (G), managers and workers (W), and transfer recipients (P). The government's objective is to stay in power, for which it needs the support of either P or W. It can...

There are three potential levels of government activity in the health sector: regulation, finance, and direct provision of services, with the government owning and managing hospitals and primary care clinics. Eid focuses on service provision. In recent years corporatization has been introduced...

The authors use the newly available Yugoslavian Labor Force Survey data to investigate wage differentials and employment decisions in the state and private sectors in Yugoslavia. For the analysis the authors use three empirical models that rely on different statistical assumptions. They extend...

The authors present new data on the regulation of the entry of start-up firms in 85 countries. The data cover the number if procedures, official time, and official costs that a start-up firm must bear before it can operate legally. The official costs of entry are extremely high in most...

One challenge in transition economies has been to avoid being caught between overrapid restructuring (harmful to the private sector) and gradual change (can undermine robust private sector emergence). Empirical evidence suggests thatin most of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union,...

This paper complements a separate study in this Series ("Government Employment and Pay: A Global and Regional Perspective,"Policy Research Working Paper 1771, May, 1997) by providing the detailed statistical and econometric evidence on which that separate study is based. The authors briefly...

All of Zambia's pension schemes are deficient in design, financing, and administration. This report urges that Zambia restructure its social protection system to complement its new economic strategy. That restructuring must address such basic problems as macroeconomic fluctuations and an...

The authors take a new look at the regulatory determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) by asking whether labor market flexibility affects FDI flows across 25 Western and Eastern European countries. Their analysis is based on firm level data on new investments during the 1999-2001 period....