Citizens in Eastern Europe are less satisfied with life than their peers in other countries. This happiness gap has persisted over time, despite predictions to the contrary by earlier scholars. It holds after controlling for a variety of covariates, such as the standard of living, life...

This paper empirically examines the impact of social trust on life satisfaction in transition countries. By using household-level data from Life in Transition Survey in 2006, 2010, and 2016, we estimate the average treatment effect (ATE) of social trust on life satisfaction level based on the...

This paper combines, explains and summarizes recent findings from the empirical literature focusing on the FDI's effect on firms' performances by collecting all the relevant firm level quantitative studies to run a regression of regressions focused on Enlarged Europe. The results show that there...

Economic self-interest and social considerations are the key determinants of public support for market reforms in transition countries. However, political strategies that rely mainly on public support for pushing through economic reforms have limited relevance if the prevailing institutional...

Observing the CEE members of the EU (EU10 countries) from a distance, they certainly used to share major structural similarities given their historical legacies, as well as certain ‘unifying’ effects of their transition to market economy and democracy. Yet, a closer look reveals important...

Recent studies have focussed on the characteristics and policies of the state to explain the extent and causes of corruption, with little attention paid to the role played by firms. Consequently, the links between corporate governance and national governance have been unexplored. This paper...

Analyses of pension funding effects on economic growth need to differentiate between "carve-out" pension privatization in Latin America and Eastern Europe and typical "add-on" pension funding in Western Europe and North America. We find no evidence that pension privatization in Latin America and...

This paper surveys the most significant problems of the pension systems of EU11 countries. These nations had to transform their old-age social security systems after replacing a state-socialist economic order with a capitalist one. Stressing common as well as specific features, our paper...

Discussions on how to organize European labour markets are one of the key public policy issues of today. In European policy debates, the most important concepts seem to be ‘flexicurity' and the ‘transitional labour market.' In this report we examine the cross-country variation in the...