Long-term sustainability requires social stability and hence could be undermined by high poverty levels. Still more than twenty five million Russians have incomes that are lower than subsistence level. Effective policies to fight poverty are to be based on clear understanding of its determinants...

Persistently sizeable unemployment attracts interest to active labor market policy as an instrument to reduce unemployment. Moreover, sustainable economic growth requires an effective re-training system, a part of which is usually associated with state employment offices’ programs. Little is...

Using individual-level data on registered unemployed collected by the Federal Employment Service in Voronezh province of Russia (1996-2000), we test some basic hypotheses on the influence of individual attributes (gender and education, in particular), working history, the specifics of the...

Using survey data from 28 transition countries, we test for the complementarity and substitutability of market-relevant skills and institutions. We show that democracy and good governance complement market skills in transition economies. Under autocracy and weak governance institutions there is...

Studies of mass support for economic reform reveal a simple conclusion: Everyone hates privatization. Yet whether respondents hold this view due to a preference for state property or concerns about the legitimacy of privatization is unclear. We test these arguments using a 2006 survey of 28,000...

As a result of external shocks, the productivity of fixed capital may sometimes decrease in certain regions of an economy. There are exogenous obstacles to migration that make it hard for workers to reallocate to more profitable regions. We point to an endogenous obstacle that has not been...

Based on a unique data set on Russian city budgets, this paper shows that revenue sharing between regional and local governments provides local governments with no incentive to increase tax base or provide public goods. Any change in local government’s own revenues is almost entirely offset by...

Three hypotheses about the nature of federal tax arrears in Russia in the second half of the 1990s are tested empirically. Tax arrears can be a result of: 1) liquidity problems in firms, 2) redistribute subsidies of the federal government, or 3) regional political resistance to federal tax...