We analyse the impact of social capital on the willingness to migrate in 28 post-communist and five western European comparator countries using the Life in Transition Survey. We find substantially lower levels of professional social capital among the older cohorts in post-communist than in the...

Internally displaced people (IDPs) constitute a serious economic, social and cultural problem for many countries, including countries in transition. Despite the importance of the problem, there are only a handful of previous studies investigating the issue of labor market outcomes of IDPs. We...

Theory asserts that individuals' migration decisions depend more on their expectations about future income levels than on their current income levels. We find that the implementation of market-oriented reforms in post-communist countries, by forming good economic prospects, has reduced...

It has been shown that higher levels of subjective well-being lead to greater work productivity, better physical health and enhanced social skills. Because of these positive externalities, policymakers across the world should be interested in attracting and retaining happy and life-satisfied...

In this paper, we analyze the growth effects of historical and biological ancestry, diversity and financial development in transition economies. We show that the common indicators of ethnolinguistic fractionalization, state history and genetic distance yield significant results and to some...

Differences in regional unemployment in post-communist economies are large and persistent. We show that inherited variation in human-capital endowment across the regions of four such economies explains the bulk of regional unemployment variation there and we explore potential explanations for...

Differences in regional unemployment in post-communist economies are large and persistent. We show that inherited variation in human-capital endowment across the regions of four such economies explains the bulk of regional unemployment variation there and we explore potential explanations for...

This paper adopts a more expansive definition of Human Development than that encompassed by the Human Development Index in order to explore diverse country patterns of behavior in relation to these broadened dimensions. We proceed by first identifying the dimensions to be investigated and...

This paper examines inequality patterns in the 1990s in Poland, Russia and Hungary. We consider three different definitions of income and analyse the contributions to inequality of their main components using LIS micro data. Inequality is measured using the Gini and Theil indices, which in turn...

In this paper, we revisit the inequality-growth relationship using an enhanced panel data set with improved inequality data and special attention to the role of transition countries. We base our analysis on the specification of Forbes (2000), but also address the functional form concerns raised...