The aim of this paper is to examine the issues of gender disparities in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) region, with a special focus given to countries covered by the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP)1. The analysis is conducted in several dimensions: labour participation,...

The aim of this paper is to examine the issues of gender disparities in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) region, with a special focus given to countries covered by the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). The analysis is conducted in several dimensions: labour participation, economic...

Conventional wisdom suggests that the stocks of human capital were one of the few positive legacies from communism. However, if factories under communism were so inefficient, why would the education system not have been? Using the education production function approach and new data on...

The Pan-European Region made significant progress from 1995 to 2007 in improving the economic, social, environmental and health indicators incorporated into the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). However, given the huge set-backs associated with the transition recession in the early 1990s and...

The author describes public education through the media and training for government officials and for journalists undertaken as part of economic reform efforts in the Republic of Georgia of the former Soviet Union. The article concludes with a discussion of the necessary conditions for success...

The curse of natural resources is a well-documented phenomenon in developing countries. Economies that are richly endowed with natural resources tend to grow slowly. Among the transition economies of the former “Eastern Bloc”, a similar pattern can be observed. This paper shows that a large...

Conventional wisdom suggests that the stocks of human capital were one of the few positive legacies from communism. However, if factories under communism were so inefficient, why would the education system not have been? Using the education production function approach and new data on...

Since the onset of the Arab Spring, economic uncertainty in Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, and Yemen (Arab Countries in Transition, ACTs) has slowed already sluggish growth; worsened unemployment, particularly of youth; undermined business confidence, affected tourist arrivals, and...

The public health care systems in the Nordic countries provide high quality care almost free of charge to all citizens. However, social inequalities in health persist. Previous research has, for example, documented substantial educational inequalities in cancer survival. We investigate to what...