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...

The paper uses a unique survey of recruitment firms to look at how Russian firms perceive the supply of skills in the labour market and how well those skills match to their demand for labour. Firms invest significant amounts of time in search to fill vacancies and search time is unambiguously...

The paper investigates adjustment costs of trade liberalization in Russia by estimating various labor market elasticities with respect to indicators of trade liberalization in the 90-ies. In particular, the influence of tariff reduction on demand for labor is estimated, inter-sectoral employment...

The main objectives of this paper are to estimate the burden of tobacco-caused mortality as a whole and by main tobacco-related diseases in Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine, and to assess the distributional health impact of an increase in tobacco taxation in these three countries....

The paper uses a unique survey of recruitment firms to look at how Russian firms perceive the supply of skills in the labour market and how well those skills match to their demand for labour. Firms invest significant amounts of time in search to fill vacancies and search time is unambiguously...

Studies of mass support for economic reform reveal a simple conclusion: Everyone hates privatization. Yet whether respondents hold this due to material self-interest or concerns about the legitimancy or outcomes of privatization view is unclear. We test these arguments using a 2006 survey of...

We use data from the 2006 round of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) to describe perceptions of the Russian population about the transition process and the role of the state compared to that of free markets. We find that about one half of Russian population is disappointed with...

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...