One of the most complex challenges of infrastructure privatization is its impact on employment. Often (but not always) private operators'main approach to cost-cutting is labor reduction. Private operators cannot afford the low levels of labor productivity typical in public companies if they are...

Privatizing, or restructuring state-owned enterprises, may lead to massive layoffs, but the number of redundant workers is usually unknown beforehand. The authors estimate labor redundancy by comparing employment levels across enterprises with different degrees of state ownership. In their...

The author uses cross-country data from Latin America and OECD countries to test the predictions of a simple efficiency wage model (Krebs and Maloney 1998) about the share of the workforce in self-employment and the rate of labor turnover across the process of development and demographic...

In this essay on how labor unions work, the author proposes a framework for the law on collective bargaining in developing countries. The structure of developing economies cannot sustain as high a level of unionism as in industrial economies. Typically less (often much less) than a quarter of...

With the transition in Estonia, worker flows increased greatly, driven by an increase in job flows. As the situation stabilized, the job and worker flows converged at rates similar to those observed in Western economies. In 1989, job reallocation accounted for only a small fraction of overall...

Since the mid -1980s, Indonesia has rapidly deregulated. Employment opportunities, income generation capacity, and the opportunity to negotiate better working conditions have expanded. Many Indonesians are concerned that workers have not shared in economic development benefits and think that a...

The authors present evidence on how employers perceive labor regulations and react when these are perceived to constrain the operation of their firm. They draw from harmonized surveys of (up to) 17,000 firms around the world and compare employers'responses with actual labor legislation. The...

Employment protection legislation in Croatia is among the most strict in Europe. Firing is difficult and costly, and flexible forms of employment are limited. Is this apparent rigidity reflected-as one would expect based on standard economic theory-in low labor market dynamics? Is job creation...

The author compares Indonesian labor legislations with labor policies in five other APEC countries: Chile, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, and the United States. The report focuses on legislation affecting union regulation, minimum wages, nonwage compensation, and working conditions....

Lithuania is a transition economy undergoing rapid enterprise restructuring associated with substantial job turnover. At the same time, unemployment in Lithuania is high and of long duration. This presents a puzzle: high job turnover epitomizes labor market flexibility, while high unemployment...