Does foreign ownership improve corporate performance or do foreign firms merely select more productive targets for takeover? Do workers benefit from foreign acquisitions? We answer these questions based on comparing the before/after change in several performance indicators of Czech firms subject...

Does foreign ownership improve corporate performance, or do foreign firms merely select more productive targets for takeover? Do workers benefit from foreign acquisitions? We answer these questions by comparing the before/after change in several performance indicators of Czech firms subject to...

This paper analyzes the effects of foreign direct investment on the sales growth rate of domestic companies in the Czech Republic. Using firm- level panel data from 1995 to 2003, it studies both horizontal and vertical spillovers. The study allows for the lagged nature of spillovers and pays at-...

The share of public investment relative to consumption expenditure has declined in past decades. Earlier literature has attributed this stylised fact variably to the relative political ease of cutting investment; different cyclical patterns of public investment and consumption; or to EMU’s...

Recent work on the following three aspects of labor market transition in the Czech Republic is presented: (i) reallocating workers and jobs from post-communist firms to newly started enterprises, (ii) providing incentives for human capital investment decisions, and (iii) coming to terms with...

The system of Unemployment Insurance (UI) financing in the US draws its funds from a payroll tax on employers and varies the tax rate according to the individual employer's layoff history. There exists extensive evidence on the effect of this so-called experience rated tax on layoff decisions....

The establishment of the EU-15 'single market' in 1993 brought about a high degree of synchronization of industry shocks, while substantial diversity existed in the development of country-level financial markets. We compare within-industry growth rates of similar 'single-market' firms facing...

This paper examines the gender gaps in employment and wages among top- and lowerlevel managerial employees in a recent sample of Czech firms. Unlike the existing analyses of managerial gender pay gaps, we acknowledge the adverse consequences of the low and uneven representation of women for the...

This paper uses individual-level data to characterize economy-wide job creation and destruction during periods of massive structural adjustment. We contrast the gradualist Czech and the rapid Estonian approach to the destruction of the communist economy to provide evidence on selected...

One’s position in an alphabetically sorted list may be important in determining access to rationed goods or oversubscribed public services. Motivated by anecdotal evidence, we investigate the importance of the position in the alphabet of the last name initial of Czech students for their...