We analyse the profile of potential emigrants from Albania using data from the Central and Eastern Europe Eurobarometer in 1992. Respondents were asked to rate on a four-point scale the likelihood that they would go to Western Europe to live and work. Our results show that the intention to...

We examine the effects of two different types of commodity taxation, specific and ad valorem, on wages and profits. We analyze two models of wage determination, one with efficiency wage setting and one with bargaining between a union and a firm. In the former, a (locally) revenue-neutral shift...

This paper provides some of the first empirical evidence on the psychological impact of past unemployment. Using eleven waves of the German socio-economic panel (GSOEP) data set, we show, as is now standard, that those currently unemployed have far lower life satisfaction scores than do the...

This note reports the results of field surveys of individuals and firms in Albania, carried out during 1998. The surveys were designed to analyse the extent of emigration from Albania during the 1990s and its causes and consequences. Our results show that emigrants are motivated mainly by the...

This study gauges the status of transition in the formerly centrally planned economies of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, using a broad approach that compares countries with respect to their business environment, competition, and managerial practices; and assesses transition progress at the...

We analyse self-reported measures of satisfaction with life in a transition country, Kyrgyzstan, using 1993 household survey data. We test whether higher levels of satisfaction are associated with greater economic well-being. This hypothesis is strongly supported by the data. Unhappiness is...

We analyse responses to two similar life satisfaction questions asked during the same interview for each respondent in a major cross-country household survey covering the transition region, Turkey and five Western European countries. We show that while the answers to the two questions are...

Countries in the Western Balkans – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, FYR Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia – all aspire to membership of the European Union, but they face a major convergence challenge in terms of living standards. The main reason behind this prosperity gap lies in the...