In 1995, Latvia became the first country in Central and Eastern Europe to implement parametric reform of the Soviet-style PAYGO pension system, and the first in the world to implement the"notional defined contribution (NDC) system"originally designed for Sweden. The Government's intention was to...

This paper demonstrates that there are potentially large returns to having a social protection policy that stakes out a productive safety net below the vulnerable and keeps them from slipping into a poverty trap. Much of the value of the productive safety net comes from mitigating the ex ante...

In the last three decades, the effects of export-oriented industrialization have called into question the once popular import substitution strategies. This change has been parallel to the development of Export Processing Zones (EPZs). Though initially found in a small number of countries, mainly...

This paper examines the research on child labor, and places the phenomenon in a broader development agenda. It explains the demand for, and supply of child labor, linking these factors to others, such as the supply of education. Then it looks into the private, and social costs of, and benefits...

This paper examines the labor market dynamics of six CEE countries over the last 10 years, paying special attention to the nature of labor market institutions these countries have adopted and their impact on labor market performance. This paper finds that, compared to EU countries, CEE countries...

This paper considers the implementation of, and rationale for, pension reforms based on notional accounts (sometimes known as notional defined contribution plans or NDCs). The distinguishing feature of such reforms is that a structure of individual accounts is established, in which contributions...

The portability of pension rights is an increasingly important issue in the Caribbean. The large and increasing flows of migrant workers, including both permanent and temporary migrants, the small size of the domestic economies and the process of regional integration and economic openness call...

A number of researchers have recently proposed a variety of different `vulnerability'measures designed to capture the welfare consequences of risk for poor households, and also proposed a variety of different approaches to estimating these various measures of household vulnerability. However,...

Economic transition in Bulgaria has been associated with the emergence of unemployment, the fall in real wages and a substantial increase in wage inequality. The ranks of low-paid workers have grown and their relative wage status has substantially deteriorated. Unemployment is of long duration....

This paper aims to better understand emigration pressures in migrant sending countries by looking at the determinants of the propensity to migrate at the individual level. The analysis is based on survey data from Albania, Moldova, Egypt and Tunisia collected by the European Training Foundation...