The Financial Crisis, Labor Market Transitions andEarnings: A Gendered Panel Data Analysis for Serbia

While results are starting to emerge, not much is known yet about the dynamics of the labormarkets of the former Eastern economies, especially in the context of the current FinancialCrisis. Arguably, this is mainly due to paucity of (panel) data. By examining labor markettransitions, earnings levels, and earnings growth and their correlates using a recent paneldata set for Serbia, this paper combines both of these issues. Estimation of gross transitionprobabilities reveals that females are disadvantaged in the Serbian labor market in terms ofmoving out of the two undesirable states, unemployment and economic inactivity, relative tomales during the first year of the financial crisis – though males are harder hit than females interms of the levels of unemployment. In terms of earnings, the picture is reversed, withfemales being worse off in terms of the levels of earnings, while they have experiencedsomewhat smaller earnings decreases than males (though, owing to the gender earningsgap, from a much lower base). Multinomial logit estimations of employment, unemployment,and inactivity transitions and OLS regressions of earnings and earnings growth revealsubstantial gender differences related to individual, job, and firm characteristics. The overallresults therefore hint at both males and females being hit in terms of employment andearnings, though in different ways. Finally, the paper discusses policy implications andprovides suggestions for further research....