Ownership and control have been concentrating in most transition countries. The consolidation of control introduces changes in the power distribution within privatized firms and, most importantly, redirects the corporate governance problem to a conflict between large and small shareholders. In...

Differences in regional unemployment in post-communist economies are large and persistent. We show that within-country regional variation in inherited human capital in four such economies explains the bulk of regional variation in unemployment; we explore potential explanations. Our evidence...

We investigate the claim made by proponents of the big-bang strategy that the establishment of property rights in an economy in transition creates its own demand for the enforcement of laws to protect those rights. Our model contains a government engaging in activities to accomplish objectives...

We use new firm-level data to examine the effects of firm divestitures and privatization on corporate performance in a rapidly emerging market economy. Unlike the existing literature, we control for accompanying ownership changes and the fact that divestitures and ownership are potentially...

This paper empirically examines social network explanations for migration decisions in the context of German reunification. Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we first show that the presence of a family in West Germany is an important predictor for the migration hazard...

We study the determinants of East-West migration within Germany during the period 1990-2006, using administrative data, the German Microcensus and the German Socio-Economic Panel. We find that in addition to income prospects and employment status, two well-known determinants of migration,...

We investigate the effects of the most important East German active labour market programmes on the labour market outcomes of their participants. The analysis is based on a large and informative individual database derived from administrative data sources. Using matching methods, we find that...

We extend the literature on transition economies' wage structures by investigating the returns to tenure and experience. This study applies recent panel data and estimation approaches that control for hitherto neglected biases. We compare the life-cycle structure of East and West German wages...