Using panel district level data from the Czech and Slovak Republic in the 1990s, we find that the exceptionally low unemployment rate in the Czech Republic as compared to Slovakia and the other CEE economies has been brought about principally by the following phenomena in the Czech Republic: (1)...

Under communism, workers had their wages set according to a centrally-determined wage grid. In this paper we use new micro data on men to estimate returns to human capital under the communist wage grid and during the transition to a market economy. We use data from the Czech Republic because it...

The paper tests three hypotheses about the causes of unemployment in the Central-East European transition economies and in a benchmark market economy (Western part of Germany). The first hypothesis (H1) is that unemployment is caused by inefficient matching. Hypothesis 2 (H2) is that...

Globalization brings opportunities and pressures for domestic firms in emerging markets to innovate and improve their competitive position. Using data on firms in 27 transition economies, the authors test for the effects of globalization through the impact of increased competition and foreign...

This paper focuses on what determines labor redundancy in selected modes of transport (rails, ports, and buses) in six countries: Brazil, Chile, Ghana, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, and Yugoslavia. It also analyzes different approaches for solving the problem, and concludes that analysis of the labor...

Senegal is in a long-term economic crisis. Senegalese industry suffers from a highly adversarial system of industrial and labor relations, excessive government regulations in some areas and inadequate government support in others, and many misperceptions about the ethnically diverse labor force...

We establish that domestically owned firms in two alternative models of emerging market economies, the Czech Republic and Russia, have not been converging to the technological frontier set by foreign owned firms. In both countries, the distance of domestic firms to the frontier grew (in all...

Economic development implies that the efficiency of firms in developing countries is approaching that of firms in advanced economies. We examine the extent of this convergence in the Czech Republic and Russia, economies that represent alternative models of implementing development policies,...

One potential impact of the looming EU accession of Central European economies is unemployment hysteresis working through long-term unemployment (LTU). In this paper, we explore the mechanisms of LTU by providing a detailed description of the recent rise in Czech LTU following the recession of...