This paper provides the first systematic evidence on compensation for executives of firms listed in China’s emerging stock market (currently the eighth largest of the world with market capitalization of over $550 billion). Specifically, using comprehensive financial and accounting data on...

This paper examines the determinants of employment changes using a panel of Polish large firms during the period 1996-2001. We investigate the impact of wages, output growth, investment, firm size and sectors upon employment, focusing on the asymmetry hypothesis. We find that investment plays an...

A multitude of explanations for low investment by Russian firms have been offered: high inflation, high interest rates, falling production, falling GDP, an underdeveloped banking system, a confiscatory tax regime, calls for the re-nationalization of industry, excessive regulations, and an...

Due to the persistence of relatively soft budget constraints and poor government credibility, the survival strategy of Romanian state-sector firms means eschewing profit maximization in the short run in favor of insider utility maximization. This takes the form of attempts at both reducing...

This paper explores the effect of mass privatization and the development of a new private sector in Russia on the wage and skill distributions in the private and state sectors of the economy. Two questions this paper seeks to answer are: (1) Does wage-setting behavior in privatized firms...

We explore the impact of privatization and the entry of new firms on enterprise performance in Belarus, a transition economy in which reform and market-orientated institutional development has been limited. We hypothesize that private ownership will enhance company performance, measured in a...

This paper examined the male-female differentials in hourly earnings in Russia from 1996 to 2002. The gender wage gap did not alter significantly in the earlier years, a period characterized by economic instability, but as the economy recovered, the differential in earnings increased initially....

One feature common to many post-socialist transition economies is a relatively compressed wage structure in the state owned sector. We conjecture that this compressed wage structure creates weak incentives for work effort and worker skill acquisition and thus presents adverse consequences for...

Like many transition economies, Slovenia is undergoing profound changes in the workings of the labor market with potentially greater flexibility in terms of both wage and employment adjustment. We investigate the impact of the changing labor market for Slovenia using unique longitudinal matched...

This paper makes some selective comparisons of the empirical evidence relating to financial discipline and soft budget constraints in the enterprise sector in China and the transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (CEEFSU). The paper finds that: (1) in both...