We use longitudinal methods and universal panel data on 30,000 initially state-owned manufacturing firms in four transition economies to estimate the impacts of privatization on employment and wages. The results in all four countries consistently reject job losses and they never imply large wage...

Why have economic reforms aimed at reducing the role of the state been successful in some cases but not others? Are reform failures the consequence of leviathan states that hinder private economic activity, or of weak states unable to implement policies effectively and provide a supportive...

The challenge for labor market policy in the transition economies has been to redress the sharp drops in employment and rises in unemployment in a way that fosters the creation of productive jobs. The authors first document the magnitude and productivity of job and worker reallocation. Then they...

We analyze the pace and patterns of job reallocation in Ukraine using 1992-2000 panel data on nearly the surviving universe of manufacturing firms inherited from the Soviet Union. Employment growth displays substantial increase in heterogeneity during this transition period, with a corresponding...

We analyze the impact of privatization on multifactor productivity (MFP) using long panel data for nearly the universe of initially stateowned manufacturing firms in four economies. Controlling for firm and industry-year fixed effects and employing a wide variety of measurement approaches, we...