Since the beginning of transition in 1990 from a centrally planned to a market oriented economy, the performance of Poland’s economy has been outstanding if we take GDP growth as our measure. It is not specific reforms that can explain this performance but the radical (“big bang”) reforms...

The paper presents the Ukrainian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (ULMS), which is one of the most widely used household and labor force surveys in Eastern Europe. It is based on a statistically representative sample of the Ukrainian population aged between 15 and 72 years, comprising about 4,000...

Continuous enterprise restructuring is needed for the transition and emerging market economies to become and remain competitive. However, the beneficial effects of restructuring in the medium run are accompanied by large worker displacement. The costs of displacement can be large and...

This paper estimates causal effects of two Polish active labor market policies - Training and Intervention Works - on employment probabilities. Using data from the 18th wave of the Polish Labor Force Survey we discuss three stages of an appropriately designed matching procedure and demonstrate...

We use personnel data from a Russian firm for the years 1997 to 2002 to study the determinants of wages during transition. Our findings indicate that remuneration is not predetermined by formal rules and a stable institutionalized structure of wages, but rather that local labor market conditions...

The transition to market-based economic systems in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union involves fundamental shifts in the allocation of resources and deep changes in the structure of production and employment. This paper uses a simple model of economic...

Transition has entailed the introduction of policies to stimulate product market competition, to establish effective corporate governance and to harden enterprise budget constraints. How do these policies interact? Are they substitute policy instruments or does one policy reinforce the effect of...

Following the collapse of planning, new small and medium-sized firms rapidly emerged in all transition economies. Using firm level data, we investigate the interaction between the widespread opportunities for new business activities such firms faced and their business environment. The business...

This paper examines the importance of competition in innovation and the growth of firms. We make use of the large-scale natural experiment of the shift from an economic system without competition to a market economy to shed light on the factors that influence innovation by firms and their...

This paper uses firm-level data from the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Surveys (BEEPS) to study the process of convergence of transition countries with developed market economies. The primary focus of the study is on competition and market structure, finance and the structure...