The increase in agricultural employment in Central Asia and Trans-Caucasus over the last two decades has had a detrimental effect on agricultural labor productivity and rural family incomes. Transition countries in the former USSR cannot, however, encourage exits from agriculture (as, for...

This study empirically investigates the short- to medium-term effects of fiscal policy on output and other macroeconomic variables in European Union countries between 1995 and 2012, with particular reference to transition countries. It applies Panel Vector Auto Regression with recursive...

Martin Ravallion ("Why Don't We See Poverty Convergence?" American Economic Review, 102(1): 504-23; 2012) presents evidence against the existence of proportionate convergence in global poverty rates despite convergence in household mean income levels and the link between income growth and poverty...

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has been argued to improve company performance and stimulate growth and employment. Transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) faced a desperate need to join the global economy, to improve their competitiveness and to create jobs through FDI. So, did...

Entrepreneurship is an important lever for spurring transition in the economies of the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe. Utilizing diversity, in terms of religion or gender, can positively affect entrepreneurial development. Programs that encourage entrepreneurial initiatives...

The collapse of the Soviet Union initiated an unprecedented social and economic transformation of the successor countries and altered the gender balance in a region that counted gender equality as one of the key legacies of its socialist past. The transition experience of the region has amply...

In this paper, we study the role of institutional quality in the cyclicality of macroeconomic policies of transition economies. Using annual data over 1996-2013, we find that the quality of institutions play a significant role in their ability to carry out counter-cyclical macroeconomic policy....

In this paper, we revisit the inequality-growth relationship using an enhanced panel data set with improved inequality data and special attention to the role of transition countries. We base our analysis on the specification of Forbes (2000), but also address the functional form concerns raised...

Or Paradox Regained? The answer is Paradox Regained. New data confirm that for countries worldwide long-term trends in happiness and real GDP per capita are not significantly positively related. The principal reason that Paradox critics reach a different conclusion, aside from problems of data...

We investigate the drivers of firm level productivity in catching-up economies by jointly estimating its relationship to innovation and competition using data from the EBRD-WB Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The findings confirm...

In this paper, we revisit the inequality-growth relationship using an enhanced panel data set with improved inequality data and special attention to the role of transition countries. We base our analysis on the specification of Forbes (2000), but also address the functional form concerns raised...

This paper offers a review, analysis and assessment of the status of services liberalization in North and Central Asia. Following a brief introduction about the region and its economic context, this study provides an overview of the binding commitments undertaken by transition economies under...

Large and sudden economic and political changes, even if potentially positive, often entail enormous social and health costs. Such transitory costs are generally underestimated or neglected by incumbent governments. The mortality crisis experienced by the former communist countries of...

In transition economies, a significant number of companies reduce their tax and social contributions by paying their staff an official salary, described in a registered formal employment agreement, and an extra, undeclared "envelope wage," via a verbal unwritten agreement. The consequences...

Increasing women's labor force participation is important to sustainable economic development, especially in economies with highly educated women and an aging population. Women’s participation varies across transition countries, driven by such economic and social factors as traditional views...

In 2002, the EU set targets for expanding childcare coverage, but most of the post-socialist countries are behind schedule. While childcare expansion places a heavy financial burden on governments, low participation in the labor force by mothers, especially those with children under the age of...

The shadow economy has been a serious problem with varying dimensions in all the income group economies and has significant adverse effects on the development of economies. Therefore, all the countries have tried to combat with the shadow economy by taking various measures. This study researches...

Compared to developing economies, European transition economies had high levels of human capital when their transitions began, but a lack of resources and policies to protect poor families hampered children’s access to education, especially for non-compulsory school grades. Different phenomena...

The privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOE) in transition economies has often been found to improve employment and productivity of privatized SOEs, despite policymakers’ fears regarding possible job cuts. This positive effect can be enhanced if privatization also promotes firms’...

Using firm-level data for 28 transition countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia over the 2002–2009 period, this paper analyzes whether differences in the functioning of intellectual property rights (IPRs) systems—measured along various dimensions, including de facto enforcement and de...

Changes in the tax structure and category of taxes clearly matter when it comes to initiating tax policies. This paper employs data from a sample of 33 transitional countries over the period 1991-2014. It finds that, in a particular transitional country, the higher the national income, the...

This paper examines the contraction in the gender wage gap in Georgia between 2004 and 2011. Behind the continuous decline at the mean lies a change in the shape of the gender wage gap across the wage distribution before and after the 2008 crisis. Before the crisis, the growth in state sector...

The policy brief presents a review of potential effects of parametric pension reform in Belarus starting in 2017 for the population aged 50 and more in terms of unemployment, alcohol consumption, and poverty. It concludes that, despite the fact that raising the retirement age is overdue in...

"Fairness of wage distribution or the perception of such is a phenomenon crucial for the stability of new democracies. While theories exist about how change of the political system trickles down to the attitudinal level, the systematic analysis of the effect of economic transition on public...

It has been shown that higher levels of subjective well-being lead to greater work productivity, better physical health and enhanced social skills. Because of these positive externalities, policymakers across the world should be interested in attracting and retaining happy and life-satisfied...

The aim of the paper is to analyze the development of the Estonian credit and saving market, especially considering the sector of households and non-financial corporations, in order to reveal the potential of saving and loan association (SLA) to enhance the economic and social development...

Because entrepreneurial activity can stimulate job creation and long-term economic growth, promoting entrepreneurship is an important goal. However, many financial, bureaucratic, and social barriers can shortcircuit the process of actually starting a business, especially in transition economies...

In the transition from central planning to a market economy in the 1990s, governments focused on privatizing or closing state enterprises, reforming labor markets, compensating laid-off workers, and fostering job creation through new private firms. After privatization, the focus shifted to...

Most comparative research suggests that immigrants from post-socialist countries earn less than natives, work in jobs for which they are overqualified, and may experience unhappiness compared with natives, other immigrants, and non-migrants. In contrast, one study presents causal evidence which...

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to analyse whether innovators perceive corruption to be systematically more important than non-innovators across different post-transition EU countries. Design/methodology/approach -We use the Business Environment Survey (BEEPS V) data. The sample consists...

Large imbalances between the supply and demand for skills in transition economies are driven by rapid economic restructuring, misalignment of the education system with labor market needs, and underdeveloped adult education and training systems. The costs of mismatches can be large and...