Documents Earle, John 4 results

"The challenge for labour market policy in the new member states and other transition economies of Eastern Europe has been to redress the sharp drops in employment and rises in unemployment in a way that fosters the creation of productive jobs. This paper first documents the magnitude and productivity of job and worker reallocation. It then investigates the effects of privatisation, product and labour market liberalisation, and obstacles to growth in the new private sector on reallocation and its productivity in Hungary, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine. We find that market reform has resulted in a large increase in the pace of job reallocation, particularly that occurring between sectors and via firm turnover. Unlike under central planning, the job reallocation during the transition has contributed significantly to aggregate productivity growth. Privatisation has not only stimulated intrasectoral job reallocation, but the reallocation is more productive than that among remaining state firms. The estimated effect of privatisation on firm productivity is usually positive, but it varies considerably across countries. The productivity gains from privatisation have generally not come at the expense of workers, but are associated rather with increased wages and employment."

"Studies of transition economy labor markets have typically relied on standard, publicly available employment and unemployment statistics. This paper analyzes microdata on detailed labor force survey responses in Russia, Romania, and Estonia to measure nonstandard, boundary forms and alternative definitions of labor force status. Our estimates show that measured employment and unemployment rates are quite sensitive to definition, particularly in the treatment of household production (subsistence agriculture), unpaid family helpers, and discouraged workers; while the categories of part-time work and other forms of marginal attachment are still relatively unimportant. We find that tweaking the official definitions can produce alternative employment rates that are sharply higher in Russia but much lower in Romania and slightly lower in Estonia, and alternative unemployment rates that are sharply higher in Romania and moderately higher in Estonia and Russia."

" This article estimates the wage effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) using firm-level and linked employer-employee panel data containing a large number of foreign acquisitions over a long period of rapid development in Hungary. Matching on pre-acquisition data, the authors find that much of the raw foreign wage premium represents selection bias, but that foreign acquisition nevertheless raises average wages by 15 to 29% when controlling for fixed effects for firms and highly detailed worker groups, and by 6% with firm–worker match effects. Acquired firms that are later divested to domestic owners experience a substantial reversal of the positive acquisition effect. No type of worker—defined by education, experience, gender, incumbency, and occupational group—experiences wage decline, but the patterns suggest skill bias in the gains from acquisition. The evidence implies a strong cross-firm correlation of FDI wage and productivity differentials, and an inverse relationship between FDI effects and economic development level of the sending country relative to Hungary."