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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Mass Privatisation And The Post-Communist Mortality Crisis: Is There Really A Relationship?, John S. Earle, Scott G. Gehlbach Jan 2010

Mass Privatisation And The Post-Communist Mortality Crisis: Is There Really A Relationship?, John S. Earle, Scott G. Gehlbach

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We reexamine the recent, well-publicized claim that "rapid mass privatisation [of state-owned enterprises]...was a crucial determinant of differences in adult mortality trends in postcommunist countries" (Stuckler, King and McKee, 2009). Our analysis shows that the estimated correlation of privatization and mortality in country-level data is not robust to recomputing the mass-privatization measure, to assuming a short lag for economic policies to affect mortality, and to controlling for country-specific mortality trends. Further, in an analysis of the determinants of mortality in Russian regions, we find no evidence that privatization increased mortality during the early 1990s. Finally, we reanalyze the relationship between …


Helping Hand Or Grabbing Hand? State Bureaucracy And Privatization Effectiveness, J. David Brown, John S. Earle, Scott G. Gehlbach Aug 2008

Helping Hand Or Grabbing Hand? State Bureaucracy And Privatization Effectiveness, J. David Brown, John S. Earle, Scott G. Gehlbach

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

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 institutional environment? We explore these questions in a study of privatization in postcommunist Russia. Taking advantage of large regional variation in the size of public administrations, and employing a multilevel re-search design that controls for pre-privatization selection in the estimation of regional privatization effects, we examine the relationship between state bureaucracy and the impact …


Understanding The Contributions Of Reallocation To Productivity Growth: Lessons From A Comparative Firm-Level Analysis, J. David Brown, John S. Earle Aug 2008

Understanding The Contributions Of Reallocation To Productivity Growth: Lessons From A Comparative Firm-Level Analysis, J. David Brown, John S. Earle

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We analyze comprehensive manufacturing firm data to measure the contribution of interfirm employment reallocation to aggregate productivity growth during the socialist and reform periods in six transition economies. Modifying a standard decomposition technique to better reflect the role of firm entry, we find that reallocation rates and productivity contributions are very low under socialism, but they rise dramatically after reforms, and productivity contributions greatly exceed those observed in market economies. Early in transition, more reform is associated with larger contributions from reallocation, but later, and on average over the whole transition, this relationship is reversed. Though reallocation rates are larger …


Complementarity And Custom In Wage Contract Violation, John S. Earle, Klara Sabirianova Peter Jul 2006

Complementarity And Custom In Wage Contract Violation, John S. Earle, Klara Sabirianova Peter

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We analyze a model of wage delay in which strategic complementarity arises because each employer's costs of violating its contracts decrease with the arrears in its labor market. The model is estimated on panel data for workers and firms in Russia, facilitating identification through fixed effects for employees, employers, and local labor markets, and instrumental variables based on policy interventions. The estimated reaction function displays strongly positive neighborhood effects, and the estimated feedback loops - worker quits, effort, strikes, and legal penalties - imply that costs of wage delays are attenuated by neighborhood arrears. We also study a nonlinear case …


Nonstandard Forms And Measures Of Employment And Unemployment In Transition: A Comparative Study Of Estonia, Romania, And Russia, J. David Brown, John S. Earle, Vladimir Gimpelson, Rostislav Kapeliushnikov, Hartmut Lehmann, Álmos Telegdy, Irina Vantu, Ruxandra Visan, Alexandru Voicu Feb 2006

Nonstandard Forms And Measures Of Employment And Unemployment In Transition: A Comparative Study Of Estonia, Romania, And Russia, J. David Brown, John S. Earle, Vladimir Gimpelson, Rostislav Kapeliushnikov, Hartmut Lehmann, Álmos Telegdy, Irina Vantu, Ruxandra Visan, Alexandru Voicu

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

This paper looks behind the standard, publicly available labor force statistics relied upon in most studies of transition economy labor markets. We analyze microdata on detailed labor force survey responses in Russia, Romania, and Estonia to measure nonstandard, boundary forms and alternative definitions of employment and unemployment. Our calculations show that measured 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 in apparently minor ways …


Does Privatization Hurt Workers? Lessons From Comprehensive Manufacturing Firm Panel Data In Hungary, Romania, Russia, And Ukraine, J. David Brown, John S. Earle, Álmos Telegdy Feb 2006

Does Privatization Hurt Workers? Lessons From Comprehensive Manufacturing Firm Panel Data In Hungary, Romania, Russia, And Ukraine, J. David Brown, John S. Earle, Álmos Telegdy

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We estimate the effects of privatization on firm-level wages and employment in four transition economies. Applied to longitudinal data on manufacturing firms, our fixed effect and random trend models consistently fail to support workers' fears of job losses from privatization, and they never imply large negative effects on wages; only for domestic privatization in Hungary and Russia are small (3-5%) negative wage effects found. Privatization to foreign investors has positive estimated impacts on both employment and wages in all four countries. The negligible consequences of domestic privatization for workers result from effects on scale, productivity, and costs that are large …


The Productivity Effects Of Privatization: Longitudinal Estimates From Hungary, Romania, Russia, And Ukraine, J. David Brown, John S. Earle, Álmos Telegdy Oct 2005

The Productivity Effects Of Privatization: Longitudinal Estimates From Hungary, Romania, Russia, And Ukraine, J. David Brown, John S. Earle, Álmos Telegdy

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

This paper estimates the effect of privatization on multifactor productivity (MFP) using long panel data for nearly the universe of initially state-owned manufacturing firms in four economies. We exploit the key longitudinal feature of our data to measure and control for pre-privatization selection bias and to estimate long-run impacts. We find that the magnitudes of our estimates are robust to alternative functional forms, but sensitive to how we control for selection. Our preferred random growth models imply that majority privatization raises MFP about 15% in Romania, 8% in Hungary, and 2% in Ukraine, while in Russia it lowers it 3%. …


Do Government Sponsored Vocational Training Programs Help The Unemployed Find Jobs? Evidence From Russia, Anton Nivorozhkin, Eugenity Nivorozhkin Jan 2005

Do Government Sponsored Vocational Training Programs Help The Unemployed Find Jobs? Evidence From Russia, Anton Nivorozhkin, Eugenity Nivorozhkin

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

The study estimates the employment effect of vocational training programs for the unemployed in urban Russia. The results of propensity score matching indicate that training programs had a non-negative overall effect on the program participants relative to non-participants.


Economic Reforms And Productivity-Enhancing Reallocation In The Post-Soviet Transition, J. David Brown, John S. Earle Jan 2004

Economic Reforms And Productivity-Enhancing Reallocation In The Post-Soviet Transition, J. David Brown, John S. Earle

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

How do economic reforms affect resource reallocation processes and their contributions to productivity growth? This paper studies the consequences of enterprise privatization and liberalization of product markets, labour markets, and imports in the former Soviet Republics of Russia and Ukraine. Analyzing interfirm reallocation of output, labour, capital, and an input index with annual industrial census data from 1985 to 2001, we find that Soviet Russia displayed low reallocation rates that bore little relationship to relative labour and multifactor productivity across firms. Since reforms began, resource flows have increased in both countries, and their contributions to aggregate productivity growth have become …


Community Norms And Organizational Practices: The Legitimization Of Wage Arrears In Russia, 1992-1999, John S. Earle, Andrew Spicer, Klara Sabirianova Peter Dec 2003

Community Norms And Organizational Practices: The Legitimization Of Wage Arrears In Russia, 1992-1999, John S. Earle, Andrew Spicer, Klara Sabirianova Peter

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

What role do community norms play in the diffusion and persistence of new organizational practices? We explore this question through an examination of the widespread practice of wage arrears, the late and non-payment of wages, in Russia during the 1990s. Existing research on wage arrears most often examines this practice as a means of flexible wage adjustment under difficult economic conditions. We develop an alternative theory that explains wage arrears through their acceptance as a legitimate form of organizational behavior within local communities. Our empirical analysis finds some support for the neoclassical position that wage arrears reflect adjustment to negative …


Job Reallocation And Productivity Growth Under Alternative Economic Systems And Policies: Evidence From The Soviet Transition, J. David Brown, John S. Earle Dec 2002

Job Reallocation And Productivity Growth Under Alternative Economic Systems And Policies: Evidence From The Soviet Transition, J. David Brown, John S. Earle

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

How do economic policies and institutions affect job reallocation processes and their consequences for productivity growth? This paper studies the extreme case of economic system change and alternative transitional policies in the former Soviet Republics of Russia and Ukraine. Exploiting annual industrial census data from 1985 to 2000, we find that Soviet Russia displayed job flow behavior quite different from market economies, with very low rates of job reallocation that bore little relationship to relative productivity across firms and sectors. Since liberalization began, the pace, heterogeneity, and productivity effects of job flows have increased substantially. The increases occurred more quickly …


The Reallocation Of Workers And Jobs In Russian Industry: New Evidence On Measures And Determinants, John S. Earle, J. David Brown Aug 2002

The Reallocation Of Workers And Jobs In Russian Industry: New Evidence On Measures And Determinants, John S. Earle, J. David Brown

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Gross job and worker flows in Russian industry are studied using panel data from a recent survey of 530 firms selected through national probability sampling. The data permit an examination of several important measurement issues-including the timing and definition of employment, the roles of split-ups and mergers, and the relative magnitudes of rehiring and new hiring and of quits and layoffs—and they contain a rich set of firm characteristics that may affect job and worker turnover. The results imply that job destruction and worker separation rates in industrial firms rose in the early 1990s, as did job flows as a …


Evaluating Labor Market Performance: Employment Reallocation And Productivity Growth In Russia, John S. Earle Jul 2002

Evaluating Labor Market Performance: Employment Reallocation And Productivity Growth In Russia, John S. Earle

Employment Research Newsletter

No abstract provided.


How Late To Pay? Understanding Wage Arrears In Russia, John S. Earle, Klara Sabirianova Peter Mar 2002

How Late To Pay? Understanding Wage Arrears In Russia, John S. Earle, Klara Sabirianova Peter

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We organize an empirical analysis of Russian wage arrears around hypotheses concerning factors that create incentives for firms to pay late and for workers to tolerate late payment, both reinforced by a prevalent environment of overdue wages. Our analysis draws upon nationally representative household panel data matched with employer data to show substantial interfirm variation with the probability of arrears positively related to firm age, size, state ownership, and declining performance. Estimation of a constrained multinomial logit model also reveals intrafirm, variation related to job tenure and small shareholdings in the firm. Workers tend to have higher arrears in rural …