Macroeconomics Commons^™

What Happened To The Middle Class In The New Market Economies? The Case Of Croatia And Poland, Joanna Tyrowicz, Iva Tomić

Joanna Tyrowicz

Transition countries are believed to have undergone signifi cant social and economic structural changes. Indeed, the early transition resulted in the modifi cation of ownership structure and recognized processes of labor reallocation as well as in rapid educational booms in many Central and Eastern European countries. In this paper we shed some light on the changes regarding the size and composition of the middle class in two transition countries, Croatia and Poland, in the period 1995-2008. In general, the size of the middle class – as defi ned by individuals with wages around the median – decreased in Poland roughly …

Riding On The Wave? Middle Class In Transition, Joanna Tyrowicz, Joanna Nestorowicz

Joanna Tyrowicz

In this paper we inquire into how structural social changes associated with economic transition affected the relative position of the so called ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ middle classes. We use Polish quarterly labor force surveys over the period 1995-2007 and analyze the distribution of self-reported wages and educational attainment across social groups. In the analysis we account for differences observed in the metropolies (usually benefiting immensely from the economic changes) and non-metropolitan areas (where most of the negative consequences are felt).

We find that although transition has contributed to greater inequalities both in terms of earned income and education, traditional middle …

Nonlinear Stochastic Convergence Analysis Of Regional Unemployment Rates In Poland, Joanna Tyrowicz, Piotr Wojcik

Joanna Tyrowicz

This paper analyzes convergence of unemployment rates in Poland at NUTS4 level by testing nonlinear convergence, applying the modified KSS-CHLL for each pair of territorial units. The results suggest that actually the convergence is a rare phenomenon and occurs only in 1916 cases out of potential over 70 000 combinations. This paper inquires what systematic reasons contribute to this phenomenon.

There are some circumstances under which unemployment convergence should be more awaited than in the others. These include sharing a higher level territorial authority, experiencing similar labour market hardship or sharing the same structural characteristics. For each of these three …

Blame No One? Investment Decisions Of The Polish Stock-Listed Companies, Joanna Tyrowicz

Joanna Tyrowicz

It is often raised that enterprises in transition countries are cursed with credit constraints and insufficient capital. Regardless of whether this belief holds for the whole of the economy, the Agency Theory provides a useful both theoretical and empirical framework helping to verify the efficiency of investment decisions in case of companies for which 'objective' future cash-flow valuation is available. The assertion of managerial discretion has been verified empirically for many different countries with the analytical background provided by user cost of capital and Tobin's Q theories. This paper’s contribution is the analysis of the Polish stock-listed companies behavior with …

(In)Efficiency Of Matching - The Case Of A Post-Transition Economy, Joanna Tyrowicz, Tomasz Jeruzalski

Joanna Tyrowicz

This paper approaches the question of efficiency in job placement using regional data for Polish regions (policy relevant NUTS 4 level) over the time span of 2000-2008. Using a unique data set we estimate the matching function using stochastic frontier as well as difference-in-difference estimators. We use also managed to combine this unique data set with another unique source of data on the ALMPs

coverage, unemployment structure across time and regions as well as the individual capacity of local labour offices. We use these data to explain the exceptional variation in estimated efficiency scores.

Our findings suggest that matching abilities …

On Measuring The Efficiency Of The Social Security System Reforms. The Case Of Poland, Joanna Tyrowicz, Piotr Mularczyk

Joanna Tyrowicz

As other European countries, transition economies face the reform of the social security system. As one of the first, Poland has introduced a pension reform in 1999, which changed a standard pay-as-you-go system into a one constructed of three pillars and based on addressed contributions. The five years from the reform allow to take a first look at the reform, both in terms of assessing the legal implementation as well as the realization of main assumptions and aims. In this paper we consider the effectiveness of the reform. We find that in many aspects this reform should not be considered …