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Articles 1 - 14 of 14
Full-Text Articles in Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies
Overcoming Postcommunist Labour Weakness: Attritional And Enabling Effects Of Mncs In Central And Eastern Europe, Aleksandra Sznajder Lee, Vera Trappmann
Overcoming Postcommunist Labour Weakness: Attritional And Enabling Effects Of Mncs In Central And Eastern Europe, Aleksandra Sznajder Lee, Vera Trappmann
Political Science Faculty Publications
Based on micro-level analysis of the developments in the steel sector in Poland, Romania and Slovakia, this paper examines the effects of multinational corporations (MNCs) on labour unions in Central and Eastern Europe. It makes a three-fold argument. First, it shows that union weakness can be attributed to unions’ strategies during the restructuring and privatization processes of postcommunist transition. Consequently, tactics used for union regeneration in the West are less applicable to CEE. Rather, the overcoming of postcommunist legacy is linked to the power of transnational capital. Through attritional and enabling effects, ownership by MNCs forces the unions to focus …
Between Apprehension And Support: Social Dialogue, Democracy, And Industrial Restructuring In Central And Eastern Europe, Aleksandra Sznajder Lee
Between Apprehension And Support: Social Dialogue, Democracy, And Industrial Restructuring In Central And Eastern Europe, Aleksandra Sznajder Lee
Political Science Faculty Publications
This article explores the attitudes of trade union organizations to restructuring and privatization of their enterprises to strategic foreign investors in Central and Eastern Europe's biggest steel producers: Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, and Slovakia. Contrary to advocates of insulating technocratic decision-makers from social partners, this article argues that higher quality of democracy and concomitant social dialogue carried out at the level of the sector with union organizations that are autonomous of the government in power (as was the case in the Czech Republic and Poland), are associated with greater restructuring and with support for privatization to strategic foreign investors. In …
Mass Privatisation And The Post-Communist Mortality Crisis: Is There Really A Relationship?, John S. Earle, Scott G. Gehlbach
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 …
Understanding The Contributions Of Reallocation To Productivity Growth: Lessons From A Comparative Firm-Level Analysis, J. David Brown, John S. Earle
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 …
Helping Hand Or Grabbing Hand? State Bureaucracy And Privatization Effectiveness, J. David Brown, John S. Earle, Scott G. Gehlbach
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 …
The State‐Led Transition To Liberal Capitalism: Neoliberal, Organizational, World‐Systems, And Social Structural Explanations Of Poland’S Economic Success, Lawrence P. King, Aleksandra Sznajder Lee
The State‐Led Transition To Liberal Capitalism: Neoliberal, Organizational, World‐Systems, And Social Structural Explanations Of Poland’S Economic Success, Lawrence P. King, Aleksandra Sznajder Lee
Political Science Faculty Publications
Neoliberals argue that rapid liberalization and privatization can transform postcommunist economies into Western-style capitalist systems. Organizational sociologists argue that these policies produce a unique variety of capitalism, while world-systems theorists argue that they lead to underdevelopment. This article advances a social structural alternative in a crucial case. Poland’s relative economic success resulted from prolonged state ownership and an interventionist state employing various industrial policy tools that facilitated efficiency-enhancing market-oriented restructuring before ushering in beneficial foreign direct investment. The resulting capitalist system closely resembles the typical pattern found in most late industrializers.
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
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 …
Effects Of Eu Accession On The Politics Of Privatization - The Steel Sector In Comparative Perspective, Aleksandra Sznajder Lee
Effects Of Eu Accession On The Politics Of Privatization - The Steel Sector In Comparative Perspective, Aleksandra Sznajder Lee
Political Science Faculty Publications
The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the European Union (EU) accession process on the restructuring and privatization of the steel sector of the four largest steel producers in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), namely Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, and Slovakia. The outcome to date for these countries' steel mills has been relatively uniform in that they have been integrated into the global production networks of some of the largest multinational steel enterprises. The pressures which brought this outcome about, however, were far from uniform. The variability in the modes of convergence is highlighted by …
The Productivity Effects Of Privatization: Longitudinal Estimates From Hungary, Romania, Russia, And Ukraine, J. David Brown, John S. Earle, Álmos Telegdy
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%. …
Economic Reforms And Productivity-Enhancing Reallocation In The Post-Soviet Transition, J. David Brown, John S. Earle
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 …
Job Reallocation And Productivity Growth Under Alternative Economic Systems And Policies: Evidence From The Soviet Transition, J. David Brown, John S. Earle
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
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
Evaluating Labor Market Performance: Employment Reallocation And Productivity Growth In Russia, John S. Earle
Employment Research Newsletter
No abstract provided.
Generating Needed Modernization Funds: Streamlining The Bureaucracy--Not Outsourcing And Privatizing--Is The Best Solution, Jan P. Muczyk
Generating Needed Modernization Funds: Streamlining The Bureaucracy--Not Outsourcing And Privatizing--Is The Best Solution, Jan P. Muczyk
Faculty Publications
The Department of Defense (DoD) budget, in real dollars, has decreased for a dozen years or so, and will likely continue to do so. Since all the funds necessary for warfighting asset modernization will not come from Congress, DoD must free up existing funds for reallocation to its modernization program. So far, much reliance has been placed on privatization and outsourcing as ways of releasing large sums of money. But it is highly unlikely that these instrumentalities are up to the task, and other sources must shoulder a large part of the load. Although eliminating duplication of mission and roles …