Arbeitspapier

How important are labor market institutions for labor market performance in transition countries?

This paper offers a first comprehensive study of the relationship between labor market institutions and policies and labor market performance in the countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, which in the last two decades experienced radical economic and institutional transformations. Based on a new and unique hand-collected dataset, the paper first documents the evolution of labor market institutions and policies in the transition region. The data show a clear trend towards liberalization of labor markets, especially in the countries of the former Soviet Union, but also substantial differences across the countries studied. Second, the paper takes advantage of the large variation in the key economic and institutional variables to test several predictions concerning the role of institutions and polices in explaining labor market outcomes. The results of our econometric analysis are generally consistent with the view that institutions matter for labor market outcomes, and that deregulation of the labor markets improves their performance. The analysis also suggests several significant interactions between different institutions, which are in line with the idea of reform complementarity and broad reform packages. We also show that there are important advantages of focusing on a broader set of labor market outcomes, and not only on the unemployment rate, which until now has been the main approach in the empirical literature.

Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 4673

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft
Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
Socialist Systems and Transitional Economies: General
Thema
Labor market institutions
unemployment
transition economies
Arbeitsmarktflexibilisierung
Übergangswirtschaft
Arbeitsmarkt
Institutioneller Wandel
Arbeitslosigkeit
Transformationsstaaten
Osteuropa
Zentralasien

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Lehmann, Hartmut
Muravyev, Alexander
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
(wo)
Bonn
(wann)
2009

Handle
Letzte Aktualisierung
10.03.2025, 11:43 MEZ

Datenpartner

Dieses Objekt wird bereitgestellt von:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. Bei Fragen zum Objekt wenden Sie sich bitte an den Datenpartner.

Objekttyp

  • Arbeitspapier

Beteiligte

  • Lehmann, Hartmut
  • Muravyev, Alexander
  • Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Entstanden

  • 2009

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