Employment determination in enterprises under communism and in transition
Subtitle: evidence from Central Europe
By: by Swati Basu, Saul Estrin, Jan Svejnar.
Contributors: Estrin, Saul.; Svejnar, Jan.
Series: Discussion paper ;; no. 1370; Discussion paper (Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit : Online) ;; no. 1370
Publisher: IZA
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Bonn, Germany
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
Subjects: Labor market -- Europe, Central.; Employee selection -- Europe, Central.
Description: "In this paper, we present a comparative analysis of employment determination in four transition economies as they move from central planning to a market economy in the early 1990s. We use firm level panel data sets from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia to estimate dynamic employment equations for the period immediately before and after the start of transition. We find evidence that firms behave for the most part as if they were on their labor demand curves, with little evidence of labor hoarding. There were significant cross-country variations in the determinants of employment during the reform process however. Hungarian and Polish firms started the transition already substantially reformed, and became even more responsive to market signals as transition proceeded. In contrast, firms in the Czech and Slovak republics started in the completely unresponsive mode characteristic of central planning, but rapidly caught up with their counterparts in Hungary and Poland"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
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