Buy-outs in Hungary,Poland and Russia: governance and finance issues1

The governments of Hungary, Poland and Russia have used buy-outs as an important privatization strategy which can be viewed as forming a continuum from straightforward sales where management and employees generally achieve significant ownership, as in Hungary, via intermediate approaches as in Poland where both payment and free distribution of shares are involved, to the Russian case where state-owned enterprises were effectively “given away” through a voucher privatization scheme. This paper, first, presents preliminary evidence on the extent and nature of post-privatization restructuring in buy-outs in these three countries, which highlights the transitory nature of this form of organization. Second, in the light of these findings, the paper analyses the possibilities and difficulties associated with enhancing corporate governance and finance.     

Entrepreneurs and the Ordering of Institutional Reform: Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Russia and Ukraine Compared

We use survey data to examine new firms in Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Russia and Ukraine. By measures of job growth, security of property, and market development, our countries fall into two groups: an advanced group including Poland, Romania and Slovakia, with Slovakia falling somewhat behind the other two; and a backward group of Russia and Ukraine. Macroeconomic stability is not sufficient for private-sector growth. A lack of bank finance does not seem to prevent private-sector growth. More inhibiting than inadequate finance are insecure property rights.     

The Art of Reforming Centrally Planned Economies: Comparing China, Poland, and Russia

The three reasons for gradualism, (1) agricultural reform should precede industrial reforms, (2) state-owned enterprises (SOEs) can be reformed, and (3) economic liberalization should precede political liberalization, are not generalizable. China′s gradualism is the product of political deadlock over the final form of the economy. China has been most successful in the areas where reforms have been radical and lackluster where reforms have been incremental. The output performance across reforming countries reflected differences mainly in economic structures rather than in policies. China′s growth comes from the movement of surplus agricultural labor into industry, and Poland′s and Russia′s decline come from the closing of noncompetitive enterprises to release factors of production to the new efficient enterprises. J. Comp. Econom., June 1994, 18(3), pp. 000-000. University of California, Davis, California 95616-8617.     

Medical coverage for local national employees in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Russia

Employers that must provide medical benefits for employees in Russia and other Eastern European countries cannot try to match the coverage they provide in the United States. This article, which focuses on the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Russia, summarizes the medical benefits provided by each government's social security system, describes other means of accessing medical care in these countries and outlines the insured supplemental benefit plans that may be available to employers in the local market.     

The IMF-Supported Programs of Poland and Russia, 1990-1994: Principles, Errors, and Results

The paper discusses four IMF-supported adjustment programs in Poland, 1990-1995, and two in Russia, 1992-1994, in terms of the underlying theory, policy objectives, assumptions, policies, errors, and results. The paper suggests that the role of the IMF and the World Bank has been helpful and significant but, compared to the influence of domestic factors and local reformers, relatively modest. Transition-related features of the programs are the focus of the analysis. The specific topics include the choice of nominal anchors, the speed of disinflation, the choice of performance criteria, and the role of foreign economic assistance. J. Comp. Econom. June 1995, 20(3), pp. 316-346. London School of Economics and Political Science, London, WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom.     

英国世界遗产保护利用与社区发展互动的启示——以哈德良长城为例

社区参与世界遗产保护在国内外倍受关注。英国世界文化遗产哈德良长城(Hadrian’sWall)的保护与社区发展的良性互动,较好地实现了遗产保护、旅游利用和社区发展的多赢,值得我们借鉴。通过研究哈德良长城保护与社区发展的互动机制,给予我们的启示有:加强世界遗产管理部门、社区参与遗产保护的意识;发挥解说的管理功能;在遗产保护利用中寻求遗产地城乡的发展机会;培养遗产地居民的认同感和主权感;建立相关组织和机构协调监测遗产保护和社区发展。     

Firm turnover,restructuring and labour productivity in transition: the case of Poland

Many studies have found strong and positive relationship between per capita income and health care expenditure. These studies usually adopt the assumptions that (1) the relationships among the variables are constant; and/or (2) the supply-side market for health care could be treated by using standard demand functions models. To take into account of the supply side of health care, we use the demand and supply approach with the cointegration model to re-examine this issue. By using Taiwan health care expenditure data, our results show that the real income elasticity is smaller than unity and the health care expenditures are primarily for ‘curing’ rather than ‘caring’.     

Shortage and currency substitution in transition economies: Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and Romania

This paper examines currency substitution in Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and Romania during the end of central planning and transition to market economies. Before liberalization, central European economies faced increasing shortage and repressed inflation in the official sector. Households held substantial wealth in real assets and foreign currency. Furthermore, part of their savings was held as hunting money against potential opportunities to buy in bulk at bargain prices in official stores or pay a premium price on the black market. The shift from centrally-planned to market economies is modeled with a shortage variable. Foreign currency demand and consumption functions are estimated by the Johansen procedure. Environmental constraints play a key role in interpreting estimates. The official sector shortage is an important determinant of foreign currency demand in each country.     

Public Expenditure in Poland: Major Trends,Challenges and Policy Concerns

This article surveys the behaviour of public expenditure in Poland. The analysis is conducted against a theoretical background outlining the basic government functions and possible government failures in a market economy. The first part provides an overview of major trends in public expenditure during systemic transformation in Poland. It also highlights the reprioritisation of government objectives in channelling budgetary funds. The second part gives an account of the most salient consequences of the changing pattern of public expenditure and discusses the main policy concerns involved, pointing out the adverse macroeconomic effects of government failure to create or enhance positive externalities for business. The last part outlines the most significant future challenges, with special emphasis on the implications of the public finance crunch that emerged in mid-2001. It also argues that two 'external' factors, globalisation and the forthcoming EU accession, will gain importance in the future in shaping public expenditure in Poland.     

Productivity,innovation and convergence in Poland1

This paper provides evidence on factors driving productivity growth in the new EU member states, focusing on Polish manufacturing industries. The results obtained indicate that companies in Poland benefit significantly from transfer of technologies accumulated in more developed economies. No strong evidence is found on immediate technology transfer. The significant effect of domestic innovation activity is mainly due to its impact on the speed of convergence and is particularly strong in high‐tech industries, relatively privatized industries and industries initially further from the technological frontier.     

Private sector employment in Russia: Scale, composition and performance

In Russia, as across Central and Eastern Europe, privatization and the establishmemt of new private firms have been viewed as key factors in labour market adjustment during the transition period. This paper considers the overall employment developments in the private sector in Russia and the extent to which the private sector employment performance is differentiated from that of other sectors in five Russian regions. The analysis is based on a fresh look at these issues using official statistics published by Goskomstat and drawing on microdata from the March 1996 Russian Labour Force Survey (LFS). A special questionnaire attached to the LFS in the study regions provides supplementary information.
The paper highlights shifts in the sectoral composition of employment, including growth in private sector employment. Compared to other forms of ownership, the analysis confirms a tendency for private sector ownership in the study regions to be associated with stronger employment performance with respect to hours worked and, in some cases, timely payment of wages. Private sector firms appear to have relatively flexible employment patterns, utilizing more fixed-term or part-time employment than other types of firms and experiencing greater labour turnover. Also, private sector employees tend to be somewhat younger and probably more adaptable people. However, there is significant variation across the study regions and substantial exceptions exist with respect to the above-mentioned tendencies. With respect to employment issues, the differentiation between sectors appears to be less pronounced than one might have expected.     

Industrial conglomerates,risk spreading and the transition in Russia

This article explains the lasting transition crisis of Russian agriculture by applying Hayami & Ruttan's theory of induced innovation. The empirical analysis uses Russian farm data. For various types of farms factor intensities and partial factor productivities are calculated to identify differences in productivity between them. We identify the mechanism through which institutional frictions in Russia influence the choice of technology and the adaptation of technological change. Finally, policy recommendations are derived to make technical change more consistent with relative factor supplies and prices, and improve productivity, especially of inefficient farm types. In our view nothing speaks in favour of expensive Western ‘high-tech’ machinery imports to enhance the efficiency of Russian farms (especially larger ones). Until now the poor operation of domestic markets in Russia has obstructed a sufficient supply of Russian technology consistent with relative scarcities.     

Municipal Finance in Poland,the Slovak Republic,the Czech Republic and Hungary: Institutional Framework and Recent Development

The recent process of political and economic transition in eastern European countries has not only contributed to the decentralisation of political structure but also significantly enhanced the fiscal autonomy of municipalities in these countries. In this context many similar types of public activities have recently been assigned to local governments, and some taxes were also declared to be local taxes. To be sure, this type of fiscal decentralisation has caused some additional problems, particularly for safeguarding the quality of publicly provided goods and services and for co-ordinating intergovernmental fiscal transfers between the central and local governments. For instance, some criticise that many small-sized municipalities in the transition economies have suffered from financial bottlenecks and have not been able to receive sufficient financial support from the central government. However, such a fiscal devolution trend appears to continue. This study primarily deals with issues surrounding the impact of national fiscal policy and the regulatory framework on local governments' expenditure behaviour and their ability to mobilise necessary revenues under the particular consideration of the institutional and administrative co-operation with the central government and of the less well-developed financial market in Poland, the Slovak Republic, the Czech Republic and Hungary.     

Human Capital, Growth, and Inequality in Russia

Our model captures the fact that Russia has both much human capital and an education system that produces the wrong skills for a market economy. We define a rule for the timing of educational restructuring that is Pareto optimal and that dominates all later times in a Paretian sense while simultaneously reducing inequality. We demonstrate that failure to implement restructuring early in the transition process is likely to produce a very long delay that will significantly reduce Russia's human capital. A retreat from subsidizing public education is likely to be counterproductive. We argue that early educational restructuring should be emphasized in Russia's transition strategy. J. Comp. Econom., December 1999, 27(4), pp. 618–643. Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, N.T., Hong Kong, People's Republic of China; University of Colorado, Denver, Denver, Colorado 88217; and Royal Holloway College, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 OEX, United Kingdom.     

Worker flows, job flows and unemployment in a matching model

Standard matching models of unemployment generate far too little volatility in unemployment and vacancies relative to the variation in the shock variables. Shimer (2005) showed that in US data the vacancy-to-unemployment ratio is about 26 times more volatile than the standard model predicts. He identified the flexibility of wages as the key issue and triggered a heated debate on possible improvements of the core model to accommodate these empirical facts. In this paper, we first document Shimer's facts for the UK and find them to be qualitatively similar to US facts. We then develop and calibrate a model based on the Mortensen and Pissarides approach that increases the volatility of the v/u ratio 20-fold compared to the standard framework. The key features of our model relate to the job creation decision by firms and the search options of workers. We allow these to search whilst employed, and firms to re-advertise jobs that have been quit from. This leads us to use a different job creation process, whereby potential vacancies, or job ‘ideas’, arise at a finite rate per period over a range of idiosyncratic productivities. Calibrating the model to UK data, we show that it delivers volatility in unemployment and vacancies much closer to, though still not as large as, that observed for the UK, whilst retaining the standard wage determination process.     

The Small Border Traffic Zone between Poland and Kaliningrad Region (Russia): The Impact of a Local Visa-Free Border Regime

After Poland’s accession to the EU, the Polish-Russian border became the EU external border. This significantly changed its nature and started the new type of cross border relation. Since 2012, when the Small Border Traffic (SBT) zone came into force, the border has changed its blockade function and started instead to be treated as a resource. The fundamental loosening of the border crossing regime reduced the social and functional distance between Poland and Kaliningrad, and in a broader sense between EU and Kaliningrad. This paper will try to show how small but meaningful initiative, the SBT, has had an impact on cross-border region. The present paper will describe the relationship between larger geopolitical actors and how they affect local border relations. The aim of this paper is to present phenomenon of new visa regime at the Polish-Russian border. The paper likewise describes the impact of the SBT on local communities and their economies, as well as national relations between adjacent countries. The analysis is based on the interviews and surveys conducted in the Polish-Russian border region in late 2014.     

Fertility Decisions and Gender Differences in Labor Turnover, Employment, and Wages

A striking observation of the U.S. and other labor markets is the weak position of women in terms of job attachment, employment, and earnings relative to men. We develop a model of fertility and labor market decisions to study the impact of fertility on gender differences in labor turnover, employment, and wages. In our framework, individuals search for jobs and accumulate general (experience) and specific (tenure) human capital when they work. They can also increase their wage by moving to a job of higher quality. Labor market decisions (e.g., job acceptance and job mobility) may differ across genders: females that give birth may decide to interrupt their labor market attachment in order to enjoy the value of staying at home with their children. The model economy is successfully calibrated to match aggregate statistics in terms of fertility, employment, and wages. We find that fertility decisions generate important gender differences in turnover rates, with long lasting effects in employment and wages. These differences in labor turnover account for almost all the U.S. gender wage gap that is attributed to labor market experience by Blau and Kahn (2000, Journal of Labor Economics15(1), 1–42). The model also implies a very small role of tenure capital in accounting for wage differences between males and females (gender gap), and between females with and without children (family gap). Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: E24, J13, J21, J31.