How aware are employees of their benefits? Findings from two companies

This study examines benefit awareness of employees in two companies. Contrary to previous research, the results show that employees are generally accurate in their perceptions of the benefits available to them. However, the results also show a lack of awareness of unemployment insurance and disability insurance as benefits. In addition, employees were somewhat uncertain regarding costs of benefits to employers. These findings suggest that employers should monitor employee awareness of benefits and target communications to specific problem areas.     

Broken rails: the privatisation of Estonian railways

Based on the experience of Estonian railways, this article argues that the privatisation of monopolistic infrastructure is economically wasteful and politically divisive. In 2000–2001, Estonia sold the passenger carrier and a portion of the track to domestic businessmen posing as a British strategic investor, and the main freight carrier and most of the track to an American-led consortium. The passenger carrier continued to receive government subsidies but closed several rail lines, which led to protests by passengers. The freight carrier earned large profits from the transit of Russian oil to Europe, but invested its money in buying used American locomotives, rather than rebuilding the track. Both companies laid off about half of their workforce, provoking the first private-sector strike in Estonia since the collapse of Communism. In 2006, a new government bought back the freight services and track at more than twice the sale price, an expensive lesson in the perils of privatisation.     

Social inequalities in famine mortality in the manorial system of the tsarist Russian province of Livland in the mid-1840s

By relying on longitudinal data on two rural parishes in the Russian Baltic province of Livland, the article analyses two questions concerning famine's short-run effects on mortality in a manorial system: (1) whether there is evidence of a social gradient in mortality during the famine of 1844–6 and (2) whether the manors could protect the peasants against the hardships. The analysis reveals that neither the status of a farmer peasant nor the landlord saved the local inhabitants from an increased risk of dying during the famine of 1844–6. The conventional assumptions about the protective effect of the higher socio-economic status or type of manor against subsistence crisis found very little support in the study.