Worker Training in a Restructuring Economy: Evidence from the Russian Transition

We use 1994-1998 data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) to measure the incidence and determinants of several types of worker training and to estimate the effects of training on workers' interindustry, interfirm, and occupational mobility, their labor force transitions, and their wage growth in Russia compared to the U.S. We hypothesize that the shock of economic liberalization in Russia may raise the benefits of training, particularly retraining for new jobs, but uncertainty concerning the revaluation of skills may raise the costs, with an overall ambiguous effect on the amount of training undertaken. The RLMS indicates a lower rate of formal training than studies have found for the U.S., suggesting that the second effect dominates. Previous schooling is estimated to affect the probability of training positively, but the relationship is much stronger for additional training in the same field than for retraining for new fields, consistent with the hypothesis that schooling and training are complementary but become more substitutable in a restructuring environment. Foreign ownership of the firm also positively affects the probability of undertaking training, providing evidence of active restructuring by foreigner investors. Additional training in workers' current fields is estimated to reduce mobility and earnings, suggesting inertial programs from the pre-transition era. Retraining in new fields increases all types of worker mobility and has higher returns than those typically observed for training in the U.S., but it also raises the variance of earnings and the probability of employment, consistent with a search view of such retraining. Given the large returns to retraining, the efforts of Russian workers to learn new skills may increase as uncertainty is resolved and restructuring proceeds.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39715/3/wp331.pd

Sustainable planning of cross-border cooperation: a strategy for alliances in border cities

In recent years, cooperation among nations has become a critical issue towards sustainable development of neighbor cities in border areas. In this regard, sustainable common planning approaches and policies are an increasing reality, particularly in European territories. Considering the significant amount of cross-border cooperation (CBC) projects and strategies within Europe, it is crucial to promote research approaches that are able to identify the most positive approaches towards the establishment of alliances in border territories, serving as pivotal methodologies for achieving success. Contextually, the present study considered direct and indirect research methods and tools, literature reviews, data collection, computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) and computer-assisted web interview (CAWI), all applied over two European border cities: Cieszyn (Poland) and Cesky Tesin (Czech Republic). These methods enabled the assembly of perspectives of local authorities, public and private institutions, non-governmental organizations, and entrepreneurs from the cities under study. Through the analysis of the collected data, five conditions have been identified for the success of strategic alliances in CBC projects: (i) well defining the alliance goals; (ii) ensuring participation in the alliance of various groups of stakeholders; (iii) involvement of both partners with extensive experience in CBC; (iv) ensuring the coherence of the key objective; and (v) guaranteeing the alliance benefits both sides. These conditions might effectively contribute to achieve more successful outputs in CBC projects, highlighting the relevance of previously developed strategies on the definition of future approaches.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Postalveolar fricatives in Slavic languages as retroflexes

The present study poses the question on what phonetic and phonological grounds postalveolar fricatives in Polish can be analyzed as retroflex and whether postalveolar fricatives in other Slavic languages are retroflex as well. Velarization and incompatibility with front vowels are introduced as articulatory criteria for retroflexion, based on crosslinguistic data. According to these criteria, Polish and Russian have retroflex fricatives, whereas Bulgarian and Czech do not. In a phonological representation of these Slavic retroflexes, the necessity of perceptual features is shown. Lastly, it is illustrated that palatalization of retroflex fricatives both in Slavic languages and more generally causes a phonetic and phonological change to a non-retroflex sound

Report on argumentation and teacher education in Europe

This document will ultimately form part of a comprehensive package of materials for teacher education and professional development in argumentation. The initial deliverable from Kaunas University of Technology described the rhetorical basis of argumentation theory for pre‐ and in‐service teachers, whilst this state of the art report sets out the current and rather unsatisfactory status of argumentation in curricula, initial teacher training/education and teacher professional development, across the fifteen S‐TEAM partner countries. We believe that this is a representative sample and that the report can be taken as a reliable snapshot of the situation in Europe generally

Inflation Targeting, Between Rhetoric and Reality. The Case of Transition Economies

The paper examines the inflation targeting regime in the context of transition economies. Recent years have witnessed an increasing number of central banks in these countries moving towards the implementation of inflation targeting regimes. However, the success of such a regime depends largely on the degree to which certain general requirements are met. As experience in a number of transition economies has shown so far, targeting inflation is not an easy task. The ongoing restructuring process in these economies makes the inflation forecasting process more difficult and introduces an additional source of uncertainty in the system. By unequivocally choosing inflation as a nominal anchor the central banks could face potential dilemmas if, for example, exchange rate appreciated too much under the pressure of massive capital inflows. The paper presents the broad framework in which inflation targeting could operate efficiently and attempts to assess the extent to which such a regime, when applied to transition economies, could fit into this framework.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40129/3/wp743.pd