The Ukrainian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey: Towards a better understanding of labor markets in transition

The paper presents the Ukrainian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (ULMS), which is one of the most widely used household and labor force surveys in Eastern Europe. It is based on a statistically representative sample of the Ukrainian population aged between 15 and 72 years, comprising about 4,000 households and 8,500 individuals. The paper introduces the essential aspects of the ULMS, including sampling, survey instruments and content as well as discusses the current available data. Key details of the forthcoming 2012 wave of the survey are outlined. The article also provides an overview of major studies accomplished with the help of the ULMS data. The review suggests the usefulness and high potential of the survey in tackling important questions in labor economics and related fields

Labour market flows and labour market policies in the British Isles, Poland and Eastern Germany since 1980.

This thesis utilizes flow analyses of the labour market in order to examine two key issues. First, to asses the effectiveness of active labour market policies in Britain, Ireland and Poland. Secondly, it allows us to characterize and quantify movements between labour market states which have been occurring on an unprecedented scale in economies undergoing transition. Chapters 1 and 2 investigate whether active labour market policies in Britain and Ireland have been instrumental in curing or preventing partial hysteresis due to long-term unemployment. In models of the determination of overall and duration-specific outflow rates from unemployment, the predictive power of active measures variables is tested. Chapter 3 uses the 'lista 500' panel data set to test the hypothesis that after the decentralizing reforms of the early eighties simple models of profit maximization can explain labour adjustment by large Polish enterprises. Chapter 4 traces the build up of unemployment in Poland by characterizing the composition and determinants of flows between various labour market states. Traditional flow analysis is amended by dividing the state employment into the sub-states, private and state sector employment, and by emphasizing the institutional framework unique to the Polish labour market in its first stage of transition. In Chapter 5 a unique panel data set is used to quantify labour market transitions in Eastern Germany in the first year after unification. Multinomial logit regressions are employed to highlight the determinants of the estimated transition rates. The applicability of standard models of labour market transitions to labour markets in transforming economies is also tested. Chapter 6 uses Voivodship-level aggregate panel data to evaluate passive and active labour market policies in Poland which took shape in 1991 and 1992. We also test for the existence of a well behaved matching technology in the Polish labour market. The methodology of Chapters 1 and 2 is modified to account for the panel nature of the data

The Wage and Non-wage Costs of Displacement: Evidence from Russia

This paper is the first to analyze the costs of job loss in Russia, using unique new data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey over the years 2003-2008, including a special supplement on displacement that was initiated by us. We employ fixed effects regression models and propensity score matching techniques in order to establish the causal effect of displacement for displaced individuals. The paper is innovative insofar as we investigate fringe and in-kind benefits and the propensity to have an informal employment relationship as well as a permanent contract as relevant labor market outcomes upon displacement. We also analyze monthly earnings, hourly wages, employment and hours worked, which are traditionally investigated in the literature. Compared to the control group of non-displaced workers (i.e. stayers and quitters), displaced individuals face a significant income loss following displacement, which is mainly due to the reduction in employment and hours worked. This effect is robust to the definition of displacement. The losses seem to be more pronounced and are especially large for older workers with labor market experience and human capital acquired in Soviet times and for workers with primary and secondary education. Workers displaced from state firms experience particularly large relative losses in the short run, while such losses for workers laid off from private firms are more persistent. Turning to the additional non-conventional labor market outcomes, there is a loss in terms of the number of fringe and in-kind benefits for reemployed individuals but not in terms of their value. There is also some evidence of an increased probability of working in informal jobs if displaced. These results point towards the importance of both firm-specific human capital and of obsolete skills obtained under the centrally planned economy as well as to a wider occurrence of job insecurity among displaced workers