Bosnia and Herzegovina 2001-2004 : enterprise restructuring, labor market transitions and poverty

This paper takes stock of labor market developments in Bosnia and Herzegovina over the period 2001-2004, using the panel Living Standards Measurement Study/Living in Bosnia and Herzegovina survey. The analysis estimates a multinomial logit model of labor market transitions by state of origin (employment, unemployment, and inactivity) following the specification of widely used models of transition probabilities, and analyzes the impact of standard covariates. The results provide strong evidence that there are indeed significant differences in labor market transitions by gender, age, education, and geographic location. Using the panel structure of the multi-topic survey data, the authors find that these transitions are related to welfare dynamics, with welfare levels evolving differently for various groups depending on their labor market trajectories. The findings show that current labor market trends reflecting women's movement out of labor markets and laid-off male workers accepting informal sector jobs characterized by low productivity will lead to adverse social outcomes. These outcomes could be averted if the planned enterprise reform program creates a more favorable business environment and leads to faster restructuring and growth of firms.Labor Markets,Labor Policies,Population Policies,,Banks&Banking Reform

Post-socialist housing systems in Europe:Housing welfare regimes by default?

This article develops a conceptual framework derived from welfare regime and concomitant literatures to interpret housing reform in post-socialist European countries. In it, settled power structures and collective ideologies are necessary prerequisites for the creation of distinctive housing welfare regimes with clear roles for the state, market and households. Although the defining feature of post-socialist housing has been mass-privatisation to create super-homeownership societies, the emphatic retreat of the state that this represents has not been replaced by the creation of the institutions or cultures required to create fully financialised housing markets. There is, instead, a form of state legacy welfare in the form of debt-free home-ownership, which creates a gap in housing welfare that has been partially filled by households in the form of intergenerational assistance (familialism) and self-build housing. Both of these mark continuities with the previous regime. The latter is especially common in south-east Europe where its frequent illegality represents a form of anti-state housing. The lack of settled ideologies and power structures suggests that these housing welfare regimes by default will persist as part of a process that resembles a path-dependent ‘transformation’ rather than ‘transition’

Oil and gas:a blessing for the few. Hydrocarbons and inequality within regions in Russia

Building on earlier work on regional inequality in Russia the article seeks to demonstrate that the regional oil and gas abundance is associated with high within-region inequality. It provides empirical evidence that hydrocarbons represent one of the leading determinants of an increased gap between rich and poor in the producing regions. The discussion focuses on a possible cluster of geographic, economic and political factors underlying the phenomenon