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In the transition from central planning to a market economy in the 1990s, governments focused on privatizing or closing state enterprises, reforming labor markets, compensating laid-off workers, and fostering job creation through new private firms. After privatization, the focus shifted to creating a level playing-field in the product market by protecting property rights, enforcing the rule of law, and implementing transparent start-up regulations. A fair, competitive environment with transparent rules supports long-term economic growth and employment creation through the reallocation of jobs in favor of new private firms.

In this paper we analyse the labor market and its relationship with globalization in two groups of countries similar in their GDP per capita levels at the beginning of the 1980s but otherwise significantly different in their economic and social structures. On the one hand we look at Argentina, Brazil and Chile, on the other hand we analyse South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. It is argued that the Latin American group adopted pro-globalization policies too quickly and without an adequate social safety net, and that the East Asian group was particularly vulnerable to the 1997 crisis in connection with an ill-designed financial markets liberalisation and poor labor market policies. We suggest that the high social costs of labor market imbalances generated throughout the 1980s and 1990s in these two groups of countries should have been tackled within an encompassing development strategy, with an eye at social safety nets and labor supply policies – such as active and passive labor market institutions – designed for each country specifically.

The focus of this paper is the analysis of the persistent lawlessness attitude observed in some transition and developing countries where an overall increase in the quality of institutions is recorded. The mechanism of information diffusion on institutional quality is explored using a model where the state confronts a continuum of agents prone to either strip assets or to invest. The model predicts that high uncertainty and potential sunk costs in a situation of rule of law enforcement push the economy towards anarchy, a Pareto-dominated equilibrium. Viceversa, if the assets' value and the cost of asset-stripping are high, this is instrumental to a rule of law enforcement, a Pareto-dominant equilibrium. High institutional quality can increase the likelihood of rule of law enforcement if there is enough information about the strength of institutions. On the other hand, if good institutions and good information about institutions do not come together, there is scope for the puzzled co-existence of advancement in reforms and poor property rights protection.

AbstractIn the 1990s – during the restructuring of large state enterprises – Central European economies experienced high unemployment. Social policy expenditures, particularly targeted to the non‐employed, grew faster than expected due to the need to finance the out‐of‐the‐labour categories. In 1992, after the Passive Labour Market Policies' reforms, the pace of transition decelerated. Unemployment dynamics, speed of transition and non‐employment policies are modelled based on the assumption that the labour force is shrinking over time. Dismissed workers have the opportunity to choose an outside‐option alternative to labour force participation. Individual uncertainty is assumed in a first phase of transition, while aggregate uncertainty – generating opposition to restructuring – is modelled in a second phase. The model predicts a slowdown in the speed of transition.

After the start of transition, in Central European Economies the restructuring process of large state enterprizes was accompanied by high unemployment all through the '90s. Social policy expenditures, particularly targeted to the non-employed, grew faster than expected due to the need to finance the out-of-labor categories. The reallocation of workers from the state to the private sector called for the establishment of an adequate social safety net. In this paper, unemployment dynamics, speed of transition and non-employment policies are modelled based on the assumption that the labor force is shrinking over time. Dismissed workers have the opportunity to choose an outside- option, i.e. an alternative to the labor force participation. Individual uncertainty is assumed in a first phase of the model, while aggregate uncertainty generating opposition to restructuring is modelled in a second phase. The model predicts a slow down of the speed of transition. Starting from 1992, after the reforms concerning Passive Labor Market Policies (PLMPs), a reduced pace of transition appeared: the reasons why this happened have not yet been explained by the Optimal Speed of Transition (OST) literature.

This paper explores how cross-sectional data can be exploited jointly with longitudinal data, in order to increase estimation efficiency while properly tackling the potential bias due to unobserved individual characteristics. We propose an innovative procedure and we show its implementation by analysing the determinants of consumption in Nicaragua, based on data from three Living Standard Measurement Study surveys from 1993, 1998 and 2001. The last two rounds constitute an unbalanced longitudinal data set, while the first is a cross-section of different households. Under the assumption that the relationship between observed and unobserved characteristics is homogeneous across time, information from longitudinal data is used to clean the bias in the unpaired sample. In a second step, corrected unpaired observations are used jointly with panel data. This reduces the standard errors of the estimation coefficients and might increase their significance as well, otherwise compromised by the limited variation provided by the short longitudinal data. -- Panel data ; estimation efficiency ; pseudo-panel ; consumption model ; Nicaragua

We conduct a comparative analysis of Labor Market Policies and outcomes for the EU member states, for period 2000-2005. We document the main differences in Labor Market Policies across EU members, including new members states after 2004. We focus on indicators of policy generosity (expenditures relative do GDP) and relate these and other policy indicators to indicators of labor market outcomes and performance. Our results show that, on a cross-country basis, higher rates of employment are in general associated with: (i) higher expenditures on labor market policies, especially on active policies; (ii) a lower degree of rigidity in labor market institutions and in product market regulation.

We conduct a comparative analysis of Labor Market Policies and outcomes for the EU member states, for period 2000-2005. We document the main differences in Labor Market Policies across EU members, including new members states after 2004. We focus on indicators of policy generosity (expenditures relative do GDP) and relate these and other policy indicators to indicators of labor market outcomes and performance. Our results show that, on a cross-country basis, higher rates of employment are in general associated with: (i) higher expenditures on labor market policies, especially on active policies; (ii) a lower degree of rigidity in labor market institutions and in product market regulation.

This paper explores how cross-sectional data can be exploited jointly with longitudinal data, in order to increase estimation effciency while properly tackling the potential bias due to unobserved individual characteristics. We propose an innovative procedure and we show its implementation by analysing the determinants of consumption in Nicaragua, based on data from three Living Standard Measurement Study surveys from 1993, 1998 and 2001. The last two rounds constitute an unbalanced longitudinal data set, while the first is a cross-section of di®erent households. Under the assumption that the relationship between observed and unobserved characteristics is homogenous across time, information from longitudinal is are used to clean the bias in the unpaired sample. In a second step, corrected unpaired observations are used jointly with panel data. This reduces the standard errors of the estimation coe±cients and might increase their significance as well, otherwise compromised by the limited variation provided by the short longitudinal data.

AbstractThe need of further research on the interlink between culture and institutions has been strongly advocated by economists and institutionalists alike. However, bringing together culture and institutions within an organic framework, though, is a non-trivial operation. This is due to the complexity of the synergies between cultural aspects and institutional devices. This special issue attempts to start filling this gap and to build an ad-hoc systemic platform for disseminating such a debate. To this purpose, it brings together an organic collection of contributions in well-established conceptualisations of both culture and institutions, supported by robust and consistent methodological applications. The essays presented in this work provide consistent evidence and conceptual perspectives supporting the idea that the synergies between cultural and institutional aspects are of paramount importance to understand human behaviour, individuals' choices and societies' patterns. They also improve the theoretical, empirical and methodological understanding of the role of institutions and culture in different geopolitical and socio-economic realms. By doing so, these contributions place this special issue as prelude to further research on the co-evolution of culture and institutions and on its possible implications on different societal aspects, human development and well-being.

AbstractWe document and compare labour market institutions, policies and outcomes in the EU Member States, for the period between 1999 and 2006. Higher employment rates are in general positively associated with measures of policy generosity, especially with the use of active labour market policies (ALMP), and negatively with institutions and policies which induce rigidity in the labour market. We also find evidence that the relation between ALMP and employment levels is non‐monotonic and that it is conditional on the informal institutions prevailing in different countries.