Enterprise Restructuring and Unemployment in Models of Transition


Book Description

This volume is primarily concerned with the first key component of transition: restructuring—the changing behavior of firms and their complex interaction with the labor market, most particularly with unemployment. Chapter 1 gives an overview of firm behavior, restructuring, and the labor market in the transition. Chapter 2 focuses on the effect of output, ownership, and legal form on employment and wages in Central European firms. Chapter 3 explores employment and wage setting in three stages of Hungary's labor market transition. Chapter 4 considers enterprises in the Polish transition. Chapter 5 explains labor market flows in the midst of structural change. Chapter 6 explores the role of unemployment and restructuring in the transition, and chapter 7 presents a numerical model of transition. Emphasis is placed on the Czech and Slovak Republics, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, and Russia.







Resetting Price Controls for Privatized Utilities


Book Description

QUOTEThe aim of regulation is to protect consumers, while ensuring that the company remains viable and has an incentive to operate efficiently.QUOTEIn many developing countries private companies are replacing government agencies as owners and operators of infrastructure services. Governments must now develop new skills in economic regulation of these private providers to protect consumer interests, while also ensuring that the companies remain economically and financially sound and have incentives to operate efficiently. This manual provides new economic regulators with practical guidance on how to proceed in this fairly technical new field.Chapters cover: · Revising Price Controls · Procedures for Resetting a Price Control · Present Value Calculations · Investment and the Regulatory Asset Base · The Rate of Return · The Philosophy of Price Controls · The Form of a Price Control · Operating Costs · Revenues




Privatization and Labor


Book Description

Despite its importance, labor is one of the least addressed issues in privatization. The lack of information on the employment impact of privatization has exacerbated the fears and concerns of governments and workers alike. This paper examines the effects of privatization on labor and analyzes the mechanisms that governments can use to minimize the political and social costs of labor restructuring in privatization, by drawing on the experience of mixed economies.




Development Centre Seminars Different Paths to a Market Economy: China and European Economies in Transition


Book Description

The similarities and differences between the transition experiences of the Central European countries and the People's Republic of China are often, wrongly, taken as alternative approaches to the same problem. In reality, there is great complexity ...




The European Labour Market


Book Description

This book brings together up-to-date findings on the regional dimensions of European labour markets. It provides a conceptual and empirical study of the interactions between the European economy and its regions, paying particular attention to the issue of the transition of Central and Eastern European countries to a market economy. The topics analysed include: the structure of the shocks affecting employment (regional, industrial, national), the relationships between labour market efficiency and the regional distribution of unemployment, wage flexibility in EU member countries or in their regions and the role of active labour market policies in affecting the regional distribution of employment and unemployment.




Enhancing Job Opportunities


Book Description

Annotation This title looks at ways governments can promote the creation of more and better jobs in the region. It addresses the question of why labour market outcomes have been disappointing during the transition, and suggests policy interventions to promote firms' investment, job creation and economic development.




Unemployment, Wages, and the Impact of Active Labour Market Policies in a Regional Perspective


Book Description

Labour markets within countries vary in their performance. Some regions suffer from labour shortages, while others are faced with high unemployment figures. Furthermore structure and qualification of the workforce differs, and real wage patterns show diverging pictures between and within regions. Based on these empirical facts this study sheds some light on the wage unemployment relation and the impact active labour market policies has on this. Basic assumption is that market imperfections lead to unemployment in regional labour markets, partly owing to region-specific wage structures, and that active labour market policies can alleviate this problem. Five aspects are focused: The interaction of regional unemployment and wages based on the wage curve, the question how qualification patterns influence the regional wage level, the effectiveness of regional labour market policies, the impact of these policies on regional wage-setting, and the impact of employment service performance on real wages.




Reconstituting the Market


Book Description

Reconstituting the Market details many transition economies - some already well known, others enjoying very little attention from researchers - and a range of important issues to do with state building and its links with microeconomic transformation. The book was based on the authors' view that transition in the new states would be fundamentally more difficult than in more established states - a view which turned out to be incorrect, since in all the transition countries the former communist state had to be largely rebuilt as part of the complex process of constructing a market economy. Aspects of this process, focusing on competition policy, privatization, and the regulation of public utilities, are examined in respect to Central Europe, the Baltics, Russia, Ukraine and Moldova. The result is essential reading for anyone seeking an up-to-date account of key transition issues, covering both familiar and unfamiliar countries.




Privatization and Regulation of Transport Infrastructure


Book Description

The 1990s saw an increase in the liberalisation of transport policies and a strengthening of the role of private operators and investors in transport infrastructure worldwide. The search for sustained improvement in efficiency is probably secondary to the need to find additional financing, but it is improvement in services that is at the core of the new role of the government in transport. Governments must now become fair economic regulators of many of the privately operated transport services and infrastructures. This book examines the major challenges that governments are likely to face in taking on their new role in transport.