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on Confederation of Independent States |
| By: | Hartmut Lehmann; Tiziano Razzolini; Anzelika Zaiceva |
| Abstract: | Having unique data we investigate the link between job separations (displacement and quits) and informal employment, which we define in several ways posing the general question whether the burden of informality falls disproportionately on job separators in the Russian labor market. After we have established positive causal effects of displacement and quits on informal employment we analyze whether displaced workers experience more involuntary informal employment than their non-displaced counterparts. Our main results confirm our contention that displacement entraps some of the workers in involuntary informal employment. Those who quit, in turn, experience voluntary informality for the most part, but there seems a minority of quitting workers who end up in involuntary informal jobs. This scenario does not fall on all the workers who separate but predominantly on workers with low human capital. We also pursue the issue of informality persistence and find that informal employment is indeed persistent as some workers churn from one informal job to the next. Our study contributes to the debate in the informality literature regarding segmented versus integrated labor markets. It also contributes to the literature on displacement by establishing informal employment as an important cost of displacement. We also look at the share of undeclared wages in formal jobs and find that these shares are larger for separators than for incumbents, with displaced workers bearing the brunt of this manifestation of informality |
| Date: | 2012–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mod:depeco:0674&r=cis |
| By: | Noël, P.; Findlater, S.; Chyong, C. K. |
| Abstract: | The Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) are three amongst the smallest gas markets in Europe. They import all the gas they consume from Russia, with whom they have difficult political relationships. A disruption of their supply from Russia, whatever the cause, would have severe consequences as a large share of their peak winter consumption could not be replaced by alternative gas or other fuels. The three governments want to invest in improving gas supply security and the European Commission pushes in the same direction. But what should they do? We present an assessment of the cost of various national and regional options – dual-fuel for heat plants and CHPs; strategic gas storage; strategic LNG terminals – to increase gas supply security. The cost is calculated over thirty years for different scenarios of supply disruptions. Uncertainty in commodity prices and interest rates is taken into account through Monte Carlo simulations. We draw the policy conclusions, taking into account the regional political context. |
| JEL: | O13 P28 Q48 |
| Date: | 2012–01–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cam:camdae:1204&r=cis |
| By: | Falck, Oliver; Guenther, Christina; Heblich, Stephan; Kerr, William R. |
| Abstract: | We identify the impact of local firm concentration on incumbent performance with a quasi natural experiment. When Germany was divided after World War II, many firms in the machine tool industry fled the Soviet occupied zone to prevent expropriation. We show that the regional location decisions of these firms upon moving to western Germany were driven by non-economic factors and heuristics rather than existing industrial conditions. Relocating firms increased the likelihood of incumbent failure in destination regions, a pattern that differs sharply from new entrants. We further provide evidence that these effects are due to increased competition for local resourc es. |
| Keywords: | Germany; labor; firm dynamics; competition; Agglomeration |
| Date: | 2011–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:stl:stledp:2011-17&r=cis |
| By: | Jörg Baten; Mikolaj Szoltysek (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany) |
| Abstract: | We trace the development of numeracy in Poland and Russia from the early 17th century onwards, and numeracy in Belarus, Ukraine, and Lithuania from the 18th century onwards. The fact that western Poland was doing relatively well during the 16th and early 17th centuries, but was not able to converge to Western European levels during the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries, and even fell back relative to Southern Europe during this period, might support the hypothesis that the second serfdom development was one of the core factors delaying Eastern European human capital accumulation. The major wars in the region also had a devastating effect on numeracy levels. |
| JEL: | J1 Z0 |
| Date: | 2012–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2012-002&r=cis |