Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/20667 
Year of Publication: 
2004
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 1370
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
In this paper, we present a comparative analysis of employment determination in four transition economies as they move from central planning to a market economy in the early 1990s. We use firm level panel data sets from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia to estimate dynamic employment equations for the period immediately before and after the start of transition. We find evidence that firms behave for the most part as if they were on their labor demand curves, with little evidence of labor hoarding. There were significant cross-country variations in the determinants of employment during the reform process however. Hungarian and Polish firms started the transition already substantially reformed, and became even more responsive to market signals as transition proceeded. In contrast, firms in the Czech and Slovak republics started in the completely unresponsive mode characteristic of central planning, but rapidly caught up with their counterparts in Hungary and Poland.
Subjects: 
employment determination
transition economies
JEL: 
J23
J66
J50
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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