TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Basu, Swati
AU  - Estrin, Saul
AU  - Svejnar, Jan
        TI  - Employment Determination in Enterprises under Communism and in Transition: Evidence from Central Europe
        PY  - 2004/Oct/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 1370
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp1370
        AB  - 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.
        KW  - transition economies
KW  - employment determination
        ER  -