Publications
This article addresses the issue of socio-demographic attributes of NEET status (dropping out of employment, education or training for young people between 15 and 24 years old) in Russia, and presents an investigation of the impact of education on falling into NEET for the first time. Whilst existing studies on Russian NEETs provide a general descriptive insight into NEET status, little is known about the role of education in NEET-types formation. The empirical analysis was based on the micro-data of the Russian Labour Force Survey (LFS) by the Federal State Statistics Service for 1995–2017, and the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey Higher School of Economics (RLMS-HSE) for 2000–2017. Gender-specific multinomial logit analyses and dynamic multinomial logit panel regressions empirically support the heterogeneous nature of Russian NEETs confirming the human capital framework. They show that higher education does not provide a universal safety net from NEET status in Russia. While risks of NEET-inactivity are mainly concentrated among those who have primary or vocational education, NEET-unemployment in Russia is associated with higher education. Results contribute to the ongoing discussion about the changing rates of return for higher education and the saturation of the Russian labour market with university graduates.
Many datasets used in the social sciences have a hierarchical structure, where lower units of aggregation are ‘nested’ in higher units. In many disciplines, such data are analyzed using multilevel modeling (MLM, also known as hierarchical linear modeling). However, MLM as a framework is relatively unknown in economics. Instead, economists use a range of separate econometric methods, including cluster-robust standard errors, fixed effects models, models with cross-level interactions, and estimated dependent variable models. Relying on an extensive literature review, this paper describes this methodological divide and provides a detailed comparison between MLM and ‘economic methods’ in their abilities to deal with three methodological challenges inherent in multilevel data ‒ clustering, omitted variables, and coefficients' heterogeneity across groups. We unfold the comparative advantages of these two methodological approaches and provide practical recommendations about which of them should be used, why, and in what settings.
This chapter is dedicated to the gender pay gap (GPG) in Russia. First, it provides a review of the existing literature, covering key studies published in international and Russian academic journals. This investigation distinguishes between studies examining GPG in the 1990s and those analyzing the later period, briefly describing their focus and key findings regarding traditional economic explanations of GPG: differences in the amount of human capital between genders, family factors, industrial and occupational employment segregation, and discrimination. Second, this chapter presents and discusses the results of the standard Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition of GPG during the period from 1994 to 2018, by using RLMS-HSE micro-data. Finally, it formulates a few stylized facts and conclusions concerning the size, evolution, and sources of GPG in Russia and outlines some promising avenues for future research.
During many years Tajikistan has been the world leader in terms of the ratio of remittances to GDP. Late 2000s and early 2010s were the years of migration boom when the country’s dependence on financial streams from migration was established and the effects of migration started being evident. Much of these effects were driven by the characteristics of migrants and their households and the context of the country. This chapter reviews recent evidence on the effects that migration has on the lives of households in Tajikistan. Using data from a panel household survey, this chapter describes migrants’ profile and factors of migration decision with a special focus on migrant skills and their households’ wealth.
We shed new light on the relationship between cognition and patience, by providing documenting that the correlation between cognitive abilities and delay discounting is weaker for the same group of individuals if choices are incentivized. We conjecture that the exertion of higher cognitive effort, which induces higher involvement of the cognitive system, moderates the relationship between patience and cognition. To test this hypothesis, we analyze the relationship between various measures of cognitive ability, including the cognitive reflection test (CRT), a symbol-correspondence test, a numeracy test, as well as self-reported math ability and the interviewer’s assessment of the respondent’s sharpness and understanding, and different measures of patience, including incentivized choices between smaller sooner and larger later monetary payments and hypothetical inter-temporal trade-offs, for 107 subjects drawn from the adult population in Tbilisi (Georgia).
In this article, we employ a panel household survey from Tajikistan to study labor migrants’ location choices in Russia. We find that labor migrants from Tajikistan consider a wide variety of economic, demographic, and geographical characteristics of Russian regions when making location choices. We also find that experienced migrants are less responsive to current regional characteristics that might suggest path dependence in destination choices by experienced migrants.
This paper provides evidence on the impact of non-cognitive skills and attitudes towards risk on the decision to migrate from rural to urban areas. Our analysis is based on a unique four-wave panel of the Ukrainian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey for the period between 2003 and 2012. Adopting the Five Factor Model of personality structure, and using it in the evaluation of noncognitive skills, our results suggest that the personality trait openness to new experience increases the probability of migration. On the other hand, the non-cognitive skills conscientiousness and agreeableness are found to be negatively associated with the propensity to migrate. The impact of an increased willingness to take risks is more complex in that it increases the proclivity to move from rural areas to cities but lowers the migration intention from rural areas to towns. The effects are quantitatively significant and are robust to several sensitivity checks, including tests of reverse causality.
How severe are costs to workers when the economy undergoes a large recession? In this paper, we try to provide an answer to this question using as an example Latvia, a new EU member state, which faced the most severe recession in Europe and globally in 2008. We employ individual-level Latvian Labor Force Survey and EU SILC data over the years 2002–2016 and 2007–2015, respectively, and analyze transitions in the labor market and their determinants as well as occupational mobility. Our results show that adjustment takes place predominantly at the extensive margin since it is driven by flows to unemployment. We also show that by 2016 the labor market has bounced back to its pre-crisis performance and that for the average worker Latvia’s macroeconomic policies that focused on internal devaluation did not impose large costs in the medium run. However, the young, ethnic minorities and the less skilled were particularly affected by the crisis. Wage regressions suggest that job mobility is not associated with an increase in wages, i.e., with increased labor productivity.
The experience of developed countries – particularly member-states of the OECD – has shown that employers are actively investing in developing the human capital of their employees. According to research conducted by the World Bank, more than half of the companies in developed countries provide their employees with training in one form or another. There is, however, reason to believe that the situation is quite different in Russia. Some studies have shown that the level of investment in training in Russia is much lower. This difference can be explained by the fact that employers do not see the point in such investment because it is much easier to lure employees with the required qualifications than to train their own staff. Moreover, Russia faces a problem with high employee mobility, meaning that companies are not sure that they will get a return on their investment. Given these circumstances, the present study examines whether investments in human capital in Russia are profitable. It investigates the wage return to job-related training using a difference-in-differences estimator to control for unmeasured differences in ability and measured differences in past wages as a proxy for ability and motivation. Estimates use panel data from The Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey – Higher School of Economics from 2004 to 2011. As predicted, positive returns to training are identified and the returns increase absolutely with the level of past wages.
In this article, we study the minimum wage setting reform in Russia that aimed to decentralise the fixing of the minimum wage and to increase the involvement of social partners into this process. The old system of minimum wage setting was based on a single nationwide minimum wage which was differentiated across regions and occupations via a cumbersome framework of coefficients. The new system is a mixture of the government-set minimum wage at the federal level and collective agreements at the regional level. We show that the system of minimum wage setting has become more flexible. The reform succeeded in raising the real value of the minimum wage and increasing earnings of low-paid workers without causing significant negative effects in terms of employment. The reform did not lead to greater regional variation of minimum wages. Nevertheless, it introduced some new imbalances: an unintended consequence of the reform was the emergence of separate regional wage sub-minima for private and public sector workers in many regions. The major challenge in coming years is to strengthen the institutions of collective bargaining, introduce evidence-based evaluation and boost the capacities of government and non-government monitoring agencies.
The paper provides a critical appraisal of the normative program of behavioral economics known as ‘new paternalism’. First, it explores the theoretical foundations of behavioral economics, describes major behavioral anomalies associated with bounded rationality of economic agents and discusses its normative principles and political implications. It then discusses the main empirical and conceptual drawbacks of new paternalism and provides arguments for the alternative non-welfarist normative tradition based on the idea of freedom.
Economic growth in Russia in the first decade of this century almost doubled the country’s GDP but was accompanied by substantial reallocation of labor to the unregulated sector while formal employment was on gradual decline. The paper overviews evolution of the Russian labour market during the period of 2000-10 and discusses most general implications of informality to employment and earnings as well as the associated political economy challenges and consequences.
In this chapter, we provide evidence on compensating differentials in the labour market from the largest transition economy, Russia. Using the NOBUS micro-data and a methodology based on the estimation of the wage equation augmented by aggregate regional characteristics, we show that wage differentials across Russian regions have a compensative nature. Russian workers receive wage compensations for living in regions with a higher price level and worse non-pecuniary characteristics, such as a relatively low life expectancy, a high level of air pollution, poor medical services, a colder climate and a higher unemployment level. These compensations are not associated with the existing government system of compensating wage coefficients. After adjusting for regional amenities and disamenities, regional wages become positively correlated with interregional migration flows. According to our estimates, wage compensations along with differences in employment composition are able to account for about three fourths of the observed variation in wages across Russia regions.
In this paper, we explore the relationship between informality and earnings inequality using the data from the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS-HSE) for 2000–2010. We determine that during the entire period, earnings inequality was substantially higher in the informal sector. Informality increases earnings polarization, widening both tails of the earnings distribution. Nonetheless, inequality has declined in both formal and informal sectors. In the formal sector, changes in the distribution of monthly earnings between 2000 and 2010 were primarily generated by changes in the distribution of hourly earnings. In the informal sector, reduction of variation in monthly earnings went through two channels: declining differences in hourly rates and considerable compositional shifts within the informal sector. The results point to the importance of distributional analysis of earnings gaps and explicit accounting for the sector choice.
Informality is a defining characteristic of labour markets in developing and transition countries. This paper analyzes patterns of mobility across different forms of formal and informal employment in Russia. Using the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey household panel we estimate a dynamic multinomial logit model with individual heterogeneity and correct for the initial conditions problem. Simulations show that structural state dependence is weak and that transition rates from informal to formal employment are not lower than from non-employment. These results lend support to the integrated view of the labour market.
The chapter explores the structural change in Russian economy during the last 20 years since the beginning of transition from planned to market economy. We focus the study on the role and place of manufacturing industry in generation of jobs and incomes and on major internal and external factors responsible for those changes using mostly official data from the national statistical agency. We show that in general this period can be described as a period of deindustrialization and the share of manufacturing has been diminishing both in terms of its input in GDP and, in particular, in providing employment and incomes. We describe how various combinations of economic and political factors determined the manufacturing industry development at different sub-periods and argue that the domineering process was the passive adjustment of Russian enterprises to global competition by cutting down inefficient job-places and production lines. While this restructuring was accompanied by significant growth of labour productivity the rates of technological modernization were insufficient to increase competitiveness of majority of firms and to increase and diversify Russian manufacturing export due mostly to inefficient state policy for creating a favourable investment climate and to attract domestic and foreign direct investments to Russian manufacturing sector.
Russia, industrialization, manufacturing, economic policy, institutional development
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Using RLMS-HSE data set we analyze labor flows in the Russian labor market for 2000-2012. We document the high mobility rate and the transitive role played by non-participation. Division of all employed into three large groups (budgetary workers, workers in the corporate market sector, and employed in the non-corporate or informal sector) suggests that budgetary workers are low mobile compared to others, and informal workers and economically inactive individuals have higher probabilities to become unemployed than those who work formally. The paper exploits a few methodological approaches. First, we build transition matrices allowing estimate transition probabilities. Second, the Shorrocks indexes estimate intensity of mobility. Third, the dynamic multinomial logit model explores individual determinants of inter-status transitions and structural dependence from the previous labor market states. Fourth, we decompose the change in unemployment rate as the combination of incoming and outcoming flows. This procedure suggests that the decline in unemployment is explained by decrease in incoming flows while the outflows remain largely stable. Observed intensity and direction of flows fit the institutional configuration of the Russian labor market model.
Over the past decade Russia has experienced stable economic growth with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growing by 7 percent per year from 1998 to 2007. While the nation still enjoys a relatively healthy growth rate, analysis shows that the sources for the future growth are limited and to boost growth Russia should rely on increasing labor productivity. Improving productivity will impose new demands on Russia's workforce requiring better skills to satisfy the needs of economy growth. The international business environment survey reports that Russia's private sector considers the lack of skills and education of workers to be the most severe constraint on its expansion and growth. Despite the very high level of formal education attained by Russian workers the problem behind this may be explained by the current quality and content of education, which does not develop the necessary skills and competences demanded by the labor market. This report examines the reasons and the consequences of this skills deficit, which constrain productivity and limits innovation ultimately stifling accelerated economic growth in Russia. The objectives of the report are: 1) to deepen the understanding of the structure and composition of this skills deficit by analyzing in detail the demand for and supply of particular cognitive and non-cognitive skills; 2) to review the capacity and problems of the current systems for skills provision in Russia both through the public and private provision thereby identifying some of the underlying reasons for this skills gap; and 3) to support the development of evidence-based policy making in professional education and training, which will lead to a system better responding to the challenges of the economy and labor market.
This study considers the influence of structutal change to aggregate labour productivity growth of the Russian economy. The term “structural change” refers to labour reallocation both between industries and between formal and informal segments within an industry. Using Russia KLEMS and official Rosstat data we decompose aggregate labour productivity growth into intra-industry (within) and between industry effects with four alternative methods of the shift share analysis. All methods provide consistent results and demonstrate that total labour reallocation has been growth enhancing though the informality expansion has had the negative effect. As our study suggests, it is caused by growing variation in productivity levels across industries.
In the early twentieth century, a large number of households resettled from the European to the Asian part of the Russian Empire. We propose that this dramatic migration was rooted in institutional changes initiated by the 1906 Stolypin land titling reform. One might expect better property rights to decrease the propensity to migrate by improving economic conditions in the reform area. However, this titling reform increased land liquidity and actually promoted migration by easing financial constraints and decreasing opportunity costs. Treating the reform as a quasi-natural experiment, we employ difference-in-differences analysis on a panel of province-level data that describe migration and economic conditions. We find that the reform had a sizeable effect on migration. To verify the land liquidity effect, we exploit variation in the number of households participating in the reform. This direct measure of the reform mechanism estimates that land liquidity explains approximately 18% of migration during this period.
The Labour Market Reform in Germany: a Special Case or an Example to Follow? In this article we study the institutional reform of the German labour market during the period 2003-2005, the so-called Hartz reforms. The aim of this paper is threefold. First, we describe the economic and institutional context of the German labour market before the Hartz reforms in light of general trends in market economies. The falling competitiveness of the German economy, the need to increase the flexibility and dynamics of the labor market have made the ruling elite to proceed with institutional transformations. Second, we analyze the theoretical concepts that became the basis for the labour market reform and examine the changes in the main labour market institutions. Finally, we evaluate the outcomes of the institutional reforms for economic activity, employment, unemployment and labour costs. Of major interest is the question about the impact of the Hartz reforms on internal flexibility. In this work we rely on the institutional analysis. Results of the study contribute to the understanding of the mechanism of labour market transformations. At the same time its main conclusions can be used for improving the economic and social policy in the Russian Federation. We came to the following conclusions. We have found the positive impact of the changes in labour market institutions on labour market outcomes: especially on the dynamics of economic activity and employment. The Hartz reforms fundamentally modified the functioning of the German labor market and increased both flexibility and job creation capacities. However, the pattern of German de-regulatory reforms accesses mostly the margins of the labour market, i.e. ‘outsiders’, that contribute to a growing dualisation of the employment system. This dualisation trend was reinforced by dynamics in industrial relations and company employment practices where we can observe growing reliance on mechanisms of internal flexibility for the skilled core work force and increasing use of non-standard types of employment in less specifically skilled occupations.
Over the past decade Russia has experienced stable economic growth with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growing by 7 percent per year from 1998 to 2007. While the nation still enjoys a relatively healthy growth rate, analysis shows that the sources for the future growth are limited and to boost growth Russia should rely on increasing labor productivity. Improving productivity will impose new demands on Russia's workforce requiring better skills to satisfy the needs of economy growth. The international business environment survey reports that Russia's private sector considers the lack of skills and education of workers to be the most severe constraint on its expansion and growth. Despite the very high level of formal education attained by Russian workers the problem behind this may be explained by the current quality and content of education, which does not develop the necessary skills and competences demanded by the labor market. This report examines the reasons and the consequences of this skills deficit, which constrain productivity and limits innovation ultimately stifling accelerated economic growth in Russia. The objectives of the report are: 1) to deepen the understanding of the structure and composition of this skills deficit by analyzing in detail the demand for and supply of particular cognitive and non-cognitive skills; 2) to review the capacity and problems of the current systems for skills provision in Russia both through the public and private provision thereby identifying some of the underlying reasons for this skills gap; and 3) to support the development of evidence-based policy making in professional education and training, which will lead to a system better responding to the challenges of the economy and labor market.
Effective property rights protection plays a fundamental role in promoting economic performance. Yet measurement problems make the relationship between property rights and entrepreneurship an ambiguous issue. As an advancement on previous research in this paper we propose a new approach to the evaluation of the security of property rights based on direct measures that overcomes some limitations of previous studies. We apply this new metrics to a survey of manufacturing firms in Russia to identify the economic effects associated with the lack of property protection in a transition economy. Our analysis supports the view that there is a close relationship between institutions, property rights and economic growth. Our findings confirm that redistributive risks provide a depressing effect on investment and innovative activity of manufacturing enterprises and potentially result in a huge loss in efficiency and economic growth, which in other institutional settings could have been avoided.