Publications

This paper deals with age and educational dimensions of the labour supply in Russia and explores two time periods: from 2000 to 2015 (retrospective), and the next 15 years (prospective). For our analysis we exploit the micro-census (2015) data and all LFS waves covering the retrospective period. Combining demographic projections with expected employment rates and data on educational achievement we forecast the employment composition up to 2030. If recent past changes in both age and education have contributed to economic growth, their effect is likely to be negative in the next 15 years. These two dimensions are directly associated with such challenges as ageing and over-education of the labour force. Russia is not unique here, but it is more exposed to both dimensions than are many other countries due to its demographic and educational developments. The paper concludes with several tentative policies that could ease, although not cure, the problem.

This article addresses the issue of socio-demographic factors of becoming NEET, i.e. dropping out of employment, education or training for individuals aged 15-24. Empirical analysis was based on the micro-data of Russian Labour Force Survey (LFS) by Federal State Statistics Service for 1995-2015. The paper introduces the results of the analysis of the impact of education on NEET status which were conducted for Russia on the basis of regression estimations for the first time. Contrary to previous studies, higher education doesn’t provide a universal ”safety net” from NEET status for all young people. NEET-unemployed youth in Russia mainly have tertiary education of one level or another, while NEET-inactivity is concentrated among those who have only primary education and the size of the effect becomes even more pronounced for rural residents and females.

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.

This paper studies how the previous destination choices by household members might affect current choice by labor migrants from Tajikistan in Russia. We use 2007 and 2009 waves of Tajikistan Living Standards Survey combined with Rosstat regional statistics to analyze the effect of 2007 household migration experience and receiving regions’ characteristics on 2008-2009 migrants’ location choice within Russia. Our results suggest that there exists inertia in migrants’ choices: previously chosen destinations largely define future ones. This inertia results in quickly weakening effect of labor market conditions on migrants’ choice with migration experience

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.

The paper explores the public-private wage gap in the Russian economy along the whole wage distribution. Using RLM-HSE data set, it examines how gaps at various points of the distribution changed over time during 2000-2014 and presents decompositions of the gaps into components explained by differences in characteristics and differences in returns. The results suggest that the gap persists over time and varies along the wage distribution. During the 2000s low skilled public sector workers had smaller pay gaps than those higher skilled had. Governmental policy interventions and the economic crisis of 2008-2009 contributed to the narrowing of the gap and its partial equalization along the distribution. New set of policy changes associated with the May 2012 Presidential Decrees strengthened these tendencies but did not eliminate the gaps.

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.

Since Aristotle, a vast literature has suggested that economic inequality has important political consequences. Higher inequality is thought to increase demand for government income redistribution in democracies and to discourage democratization and promote class conflict and revolution in dictatorships. Most such arguments crucially assume that ordinary people know how high inequality is, how it has been changing, and where they fit in the income distribution. Using a variety of large, cross-national surveys, we show that, in recent years, ordinary people have had little idea about such things. What they think they know is often wrong. Widespread ignorance and misperceptions of inequality emerge robustly, regardless of the data source, operationalization, and method of measurement. Moreover, we show that the perceived level of inequality—and not the actual level—correlates strongly with demand for redistribution and reported conflict between rich and poor. We suggest that most theories about political effects of inequality need to be either abandoned or reframed as theories about the effects of perceived inequality.

In this paper, we study the minimum wage reform in Russia, which aimed to decentralize the fixing of the minimum wage and to increase the involvement of social partners in this process. The old system of the minimum wage setting was based on a single nation-wide minimum wage, which was differentiated across regions and occupations via a cumbersome framework of coefficients. The new system is a mixture of a government-legislated minimum wage at the federal level and collective agreements at regional levels. 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 considerable negative effects in terms of employment. However, the reform did not lead to greater regional variation of minimum wages. 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 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

 

In this paper, I explore public-private wage gaps across Russian regions. Using the October wage survey data for 2005-2013, I show that the wage gap varies significantly across space. My analysis suggests that this variation can be explained by the demographic composition of regional population (or by demand for the public services) and by fiscal positions of the regional budgets (affecting the supply side).

Numerous economic, sociological and psychological studies show that job loss leads to the major decline of social position measured by various indicators like income level, subjective wellbeing, life chances, job-search abilities. Job loss also leads to the serious downfall of subjective social status. However the connection between job loss and subjective social status dynamics remains to be insuffi ciently investigated. Thus little is actually known about the differences in perceptions of social position decline that come as a result of occupation-specifi c characteristics of previous employment. Given the considerable heterogeneity of employment itself, the effect of previous occupation membership on subjective social status dynamics in case of job loss may differ considerably. So the question occurs: for which occupational groups job loss is more painful in terms of subjective social status decline? Do unemployment transition and labour market exit differ in terms of its consequences for subjective social status decline for various occupational groups? Present study was conducted on the basis of the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey – Higher School of Economics (RLMS – HSE) for 2000–2012 and focuses on the role of previous occupation engagement on the dynamics of subjective social status of the unemployed and out of labour force individuals. Empirical stage of analysis included both descriptive measures (transition probabilities matrices analysis, comparisons of occupation-specifi c subjective social status means before and after job loss, identifi cation of occupations with higher probabilities of job loss) and estimations of panel regression models with fi xed effects. Results presented clarify the social penalty of job loss for various occupations on the Russian labour market and position of occupational groups in a modern Russian society.

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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.

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This paper explores the perceptions of inequality and their associations with social mobility exploiting the ISSP and LITs cross-country data set. These perceptions vary across countries as well as across individuals within countries. We try to explain this variation by examining the diverse opportunities for vertical social mobility  available to individuals. The main research question raised in the paper is whether our perception of income differentiation is driven by experience of past mobility and availability of the upward leading instruments. In other words, is a more socially mobile society more tolerant  to income inequality than a less mobilite and segmented one? The intuitive answer seems to be an obvious "yes", but empirical evidence is still scarce.

This paper discusses the structural change in the Russian employment and explores whether the evolution of employment over 2000-2012 followed the scenario of progressive upgrading in job quality or brought about the polarization of jobs in terms of their quality. Jobs are defined here as occupation-industry cells and their quality is measured through relative earnings and education levels. Using detailed micro-data from a few complementary large scale surveys, we rank all jobs according to the earnings and educational criteria and divide these distributions into 5 quintiles. At the next stage, we explore dynamic changes in job quality and socio-demographic characteristics of workers in different quintiles. The paper rejects the polarization scenario and confirms the upgrading hypothesis. 

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.

This monograph continues the series of publications on the Russian labor market prepared by the team of scholars from the Center for Labour Market Studies at the Higher School of Economics. The book provides a comprehensive analysis of various aspects of informality in the Russian labour market. It discusses a wide range of informality related issues, including its economic nature and causes, evolution and composition, measurement and policy implications. Authors question the labour market segmentation theory and the popular thesis that informal employees represent an inferior segment of the labour force that is trapped in bad jobs. Significant attention is paid to costs and benefits of going informal for workers, firms, and the society. A special focus in the book is on earnings in the formal and informal sectors, their impact on evolution of inequality and formal-informal labour mobility. A few chapters explore impact of institutions (such as taxation and minimum wage) on incidence of informal work. Implications for subjective social status and household well-being are also explored. Most of the chapters presented in the book are based on studies that use large sets of microdata and modern econometric techniques.

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.

This article addresses the elaboration of a new approach to informal employment research based on analyzing subjective social status. In spite of numerous studies conducted over the past 40 years many questions still exist in the field of informal employment research. The heterogeneous nature of activities incorporated into the concept of “informality” defines the ambiguity of its impact on the economy and society. Thus, little is actually known about the socioeconomic position of informal workers and the nature of informal employment. Is informality a kind of stratifying mechanism embedded in the social structure that changes the position of the informally employed, or not? The so-called “direct” approach based on analyzing levels of income was considered to be an inappropriate framework and thus indicated that the consequences of informal employment need to be further analyzed together with indirect – subjective – measures. The present paper discusses methodological issues and presents results concerning the subjective social position of informally employed workers in contrast to formal workers, the unemployed, and the economically inactive population. The study was carried out on the basis of a large nationally representative panel: the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey of the Higher School of Economics (RLMS-HSE) for 2000-2010. The existence of three-tier informal employment in Russia is revealed with self-employment being better off than formal employment and informal wage and salary work. No significant difference between informal wage and salary work and formal employment in terms of subjective social status is found. Thereby, one can suppose that the difference between types of employment is not embedded in the social structure at all. Taken as an indirect indicator of the quality formal employment in Russia, this could point to the great weakness of labor market institutions and the idle channels of social mobility of formal employment in Russia.

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.