Suchergebnisse

Positive impact of human capital on economic growth seems to be undisputable but its magnitude depends on to what extent high quality education and skills are demanded and valued by the labour market. This essay argues that the lack of demand for human capital cannot be cured by growing supply if other things remain intact. The author formulates 10 doubts concerning human capital absorption in the Russian economy. These doubts, supported by statistical and anecdotal evidence, relate to low quality of the Russian institutional environment which limits demand for labour and distorts its structure.

The article discusses the issue of shortage of skills in the Russian industry. Using microdata from a survey of industrial enterprises, the author confirms that most of employers complain of difficulties in hiring and attaching skilled workers. In case of mass occupations, this shortage relates mostly to low efficient enterprises, which are unable or unwilling to pay competitive market going wage. More efficient and better paying firms are less likely to face shortage of general skills on the labor market but may face limited supply of specific skills.

The article discusses the politics of the labor market reform aimed at employment deregulation and decrease in firing costs. Such reform promises to benefit most of the population and is expected to affect positively job creation and aggregate employment. However, any reforms of labor market institutions are extremely complicated in the political aspect. The author discusses two closely interconnected questions: why these reforms are so difficult for politicians and which measures can help in overcoming the existing political constraints.

The paper discusses two major dimensions of labor market adjustment to crisis conditions in Russia in 2020. Price adjustment manifests itself through changes in wages, and quantitative adjustment — in hiring and separations. Most general conclusion is that, in 2020, the former dominated, while the latter also took place. Our analysis shows deep but very selective and short run fall in wages. Exposure to downward wage flexibility was a function of type of economic activity and type of residence, not of demographic characteristics or education. Freezing new hires became the main instrument for quantitative adjustment, though the intensity of separations decreased as well. Reduction in both components of labor turnover means slower workers' reallocation and preservation of the old economic structure. If during the previous crises legislative and administrative measures slowed down reductions in personnel, which could be beneficial for employers, in the covid case employers seek to preserve the matching capital needed for fast and efficient recovery and growth.

The paper discusses the evolution of the informal employment in the Russian labor market over the last decade. It uses all consecutive waves of the Labor Force Survey conducted by the Russian Federal State Statistics Service in 1999-2009. Looking inside the informality and tracing its evolution over time, we pay special attention to heterogeneity of the informal employment and distinguish salaried informal workers and informal self-employed as two major informal groups. Simple descriptive analysis is complemented by estimating marginal effects from multinomial logit regressions. Additionally, we use cross-section estimates of informality for all Russian regions for 1999-2009 and build a new hand-made panel database with regions as observations.

The paper starts with discussing institutional framework for public sector wage setting in Russia. Given that individual choice of the sector is endogenous to wages, the authors propose alternative econometric techniques for the public-private wage gap estimation. Applying switching regression and propensity score matching techniques that allow correcting for non-random sector selection, the paper provides wage gap estimates for various demographic, occupational, and territorial population subgroups. As is shown, there is significant cross-group variation in the wage gap. The paper concludes that to eliminate the negative gap wages in the public sector should be linked to the private sector wages at the regional level.

This study considers the influence of structural change on 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 a negative effect. As our study suggests, it is caused by growing variation in productivity levels across industries.

This paper discusses the structural change in the Russian employment and explores whether the evolution of employment in 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.

The paper presents major findings from the multi-year study of informality in the Russian labor market conducted by the CLMS—HSE. The authors argue that the concept of informality though it seems to be intuitively clear is neither conceptually straightforward, nor easily measurable, nor univocal in terms of economic and social implications. The article explores the issues related to definitions, measurement, evolution, profiling, impact of institutions, mobility, earnings and inequality. All findings and conclusions are supported by special econometric studies and large data sets.

Using different cross-country data sets and simple econometric techniques we study public attitudes towards the police. More positive attitudes are more likely to emerge in the countries that have better functioning democratic institutions, less prone to corruption but enjoy more transparent and accountable police activity. This has a stronger impact on the public opinion (trust and attitudes) than objective crime rates or density of policemen. Citizens tend to trust more in those (policemen) with whom they share common values and can have some control over. The latter is a function of democracy. In authoritarian countries — "police states" — this tendency may not work directly. When we move from semi-authoritarian countries to openly authoritarian ones the trust in the police measured by surveys can also rise. As a result, the trust appears to be U-shaped along the quality of government axis. This phenomenon can be explained with two simple facts. First, publicly spread information concerning police activity in authoritarian countries is strongly controlled; second, the police itself is better controlled by authoritarian regimes which are afraid of dangerous (for them) erosion of this institution.

The paper is based on representative population surveys conducted in various countries of Europe, Asia and North America and discusses cross-country variation in populations subjective perceptions of risk of unemployment. This risk is measured by directly asking respondents whether they fear losing their job and to what degree. The paper shows that the strength of the fear varies significantly across countries in the sample as well as across various subgroups of population within the countries. Higher unemployment strengthens the fear but country-specific behavioral reactions induced by the fear may differ. Population in the "old" capitalist countries seems to react differently than in the transition countries while in the former case the Anglo-Saxon and the Scandinavian countries also demonstrate different patterns.

The article focuses on diversification and destandartization of employment in the Russian economy. The authors discuss global and objective preconditions for this process but underline a few specific features of the Russian case. The latter are due to the market transition as well as to incomplete and selective enforcement of the excessively restrictive employment protection legislation. This explains high incidence of household-based subsistence farming, underemployment, time-related overemployment, informal employment against low level of formal contracts for fixed-term or part-time employment. Using representative data the authors illustrate all major forms of non-standard employment in Russia that have evolved since 1992.