Suchergebnisse

Emigration is considered to be the most important non-military threat to Lithuania. Available statistical data indicates that approx. 10% of Lithuania's residents have emigrated over past 16 years. According to the Eurostat data, Lithuania also had the highest rate of emigration in the EU in 2005. Most of the research done in this field explains high rates of emigration as a result of relatively low wage levels. However, this paper seeks to develop an alternative explanation, which focuses on the structural imbalances in the labor market. The imbalances have resulted from rapid increase in the supply of qualified university graduates & very slow development of Lithuania's knowledge intensive sectors, which could offer high quality workplaces. This argument is supported by empirical evidence. Adapted from the source document.

This article explores why some dismissed workers adapt successfully to the changing structure of an economy, while others remain trapped in low-quality jobs and experience deskilling. The associated case study relies on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 50 former employees of four bankrupt radio-electronics factories in Lithuania. It is found that workers with 'inherited' skills that are deep and technical are able to enter high-quality jobs when new firms emerge, recombining the physical, financial and human assets of destitute factories for new productive uses. However, if such economic opportunities are scarce, workers with inherited broad skill sets are relatively more successful in transitioning to services from manufacturing. Further, in line with the literature of the sociology of work, women and older workers are found to face more acute challenges in adapting to the economic shock associated with dismissal.

Legislators elected on a party list vote (proportional representation system) are ostensibly more disciplined than those elected in single-seat district contests. However, previous efforts to test this hypothesis in cross-national studies have led to ambiguous results, as contextual factors were found to be at least as important as the type of mandate. In the case of Lithuania, which has adopted a mixed electoral system, the behaviour of elected deputies in 962 roll-call votes between 2003 and 2006 reveals that deputies from single-seat constituencies, rather than deputies on party lists, are more disciplined in the Lithuanian Seimas. This unexpected finding may be related to the peculiar dynamics of mixed electoral systems. Adapted from the source document.