Suchergebnisse

The paper is an English translation of Gospodarcze podłoże rozbiorów Polski by Jan Rutkowski, published originally in Polish in "Ruch Prawniczy, Ekonomiczny i Socjologiczny" in 1930. The text is published as a part of a jubilee edition of the "Adam Mickiewicz University Law Review. 100th Anniversary of the Faculty of Law and Administration" devoted to the achievements of the late Professors of the Faculty of Law and Administration of the Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań.

The objective of this note is to present the results of the recently completed employer skills survey, and to discuss their policy implications. The analysis finds that there is a skills shortage in Georgia despite high unemployment. It is difficult for employers, especially in the modern sector, to find workers with the required skills. Employers demand not only 'hard' technical skills, but also 'soft' social and behavioural skills (such as openness to experience) as well as higher-order cognitive skills (such as problem solving and creative thinking). And these are the skills that young Georgians often lack. Box one summarizes the main results of the analysis and shows the core employability skills that young workers lack most often. The note is organized as follows. Section one looks at the supply of and demand for skills, and shows that, despite high unemployment, there is a skills shortage. Section two examines the demand for skills more closely. It identifies skills that determine the employers hiring decisions, and skills that young job applicant most frequently lack. Section three focuses on firm organized training as a way of coping with a skills shortage. Section four concludes and discusses policy implications of the analysis.

Labor markets in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe underwent a dramatic transformation. Notably, this transformation took place within just a few years. Until the mid-2000s job opportunities were scarce and unemployment was high. But since then labor demand has picked up and unemployment has dropped substantially. In contrast to the earlier period of weak labor demand, it is now the supply side of the labor market that constrains job creation. These spectacular improvements can hardly be attributed to the greater labor market flexibility or to the more efficient matching of workers with jobs because no major reforms to labor market institutions were recently implemented in the region. Instead, the main cause was a strong increase in labor demand, as evidenced by the increase in the job vacancy rates and real wages. The surge in labor demand is likely to reflect successful enterprise restructuring supported by the improvements in the investment climate and access to global markets associated with the EU accession. For a long time enterprises in transition economies were improving competitiveness by shedding of redundant labor. Now they use productivity gains to invest, expand output and hire more workers. However, the emerging skills shortages may constrain firm growth. Thus the transition economies face a challenge of mobilizing effective labor supply. This requires improving labor supply incentives and investing in education. This paper documents the recent changes in labor market conditions in the transition economies, suggests tentative explanations, and finally suggests policies to address the emerging challenges.

AbstractEconomic transition turns the inherited wage structure upside down. Changes are rapid and dramatic. The Polish example shows that even in the first year of market‐oriented reforms, there was a marked increase in earnings inequality, a dramatic rise in the wage premium for white‐collar skills, and a significant jump in the returns to education. In contrast, skills acquired under the old system lost their value. It is younger workers who are rewarded with higher wages. The changes are spearheaded by the private sector, where inequalities and the educational premium are higher than in the public sector. Privatization, thus, has its social aspects in that it strengthens the incentive for human capital investment. This paper documents these changes and sets out possible explanations.