State Labor And The Transition To A Market Economy

In response to mounting debt crises and macroeconomic instability in the 1980s, many countries in the developing world adopted neoliberal policies promoting the unfettered play of market forces and deregulation of the economy and attempted large-scale structural adjustment, including the privatization of public-sector industries. How much influence did various societal groups have on this transition to a market economy, and what explains the variances in interest-group influence across countries? In this book, Agnieszka Paczyńska explores these questions by studying the role of organized labor in the transition process in four countries in different regions—the Czech Republic and Poland in eastern Europe, Egypt in the Middle East, and Mexico in Latin America. In Egypt and Poland, she shows, labor had substantial influence on the process, whereas in the Czech Republic and Mexico it did not. Her explanation highlights the complex relationship between institutional structures and the “critical junctures” provided by economic crises, revealing that the ability of groups like organized labor to wield influence on reform efforts depends to a great extent on not only their current resources (such as financial autonomy and legal prerogatives) but also the historical legacies of their past ties to the state.

In response to mounting debt crises and macroeconomic instability in the 1980s, many countries in the developing world adopted neoliberal policies promoting the unfettered play of market forces and deregulation of the economy and attempted large-scale structural adjustment, including the privatization of public-sector industries. How much influence did various societal groups have on this transition to a market economy, and what explains the variances in interest-group influence across countries? In this book, Agnieszka Paczyńska explores these questions by studying the role of organized labor in the transition process in four countries in different regions—the Czech Republic and Poland in eastern Europe, Egypt in the Middle East, and Mexico in Latin America. In Egypt and Poland, she shows, labor had substantial influence on the process, whereas in the Czech Republic and Mexico it did not. Her explanation highlights the complex relationship between institutional structures and the “critical junctures” provided by economic crises, revealing that the ability of groups like organized labor to wield influence on reform efforts depends to a great extent on not only their current resources (such as financial autonomy and legal prerogatives) but also the historical legacies of their past ties to the state. This new edition features an epilogue that analyzes the role of organized labor uprisings in 2011, the protests in Egypt, the overthrow of Mubarak, and the post-Mubarak regime.

This book empirically investigates the changes in labor market structure accompanying the labor market reform in China by focusing on the labor market segmentation problems from the 1980s to 2013. The book also aims to examine the effect of labor policy reforms on individual, household and enterprise behavior, including the causes and consequences of labor market reform in China, particularly the influences of labor policy reforms on labor market performance. Offering valuable insights into the changing structure of the Chinese economy, this book will be of interest to scholars, activists, and economists.

Nowhere is the tension attending simultaneous political democratization and economic liberalization more sharply felt than in the realm of labour relations. What is happening in Soviet trade unions today? How will the emerging independent unions respond to anticipated rises in unemployment? What kind of social regulation of the labour market will be appropriate in the future? These papers from a pathbreaking US-Soviet conference on labour issues reveal a considerable diversity of views on questions whose resolution will be essential to social peace in this period of transition. Among the noted contributors are Joseph Berliner, Sam Bowles, Richard Freeman, Leonid Gordon, V.L.Kosmarskii, Alla Nazimova, Michael Piore, Boris Rakitskii, Iurii Volkov, Ben Ward and Tatiana Zaslavskaia.

The collapse of the state-controlled economies of the former Eastern Bloc will certainly change the way the global economy operates. Bringing together scholars from a wide variety of theoretical perspectives, different nations and different empirical research traditions, this title examines the ongoing transition and the implications of market transitions for individual life chances, state economic policy and social stratification systems. The volume includes scholarship that focuses on both single nation and cross-national research, plus research contributions that compare state socialist/former state socialist political economies with conditions elsewhere in the world.

"The paper reviews labor market developments in the transition economies of Europe and Central Asia. It argues that the scarcity of productive job opportunities and the growing labor market segmentation are the two main labor market problems facing the transition economies. In the European transition economies the lack of jobs has led to persistent open unemployment. In the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) it has led to hidden unemployment (underemployment and low productivity employment). Unemployment in the European transition economies is supported by the developed social safety net. In contrast, in the CIS for most workers unemployment is not an affordable option. They either stick to their old, unproductive jobs in unrestructured enterprises, or work in the informal sector, or resort to subsistence agriculture. Thus, underemployment in the CIS is a mirror image of unemployment in the European transition economies. Accordingly, the high employment-to-population ratios in many CIS countries do not necessarily signify favorable labor market performance. Instead they often indicate delayed enterprise restructuring, the maintenance of unsustainable jobs in uncompetitive firms, and the existence of a large informal sector as an employer of last resort. Labor market segmentation has been caused by a sharp increase in earnings differentials and the attendant increase in the incidence of low-paid jobs, by the polarization of regional labor market conditions, and finally by the growth of the informal sector offering casual, low-productivity jobs. Labor market segmentation and accompanying inequalities are more pronounced in the CIS than in the European transition economies. "--World Bank web site.

A historically unique experiment is about to enter its second decade - German unification. Early hopes for a rapid and smooth economic transformation soon turned out to be overly optimistic. Despite massive financial transfers, the political promise of a "blooming landscape" remains a vision. Actual developments have left deep scars on the labor market, and the effects will be felt for decades to come. Was this outcome to be expected, perhaps even inevitable? What went wrong, and what were the available options? Or is the current state of Eastern German labor market in fact better than is commonly assumed?

This book is an attempt to capture and analyze several idiosyncratic features of industry and labor in the developing world. Available books and graduate-level texts in labor economics largely discuss industrial and labor market situations prevalent in developed countries, where well-defined institutional arrangements and regulations create a very different scope of analysis. The patterns of choice in training and contracts in the labor market more apparent in developing and transition countries are discussed, as are the information-theoretic results. The book also critically examines labor migration, a context in which the developing and transition countries represent large sources in the present global order. A broad base of empirical observations from industries is used to develop analytical conjectures on risk-sharing arrangements between workers and employers, while strong intuitive explanations are combined with relevant mathematical and graphical derivations, ensuring the book’s readability among graduate students pursuing courses in labor economics and industrial economics for developing and transition countries. The book may also serve as a valuable reference guide for all students in advanced human resources courses at management schools. Presenting state-of-the art research findings in all of its chapters, the book discusses numerous institutional peculiarities of the developing world, making the results distinct in view of the general scope of labor economics.