Labour Market Aspects of Transition in Eastern Europe: A Comparison between Five Countries

Abstract

The number of people out of work is increasing in a region where in most countries, with the exception of the former Yugoslavia, open unemployment has not existed for decades, and if there was any it would not have been admitted. This chapter intends to examine those reasons which explain why in most countries under consideration, with the only exception of the Czech Republic, unemployment has risen to an even higher level than what many OECD countries have experienced.

This chapter is a revised version of a chapter presented at the VII World Congress of Social Economics on The New World Order: Social Economies in Transition, held in Verona, 3–6 August 1994, and an earlier draft is to be published in Budapest. The author expresses her gratitude to Marek Góra (Warsaw School of Economics), Sonja Drobnic (University of Bremen, Germany), as well as to her colleagues in the Institute for World Economics, Pál Gáspár, András Inotai and Judit Kiss, for their valuable comments on an earlier draft. I take the responsibility for any errors or faults.