Publications of Earle, J.S.

Corporate control in Hungary

In this paper we describe the Hungarian legal framework regulating disclosure of information about listed firms at the Budapest Stock Exchange (BSE), and we analyze the concentration and types of blockholders at these firms for the years 1996-2000. Disclosure rules on the BSE became EU-compatible only very recently, and so far indirect holdings were not reported. The concentration of direct ownership is nonetheless rather high, the largest owner having 46.2 percent on average in May 2000. While this figure is similar to the corresponding levels in continental Europe, it is more unusual that the second and third largest blockholders also have large shares (on average 20.2 and 10.4 at the same date). Concentration was quite stable during 1996-1999, while it decreased somewhat in 2000. The most prevalent type of owner is foreign investor, which had over 50 percent of all blockholdings in 2000, although domestic private blockholders and the state are also present in a significant number of firms.

Understanding the contributions of reallocation to productivity growth: lessons from a comparative firm-level analysis

We analyze comprehensive manufacturing firm data to measure the contribution of inter-firm employment reallocation to aggregate productivity growth during the socialist and reform periods in six transition economies. Modifying a standard decomposition technique to better reflect the role of firm entry, we find that reallocation rates and productivity contributions are very low under socialism, but they rise dramatically after reforms, and productivity contributions greatly exceed those observed in market economies. Early in transition, more reform is associated with larger contributions from reallocation, but later, and on average over the whole transition, this relationship is reversed. Though reallocation rates are larger in faster reforming economies, higher productivity dispersion in slower reformers creates higher productivity gains for a given volume of reallocation. The results imply that reallocation should be viewed as necessary regular maintenance for a well-functioning economy, and particularly large productivity contributions tend to reflect previous neglect more than current virtue.

Ownership and wages: estimating public-private and foreign-domestic differentials using LEED from Hungary, 1986-2003

Studies of public-private and foreign-domestic wage differentials face difficulties distinguishing ownership effects from correlated characteristics of workers and firms. This paper estimates these ownership differentials using linked employer-employee data (LEED) from Hungary containing 1.35mln worker-year observations for 21,238 firms from 1986 to 2003. We find that ownership type is highly correlated with characteristics of both workers (education, experience, gender, and occupation) and firms (size, industry, and productivity), suggesting ownership type is systematically selected along these dimensions. The large unconditional wage gaps (0.24 for public-private and 0.40 for foreign-domestic) in the data are little affected by conditioning on worker characteristics, but controlling for industry reduces the public and foreign premia (to 0.16 and 0.34, respectively), and controlling for employment size further reduces them (to 0.07 and 0.28). We also exploit the presence of 3,700 switches of ownership type in the data to estimate firm fixed-effects and random trend models, accounting for unobserved firm characteristics affecting the average level and trend growth of wages. These controls have little effect on the conditional public-private gap, but they reduce the estimated foreign premium (to 0.07). The results imply that the substantial unconditional wage differentials are mostly, but not entirely, a function of differences in worker and firm characteristics, and that linked panel data are necessary to take these correlated factors into account.

Ownership and wages: estimating public-private and foreign-domestic differentials using LEED from Hungary, 1986-2003

Studies of public-private and foreign-domestic wage differentials face difficulties distinguishing ownership effects from correlated characteristics of workers and firms. This paper estimates these ownership differentials using linked employer-employee data (LEED) from Hungary containing 1.35mln worker-year observations for 21,238 firms from 1986 to 2003. We find that ownership type is highly correlated with characteristics of both workers (education, experience, gender, and occupation) and firms (size, industry, and productivity), suggesting ownership type is systematically selected along these dimensions. The large unconditional wage gaps (0.24 for public-private and 0.40 for foreign-domestic) in the data are little affected by conditioning on worker characteristics, but controlling for industry reduces the public and foreign premia (to 0.16 and 0.34, respectively), and controlling for employment size further reduces them (to 0.07 and 0.28). We also exploit the presence of 3,700 switches of ownership type in the data to estimate firm fixed-effects and random trend models, accounting for unobserved firm characteristics affecting the average level and trend growth of wages. These controls have little effect on the conditional public-private gap, but they reduce the estimated foreign premium (to 0.07). The results imply that the substantial unconditional wage differentials are mostly, but not entirely, a function of differences in worker and firm characteristics, and that linked panel data are necessary to take these correlated factors into account.

What makes ECA firms productive? Ownership, age, market structure, and import penetration in Georgia, Hungary, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine

Background paper for the World Bank Report on Productivity Growth in ECAEconomies

The productivity effects of privatization: Longitudinal estimates from Hungary, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine

This paper estimates the effect of privatization on multifactor productivity using comprehensive panel data on initially state-owned manufacturing firms in four economies. We exploit the data's longitudinal dimension to control for preprivatization selection and estimate long-run impacts. The estimates are robust to functional form but sensitive to selection controls. Our preferred random growth estimates imply positive multifactor productivity effects of 15 percent in Romania, 8 percent in Hungary, and 2 percent in Ukraine, but a -3 percent effect in Russia. The foreign privatization effect is larger (18-35 percent) in all countries. Positive domestic effects appear immediately in Hungary, Romania, and Ukraine and continue growing thereafter, but emerge only five years after privatization in Russia.

The microeconomics of creating productive jobs : a synthesis of firm-level studies in transition economies

The challenge for labor market policy in the transition economies has been to redress the sharp drops in employment and rises in unemployment in a way that fosters the creation of productive jobs. The authors first document the magnitude and productivity of job and worker reallocation. Then they investigate the effects of privatization, product and labor market liberalization, and obstacles to growth in the new private sector on reallocation and its productivity in Hungary, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine. The authors find that market reform has resulted in a large increase in the pace of job reallocation, particularly that occurring between sectors and through firm turnover. Unlike under central planning, the job reallocation during the transition has contributed significantly to aggregate productivity growth. Privatization has not only stimulated intrasectoral job reallocation, but the reallocation is more productive than that among remaining state firms. The effect of privatization on firm productivity varies considerably across countries and is not always positive. The productivity gains from privatization have generally not come at the expense of workers but are rather associated with increased wages and employment.

Nonstandard forms and measures of employment and unemployment in transition: a comparative study of Estonia, Romania, and Russia

This paper looks behind the standard, publicly available labor force statistics relied upon in most studies of transition economy labor markets. We analyze microdata on detailed labor force survey responses in Russia, Romania, and Estonia to measure nonstandard, boundary forms and alternative definitions of employment and unemployment. Our calculations show that measured rates are quite sensitive to definition, particularly in the treatment of household production (subsistence agriculture), unpaid family helpers, and discouraged workers, while the categories of part-time work and other forms of marginal attachment are still relatively unimportant. We find that tweaking the official definitions in apparently minor ways can produce alternative employment rates that are sharply higher in Russia but much lower in Romania and slightly lower in Estonia, and alternative unemployment rates that are sharply higher in Romania and moderately higher in Estonia and Russia.

Ownership concentration and corporate performance on the Budapest Stock Exchange: Do too many cooks spoil the goulash?

We examine the impact of ownership concentration on firm performance using panel data for firms listed on the Budapest Stock Exchange, where ownership tends to be highly concentrated and frequently involves multiple blocks. Fixed-effects estimates imply that the size of the largest block increases profitability and efficiency strongly and monotonically, but the effects of total blockholdings are much smaller and statistically insignificant. Controlling for the size of the largest block, point estimates of the marginal effects of additional blocks are negative. The results suggest that the marginal costs of concentration may outweigh the benefits when the increased concentration involves "too many cooks".

What makes small firms grow? Finance, human capital, technical assistance, and the business environment in Romania

Although the development of a new private sector is generally considered crucial to economic transition, there has been little empirical research on the determinants of start-up firm growth. This article analyzes panel data on 297 new small enterprises in Romania with detailed annual information from the start-up date through 2001. Controlling for heterogeneity with a rich set of firm characteristics and firm fixed effects, our panel regressions imply that access to external credit substantially increases both employment and sales growth. Entrepreneurial characteristics such as gender and education have weaker estimated effects. Neither technical assistance nor a wide variety of measures of the business environment (contract enforcement, property rights, and corruption) have any clear association with firm growth.

Does privatization hurt workers? Lessons from comprehensive manufacturing firm panel data in Hungary, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine

We estimate the effects of privatization on firm-level wages and employment in four transition economies. Applied to longitudinal data on manufacturing firms, our fixed effect and random trend models consistently fail to support workers' fears of job losses from privatization, and they never imply large negative effects on wages; only for domestic privatization in Hungary and Russia are small (3-5%) negative wage effects found. Privatization to foreign investors has positive estimated impacts on both employment and wages in all four countries. The negligible consequences of domestic privatization for workers result from effects on scale, productivity, and costs that are large but offsetting in Hungary and Romania, and from small effects of all types in Russia and Ukraine. The positive employment outcome under foreign ownership results from a substantial scale-expansion effect that dominates the productivity-improvement effect, and the positive wage outcome from a productivity effect that dominates the effect on cost reduction.

The wage effects of schooling under socialism and in transition: evidence from Romania, 1950-2000

We estimate the impact of schooling on monthly earnings from 1950 to 2000 in Romania. Nearly constant at about 3-4 percent during the socialist period, the coefficient on schooling in a conventional earnings regression rises steadily during the 1990s, reaching 8.5 percent by 2000. Our analysis finds little evidence for either the standard explanations of such an increase in the West (labor supply movements, product demand shifts, technical change) or the transition-specific accounts sometimes offered (wage liberalization, border opening, increased quality of education). But we find some support for institutional and organizational explanations, particularly the high productivity of education in restructuring and entrepreneurial activities in a disequilibrium environment.

Job reallocation and productivity growth in the Ukrainian transition

We analyze the pace and patterns of job reallocation in Ukraine using 1992-2000 panel data on nearly the surviving universe of manufacturing firms inherited from the Soviet Union. Employment growth displays substantial increase in heterogeneity during this transition period, with a corresponding rise in excess job reallocation. Unlike data for Soviet Russia in the 1980s, Ukrainian job reallocation in the 1990s was clearly productivity-enhancing, both within and across industries. The paper also estimates the effects of firm and market characteristics on the magnitude of reallocation and on the extent to which it has contributed to aggregate productivity growth.

Economic reforms and productivity-enhancing reallocation in the post-soviet transition

How do economic reforms affect resource reallocation processes and their contributions to productivity growth? This paper studies the consequences of enterprise privatization and liberalization of product markets, labor markets, and imports in the former Soviet Republics of Russia and Ukraine. Analyzing interfirm reallocation of output, labor, capital, and an input index with annual industrial census data from 1985 to 2001, we find that Soviet Russia displayed low reallocation rates that bore little relationship to relative labor and multifactor productivity across firms. Since reforms began, resource flows have increased in both countries, and their contributions to aggregate productivity growth have become substantial through increased flows from less productive to more productive continuing firms and through higher exits of less productive entities – i.e., through creative destruction. Among the policy factors that may explain firm-level variation, privatization is estimated to have positive effects on productivity-enhancing reallocation, but there is less evidence of such effects from domestic product market competition, labor market competition, or import penetration.

Privatization, competition, and budget constraints: disciplining enterprises in Russia

We investigate whether privatization, competitive forces, and the hardening of budget constraints played efficiency-enhancing roles in Russia in the immediate post-privatization period. We find evidence of a positive impact of privatization on labor productivity: a 10% point increase in private share ownership raises real sales per employee by 3–5%. The evidence on product market competition is weaker, depending on model specification. Soft budget constraints are usually found to reduce restructuring but the effect is small and insignificant. We find that in terms of their impacts on productivity, privatization and subsidy reduction are substitutes; privatization and competition (measured as the geographic scope of markets) are complements; and that competition and subsidy reduction are independent.

The reallocation of workers and jobs in Russian industry – New evidence on measures and determinants

Gross job and worker flows in Russian industry are studied using panel data from a survey of 530 firms selected through national probability sampling. The data permit examination of several crucial measurement issues, including the timing and definition of employment and the role of reorganizations, and they contain rich information on firm characteristics. We find that new and reorganized firms display larger flows than unreorganized enterprises. Product market dispersion and managerial and dispersed outsider ownership are associated with greater worker churning, and unionization and concentrated outsider ownership with less. There is little evidence that the average firm's employment adjustments have become more responsive to adjustment costs during the transition, but private ownership and product market competition appear to increase responsiveness.

Ownership concentration and corporate performance on the Budapest Stock Exchange: do too many cooks spoil the goulash?

We examine the impact of ownership concentration on firm performance using panel data for firms listed on the Budapest Stock Exchange, where ownership tends to be highly concentrated and frequently involves multiple blocks. Fixed-effects estimates imply that the l largest block increases return on assets and operating efficiency strongly and monotonically, but the effects of total blockholdings are much smaller and statistically insignificant. Controlling for the size of the largest block, point estimates of the marginal effects of additional blocks are negative. The results suggest that the marginal costs of concentration may outweigh the benefits when the increased concentration involves "too many cooks."

What makes small firms grow? Finance, human capital, technical assistance, and the business environment in Romania

Although the development of a new private sector is generally considered crucial to economic transition and development, there has been little empirical research on the determinants of startup firm growth. This paper uses panel data techniques to analyze a survey of 297 new s small enterprises in Romania containing detailed information from the startup date through 2001. We find strong evidence that access to external finance (loans) increases the growth of both employment and sales. Taxes appear to constrain growth. There is some evidence that entrepreneurial skills increase growth, but only weak evidence for the effectiveness of technical assistance, and only when it is provided by foreign partners or international agencies. A wide variety of alternative measures of the business environment (contract enforcement, property rights, and corruption) are tested, but are found to have little or no association with firm growth.

Privatization methods and productivity effects in Romanian industrial enterprises

Comprehensive panel data on privatization transactions and labor productivity in Romanian industrial corporations are used to describe the postprivatization ownership structure and to estimate the effect of Romania's diverse privatization policies on firm performance. The econometric results show consistently positive, highly significant effects of private ownership on labor productivity growth; the point estimates imply an increased 1.0 to 1.7% growth for a 10% rise in private shareholding. The strongest estimated impacts are associated with sales to outside blockholders; insider transfers and mass privatization are estimated to have significantly smaller, although still positive, effects on firm performance.

Gross job flows in Russian industry before and after reform : has destruction become more creative ?

We analyze annual census data from 1985 to 1999 for old Russian manufacturing firms to calculate the magnitude, covariates, and productivity consequences of gross job flows before and after reforms. The job creation rate was low throughout the period but increased slightly after 1991, while job destruction, reallocation, excess reallocation, and employment growth dispersion rose markedly. The association of excess reallocation with firm size, wages, labor productivity, and capital intensity became clearly negative postreform. Job reallocation was unrelated to labor productivity growth under socialism, but recent contributions were strongly positive. Privatization and competition did not increase job flows, but they became associated with significantly higher covariance of employment growth with relative productivity, suggesting that they may have helped to focus job destruction in firms with the lowest productivity.

The reallocation of workers and jobs in Russian industry – New evidence on measures and determinants

Gross job and worker flows in Russian industry are studied using panel data from a recent survey of 530 firms selected through national probability sampling. The data permit an examination of several important measurement issues-including the timing and definition of employment, the roles of split-ups and mergers, and the relative magnitudes of rehiring and new hiring and of quits and layoffs-and they contain a rich set of firm characteristics that may affect job and worker turnover. The results imply that job destruction and worker separation rates in industrial firms rose in the early 1990s, as did job flows as a fraction of worker flows and layoffs as a fraction of separations. By contrast, job creation and worker hiring rates were flat until 1999, the former low and the latter surprisingly high. Heterogeneity in individual firm behavior increased throughout. New firms and old enterprises that have been reorganized display much larger flows compared with unreorganized enterprises. Unions appear to reduce worker flows, but the structure of neither product nor labor markets shows a significant impact. Private ownership has ambiguous effects: insider ownership, particularly by managers, is associated with higher worker flows and excess job reallocation, while outsider ownership, particularly by blockholders, is associated with lower flow rates. A measure of adjustment costs constructed from the worktime necessary to hire and train a new employee is strongly related to variables usually associated with adjustment costs, including worker wage, education, firm size, capital intensity, and labor productivity, but only weakly to job and worker turnover. Little evidence is found that firms' employment adjustments have become more sensitive to adjustment costs during the transition, but worker and manager ownership are associated with more sensitivity than are other types of ownership.

How late to pay? Understanding wage arrears in Russia

We organize an empirical analysis of Russian wage arrears around hypotheses concerning factors that create incentives for firms to pay late and for workers to tolerate late payment, both reinforced by a prevalent environment of overdue wages. Our analysis draws upon nationally representative household panel data matched with employer data to show substantial interfirm variation with the probability of arrears positively related to firm age, size, state ownership, and declining performance. Estimation of a constrained multinomial logit model also reveals intrafirm variation related to job tenure and small shareholdings in the firm. Workers tend to have higher arrears in rural regions with low hiring rates, concentrated labor markets, and more prevalent arrears in the past. We argue that wage arrears, unlike wage cuts, have a theoretically ambiguous effect on workers' quit behavior, and we show empirically that the effect varies negatively with the extent of the practice in the local labor market.

The reallocation of workers and jobs in Russian industry : new evidence on measures and determinants

Gross job and worker flows in Russian industry are studied using panel data from a recent survey of 530 firms selected through national probability sampling. The data permit an examination of several important measurement issues – including the timing and definition of employment, the roles of split-ups and mergers, and the relative magnitudes of rehiring and new hiring and of quits and layoffs – and they contain a rich set of firm characteristics that may affect job and worker turnover. The results imply that job destruction and worker separation rates in industrial firms rose in the early 1990s, as did job flows as a fraction of worker flows, and layoffs as a fraction of separations. By contrast, job creation and worker hiring rates were flat until 1999, the former low and the latter surprisingly high. Heterogeneity in individual firm behavior increased throughout. New firms and old enterprises that have been reorganized display much larger flows compared with unreorganized enterprises. Unions appear to reduce worker flows, but the structure of neither product nor labour markets shows a significant impact. Private ownership has ambiguous effects: insider ownership, particularly by managers, is associated with higher worker flows and excess job reallocation, while outsider ownership, particularly by blockholders, is associated with lower flow rates. A measure of adjustment costs constructed from the worktime necessary to hire and train a new employee is strongly related to variables usually associated with adjustment costs, including worker wage, education, firm size, capital intensity, and labour productivity, but only weakly to job and worker turnover. Little evidence is found that firms’ employment adjustments have become more sensitive to adjustment costs during the transition, but worker and manager ownership are associated with more sensitivity than are other types of ownership.

Comment on "Corporate governance and restructuring: lessons from transition economies," by Gerard Roland

Comments on the Paper by G. Roland: Corporate Governance and Restructuring: The Limits of Our Knowledge

Privatization, competition and reform strategies : theory and evidence from Russian enterprise panel data

A critical, but largely unexamined assumption in the debate over reform policy design, concerns the complementarity or substitutability of market competition and private ownership in increasing firm efficiency. We analyse a simple Cournot model that distinguishes two aspects of privatization interacting with market opening: privatization of a firm and privatization of its competitors. Under plausible conditions, the model implies that privatizing a firm is a substitute for exposing it to competitive markets, but privatizing its competitors is complementary. Our empirical analysis uses augmented 3-factor translog production functions estimated on 1992-99 panel data for 13,288 Russian manufacturing enterprises. We find that nonstate ownership of a firm reduces the marginal efficiency impact from product market dispersion, but the share of its competitors that are nonstate increases this marginal impact. Disaggregating nonstate ownership, we find that the shares of competitors in all three nonstate types are complementary with dispersed market structure, where the strongest complementarity involves foreign ownership. The evidence suggests that an important indirect impact of private ownership may be the intensification of market competition, and thus that competition only among state-owned enterprises may be ineffectual in stimulating them to increase efficiency.

Business start-ups or disguised unemployment? Evidence on the character of self-employment from transition economies

We study the character of self-employment, drawing upon household survey evidence from six transition economies. Multinomial-logit analysis distinguishing employers from own-account self-employed and comparing both groups to employees and unemployed finds that own-account status is intermediate in most characteristics; tests reject the pooling of any of these categories. Selectivity-bias-corrected earnings premia are large for employers and smaller for own-account. A structural polychotomous model shows that employers respond strongly to predicted earnings premia in all countries, while the own-account response is estimated to be negative, supporting the interpretation that individuals may be pushed into own-account status by lack of work opportunities.

Post-privatization ownership structure and productivity in Russian industrial enterprises

This paper investigates the impact of ownership structure on the productivity performance of Russian industrial enterprises. The analysis compares the effects of several types of new private owners – insiders (managers and other employees) and outsiders (individual and institutional investors) – with continued ownership by the state, and it takes into account possible selection effects in the privatisation process that may bias the observed ownership-performance relationship. The results provide some evidence that ownership change in Russia was already having some positive effects, shortly after the conclusion of the voucher privatisation process, but that those effects were strongest in companies with concentrated outside owners. Because the design of the Russian privatisation programme appears to have been biased against such institutional investors, the latter finding only emerges after a careful analysis of the simultaneous determination of ownership and performance through the privatisation process.

Incidence and duration of unemployment in Romania

The paper highlights the main characteristics of registered unemployment in Romania using a large sample of microdata (11,504 individual observations). First, we examine the composition of the unemployment pool, as well as the elapsed unemployment duration along different dimensions. Second, we present some characteristics of experienced workers, whose narrow specific skills make them one of, if not the most, vulnerable categories in the unavoidable process of labour reallocation.