Restructuring and Social Safety Nets in Russia and Ukraine - Socail Security Influence on Labor Mobility: Possible Opportunities and Challenges

The paper discusses the issue of labor force mobility in a broad sense, and analyses how changes in social security policy and the structure of the social safety net (SSN) affects different aspects of labor force mobility. The text is structured as follows: Introduction, then follows Chapter 2, which provides an overview of the labor market and social safety net developments in Russian and Ukraine over the last decade, as well as discusses common features of these countries. The Chapter 3 establishes theoretical models for different aspects of labor force mobility, discusses the availability of data on Russia and Ukraine to test these models, and provides a statistical analysis of the data. The Chapter 4 discusses results of the statistical analysis. The final chapter discusses policy conclusions that can be derived from comparison of the effect of the SSN on labor mobility in these two countries, and extends them to all countries in transition.mobility of labour, social safety net, transition countries

The quest for pension reform : Poland's security through diversity

This report looks at pension reform recently undertaken in Poland, but draws conclusions with wider applicability. It examines the motivation for reform, the struggle of progressively minded experts and politicians to advance the reform agenda, the architecture of the new system, and issues arising during the transition. The final section offers tentative conclusions and lessons for other countries while highlighting the factors leading to the reform's successful launch (it is too early yet to determine the pension system's success). Factors included enlisting broad popular support for the contents of the reform package; shielding the office for pension reform from political fights, enabling it to focus on its professional tasks; intimately involving the trade unions through several consultations; and lastly, moving quickly to grasp opportunities, that is, taking advantage of the public consensus for pension reform.Environmental Economics&Policies,Pensions&Retirement Systems,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Information Technology