SELF-SELECTION AND EARNINGS DURING VOLATILE TRANSITION

Using Bulgarian Integrated Household Surveys for 1995, 1997 and 2001 this paper explores determinants of labor force status – not working, public sector employment, private sector employment and self-employment – and earnings for each of the three employment sectors. We find that while skilled labor’s pattern of reallocation into the public sector remains roughly the same over time, the inflow of highly educated laborers into the private sector and selfemployment increases. These changes coincide with the erosion of the returns to observed skills in the private sector and self-employment, while the public sector continues to reward all types of education at higher than the elementary level.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40085/3/wp699.pd

The Informal Sector During Crisis and Transition

employment, mobility, informal sector, transition, dual economy, Bulgaria

Where to Work? Gender Differences in Labor Market Outcomes during Economic Crisis

In Central and Eastern European women started the process of transition from socialist to market economies with a status quo that differed markedly from women in both de-veloped western and traditional developing economies. They enjoyed an equal or higher level of education than men, virtually no unemployment, only temporary labor force departures, lavish maternity and child related benefits. Using panel data constructed from the 1995 and 1997 Bulgarian Integrated Household Surveys, our results reveal striking gender differences with respect to the reallocation of male and female employ-ees to and out of the public and private sectors.Employment, Mobility, Gender, Household

Migration, Transfers and Child Labor

We examine agricultural child labor in the context of emigration, transfers, and the abil-ity to hire outside labor. We start by developing a theoretical background based on Basu and Van, (1998), Basu, (1999) and Epstein and Kahana (2008) and show how hiring labor from outside the household and transfers to the household might induce a re-duction in children’s working hours. Analysis using Living Standards Measurement Survey (LSMS) data on the Kagera region in Tanzania lend support to the hypothesis that both emigration and remittances reduce child labor.child labor, emigration, transfers, Tanzania

SELF-SELECTION AND EARNINGS DURING VOLATILE TRANSITION

Using Bulgarian Integrated Household Surveys for 1995, 1997 and 2001 this paper explores determinants of labor force status – not working, public sector employment, private sector employment and self-employment – and earnings for each of the three employment sectors. We find that while skilled labor’s pattern of reallocation into the public sector remains roughly the same over time, the inflow of highly educated laborers into the private sector and selfemployment increases. These changes coincide with the erosion of the returns to observed skills in the private sector and self-employment, while the public sector continues to reward all types of education at higher than the elementary level.employment selection, earnings, Bulgaria

Female engagement in commercial agriculture, interventions and welfare in Malawi: What works for the poorest?

The poverty and extreme poverty alleviating potential of female empowerment through agricultural commercialisation has been an increasing focus of much of the recent development literature and policy discourse. Using representative data from Malawi, this chapter looks at the role of key policy interventions on the probability for women to enter the commercial agricultural sector and the impact of agricultural commercialisation on poverty and extreme poverty. We find that (i) Most interventions had positive impact on female food commercialisation, but either did not affect or affected negatively female entry into high value agriculture, (ii) Female empowerment through high value agriculture benefitted the poor and extreme poor. We conclude that gender norms in food commercialisation and high value agriculture should be understood for female empowerment interventions of the type implemented in Malawi to have the desired effect

Can Economic Crises Be Good for Your Diet?

With fortuitously timed data – collected before, during and after a major macro-financial crisis in Bulgaria – we revisit several hypotheses in the economics and nutritional literature related to the tendency of households to smooth their nutritional status over time. We explore the dietary impact of both falling real incomes in the context of hyperinflation and crisis and changing relative prices and the changing responsiveness of different groups of people to these incomes and prices over six year of fundamental structural reforms of the economy. Our results highlight large and dramatically changing food and nutrient elasticities, which challenge the perception of household ability to smooth their nutrient stream during economic crises and transitions.crisis, diet, fluctuation, health, nutrition

Revealed Informal Activity

What does it mean to be in the informal sector? Many characterizations have been used in the literature, for example, firms that are unregistered or employ a small workforce or firms/economic enterprises that do not have access to formal capital markets. But many people participate in both formal and informal activities, while classification of participation is often based on primary employment. This creates limitations to the analytical power of existing measures of informality. We develop a method for assigning households to the informal sector by inferring informal sector activity using income and expenditure surveys. We apply this method to the case of Bulgaria using LSMS income and expenditure surveys before and after a significant economic reform and compare it to those made using other indicators of informal sector activity. Our work shows that the informal sector acts as a buffer for households during periods of crisis when formal sector employment opportunities are limited. It shows the limitations of alternative stylized measures of informality in assessing the vulnerability of households involved in the informal sector, especially during periods of extreme economic hardship.informal labour markets, crisis, Bulgaria

Structures and waves in a nonlinear heat-conducting medium

The paper is an overview of the main contributions of a Bulgarian team of researchers to the problem of finding the possible structures and waves in the open nonlinear heat conducting medium, described by a reaction-diffusion equation. Being posed and actively worked out by the Russian school of A. A. Samarskii and S.P. Kurdyumov since the seventies of the last century, this problem still contains open and challenging questions.Comment: 23 pages, 13 figures, the final publication will appear in Springer Proceedings in Mathematics and Statistics, Numerical Methods for PDEs: Theory, Algorithms and their Application

Can economic crises be good for your diet?

With fortuitously timed data - collected before, during and after a major macro-financial crisis in Bulgaria - we revisit several hypotheses in the economics and nutritional literature related to the tendency of households to smooth their nutritional status over time. We explore the dietary impact of both falling real incomes in the context of hyperinflation and crisis and changing relative prices and the changing responsiveness of different groups of people to these incomes and prices over six year of fundamental structural reforms of the economy. Our results highlight large and dramatically changing food and nutrient elasticities, which challenge the perception of household ability to smooth their nutrient stream during economic crises and transitions.Crisis, Diet, Fluctuation, Health, Nutrition