Elena A. Iankova

Multi-Level Bargaining During Bulgaria's Return To Capitalism

This paper emphasizes the close interrelatedness among various levels of bargaining in transition economies. Focusing on the Bulgarian case, the author argues that in Bulgaria and other transition economies, neither purely national nor purely company-based bargaining is occurring; instead, the “social partners” (interest groups representing labor and business) have developed a multi-level bargaining structure that encompasses and links together national, company, industry, and regional levels. Multi-tier bargaining is prompted, on the one hand, by simultaneous pressures for centralization and decentralization during economic restructuring, and, on the other, by the need to legitimate the social partners at all levels. The author shows that in Bulgaria, increasing interdependencies and interactions among levels of bargaining have helped secure greater flexibility, adaptability, and survivability during extremely uncertain times.

Social and economic transformation in East Central Europe : institutions, property relations and social interests

The state managed economy and social relations under the old regimes three paths of development of the state managed economy paths of extrication the contested politics of social transformation transformation and institutional change inequality, poverty and unemployment towards a new system of industrial relations property ownership and enterprise participation problems and prospects.

Paying the price : the wage crisis in Central and Eastern Europe

List of Tables and Figures - Acknowledgements - Preface by A. Gsncz - Preface by T. Treu - Introductions by the EC and the ILO - Pay, Social Dialogue and Social Cohesion in the European Union J. Morin - Wage Policy Reforms in Central and Eastern Europe: A First Assessment (1990- 96) D. Vaughan-Whitehead - Wage Dynamics in Albania during the Transition F. Kodra - For a Negotiated Alternative to Tax-based Incomes Policy in Bulgaria V. Tzanov - The True Effects of Wage Regulations in the Czech Republic J. Rusnok and M. Fassmann - Moves Towards Free Wage bargaining in Hungary E. Berki and M. Lado - Searching for a New Results-oriented Wage negotiation System in Poland M. Kabaj - Romania: Introducing Wage Bargaining in a Monopolistic Context S. Pert and V. Vasile - Income and Wage Distortions in Russia and Strategies for Reform R. A. Yakovlev - Wage Policy in Slovakia: From Macro to Microeconomic Objectives J. Rencko - Ukraine: Wage Decentralization in a Non-payment Crisis G. T. Khulikov - Index

Book Review: International and Comparative: Labor Relations and Political Change in Eastern Europe: A Comparative PerspectiveLabor Relations and Political Change in Eastern Europe: A Comparative Perspective. Edited by ThirkellJohn, ScaseRichard, and VickerstaffSarah. Ithaca, N.Y.: ILR Press (an imprint of Cornell University Press), 1995. 197 pp. ISBN 0-87546-708-3,

(Per-Anders Edin and Bertil Holmlund, and Richard Freeman and Robert Gibbons), West Germany (Abraham and Houseman, and East Germany (Alan Krueger and J6rn-Steffen Pischke)-provide analyses of changes in earnings inequality from the 1970s to the early 1990s. The introduction to the book provides an excellent overview. The book is, in general, well written and easy to read. It is accessible to, and will be widely read by, policy makers as well as economists. My main reservation concerns two chapters that, although excellent in themselves, sit somewhat uneasily in the book because they do not spell out the implications of their findings for wage inequality: one (by Blanchflower and Oswald) on international wage curves, and one (by Freeman and Gibbons) on centralized wage bargaining (which provides a theoretical model of the decline of centralized collective bargaining and is used to illuminate the Swedish case). What are the policy implications of this volume? The introduction asks whether the findings of the book may mark the end of an era in which income inequality is reduced by economic growth. This question is unanswered in the volume. But it is interesting to speculate. If earnings inequality is widening, then any growth in safety net provisions designed to raise incomes of the poor (to some level keyed to, say, the median income) may risk creating disincentives for work, thus giving rise to poverty traps and other evils. Moreover, widening earnings inequality will be affected by, and will have an impact on, schemes (mooted in countries such as Britain) to dismantle the welfare state. It will also have implications for training and education policy.