Raul Eamets

The Paradox of the Baltic States: Labour Market Flexibility but Protected Workers?

This article assesses the strictness of employment protection legislation and its actual enforcement in the Baltic States. We use information from the applicable legislation as well as employer surveys, data on the coverage of labour legislation and the practice of law enforcement. Overall strictness is close to the average of EU countries and relatively well aligned with EU regulations; individual and collective dismissals are relatively heavily and temporary forms of employment relatively weakly regulated. However, effective flexibility is increased by problems of enforcement: there is much evidence of violations of statutory regulations at enterprise level. In addition, the proportion of the workforce actually covered by the regulations is relatively low. In the Baltic States temporary employment is more widespread, implying a higher level of flexibility than the EU average.

Labour market flows and adjustment to macroeconomic shocks in the Baltic States

This article presents a comparison of worker flows in all three Baltic labour markets before and after the 1998 Russian crisis. Our evidence helps us to understand the micro impacts of macroeconomic shocks in the late‐transition countries and sheds light on labour market flexibility in the Baltic states. While there has been much research on the labour markets of transition economies, including Estonia, the other two Baltic economies have been largely left out so far. In spite of the common assumption viewing the three Baltic countries as one homogeneous group, we find the Russian crisis had dramatically different effects across the three labour markets. As a result of the crisis, the Estonian outflow from unemployment declined and the unemployment pool became more stagnant. In contrast, in Latvia the unemployment outflow remained relatively high, but there was an increase in the inflow to inactivity. One explanation for this situation in Latvia, where unemployment has been substantially higher than in Estonia, is that the macroeconomic shock resulted in widespread worker discouragement.

Labour Market Flexibility and Migration in the Baltic States: Macro Evidences

The Eastern enlargement of the European Union and the requirements of the European Monetary Union call for increased flexibility of labour markets in both the current EU members and candidate countries. If labour markets and institutions are rigid in the monetary union, market disequilibrium is likely to grow. The present paper aims to give a macroeconomic overview of the Baltic States’ labour market in the period 1995?2001, laying emphasis on the issues of labour market flexibility and labour migration in the context of EU eastward enlargement. The Baltic States comprise a particular regional cluster and an interesting case for making generalizations about the processes of transition and EU eastward enlargement, and developing a new field of economics - the economics of transition and integration. In real terms, one has to admit, the influence of the Baltic economies on the EU eastward enlargement processes can hardly be significant, as the very small size of the Baltic markets bears no comparison with either the markets of the current EU member states (EU15) or the other candidate countries (CC). The Baltic States have dutifully observed the main international standards regulating labour relations in accordance with the EU rules. Comparing the Baltic States’ labour market with those of EU15 and the other candidate countries, one comes to the conclusion that the Baltic States’ labour markets are flexible. The most flexible among them is the Estonian labour market followed by that of Latvia. However, predictably, after joining the EU, the labour markets of the new members may become more rigid due to the increasing influence on them of institutions and trade unions, and due to more generous funding of labour market policies. Moreover, a decline of wage flexibility can be predicted. Free movement of labour as a natural consequence of EU enlargement will also exert pressure on the Baltic labour markets due to the possible migration of better-qualified and flexible labour force, and cross-border movement of labour within the Baltic Sea Region countries. Coupled with ageing of the population, it may increase shortage of skilled labour. Consequently, if labour mobility increases and labour market flexibility declines remarkably during the enlargement processes, market disequilibrium is likely to grow in the Baltic States as well.

External Macroeconomic Shocks and the Estonian economy: How did the Russian Financial Crisis affect Estonian Unemployment and Foreign Trade?

Abstract In this empirical paper we examine how the Russian financial crisis affected Estonian unemployment and foreign trade. In our interpretation the Russian crisis caused depression in the Estonian economy, but at the same time it also caused a relatively fast reallocation of trade. Eastward export flows (largely foodstuffs) declined drastically while exports to Finland and Sweden largely increased. Several manufacturing firms went into bankruptcy and foreign investors benefited from relatively low stock prices and bought majorities in many Estonian firms. Although the main FDI inflow was connected with the banking sector, we can say that the banking sector was in crisis because of the poor performance of manufacturing (and other sectors). As a result of FDI, labour efficiency increased and labour demand declined. Employment declined in the sectors that were most affected by the Russian crisis, especially fishing, agriculture, manufacturing and construction. Unemployment remained relatively high even as GDP rose, largely because of increased productivity. From our empirical analysis we draw the conclusion that most of the suffering that resulted from declining demand was experienced by less productive blue-collar workers. We also found that low-educated groups are at an increasing risk of unemployment compared with people with a university education. These findings indirectly support our assumption about technological changes. Less qualified, rather than skilled, labour lost their jobs.

Temporary migrants and occupational mobility: evidence from the case of Estonia

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of temporary migration on the upward occupational mobility by using a novel database from Estonia. Design/methodology/approach - – The authors use a unique data set of the online job search portal of Estonia that includes thousands of employees with foreign work experience. The authors study whether the presence of temporary migration in ones working career is associated with upward movement in the occupational ladder, defined either in terms of wages or required human capital. Findings - – The authors did not find any positive effect of temporary migration on upward occupational mobility and in case of females the effect was negative. The results could be related to the short-term nature of migration and the occupational downshifting abroad as well as the functioning of home country labour market. Research limitations/implications - – While the uniqueness of the data set is of value, one needs to acknowledge its weaknesses: the job-seekers work histories are self-reported and the authors do not know what information was left out as undesired by applicant. Practical implications - – The findings imply that the benefits of temporary migration from Eastern to Western Europe on the sending country via the returnees’ labour market performance might be limited, yet it does not exclude the benefits of return migration through other mechanism. Originality/value - – The literature on return migration is not big and there are only a few papers dealing with occupational change or mobility of the return migrants. Compared to earlier studies we have looked at wider set of occupations ranked by different ladders. Using the unique data set the authors have included in the study ca 7,500 return migrants while earlier studies have been based on rather small samples.

The development of employee financial participation in Estonia

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the development of employee financial participation in Estonia from patterns of employee ownership which was promoted during the privatization of enterprises in the transition period, to the emergence of different forms of employee participation, including employee share ownership and profit sharing schemes. The analysis of the changing institutional setting and legislation in Estonia in the context of EU accession serves as a basis for examining the actual diversification of forms of employee financial participation, and provides some suggestions of likely further development.Design/methodology/approach – The study combines results from earlier research, analysis of Estonian legislation from the late 1980s to the present time, interviews with social partners, data collected through enterprise surveys during the transition period and case studies, examining recent examples of financial participation.Findings – There is no historical traditio...

Firm Demographics and Productivity Dynamics in Estonia

This paper presents one of the first studies of firm demographics in Estonia, particularly, on the processes of firm entry and exit as well as survival analysis of new firms. Also decompositions of productivity change into components consisting of resource reallocation, firm entry and exit, and productivity growth within continuing firms is carried out. Our results, derived from a novel database of the population of Estonian firms, show that firm turnover has been rather high in Estonia during the observed period from 1995 to 2001, resulting from low institutional entry barriers and emergence of the SME sector. The high survival rates for new firms and surviving firms’ relatively fast growth could reflect their relatively high productivity compared to incumbent firms and changes in the sectoral structure of the economy. The decomposition of productivity change shows that the high productivity growth has been mostly from within-firm productivity growth (e.g. the adoption of new production technologies and organizational changes), but the reallocation of production factors (especially the exit of low productivity units) has played an important role as well.

Relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility and Job Satisfaction: The Case of Baltic Countries

The growing awareness of the issue of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has raised the questions about how responsible behavior of firms would impact employees’ well-being. This paper investigates the link between corporate social responsibility and job satisfaction, which is a more widely recognized measure to assess well-being at work. Based on the survey of 3637 employees in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, measures of internal and external social responsibility are found to be positively associated with job satisfaction. Findings of the study indicate that employees’ assessments on various aspects of their job are noticeably higher in firms that are perceived as more engaged in CSR activities both towards their internal and external stakeholders. A further outcome of the study emphasizes the negative link between firm size and corporate social responsibility thus reflecting that smaller firms tend to show higher assessments regarding CSR. Similar relationships are also found between firm size and job satisfaction.

Labour market and labour market policies during great recession: the case of Estonia

The purpose of the paper is to analyse how labour market and labour market institutions reacted during recent crises. In early 1990s Estonia introduced a set of rather unique policy options like currency board as a ground for monetary policy, low taxes, open foreign trade policy, low public sector debts, annually balanced state budget etc. These measures caused very limited options to implement both monetary and fiscal policy. Macroeconomic adjustment will take place in such situation through the labour market. In the case of Estonia, we can observe a very high labour market flexibility, which played a crucial role in recent economic recession. The measures taken included a reduction of nominal wages, working hours and redundancies among employees. This indicates that the traditional institutional factors that protect workers and also could decrease the flexibility of the labour market, such as labour market regulation, social protection and union activities, are not very well developed in Estonia and do not have a significant effect on the outcomes of the labour market. The labour market reform was launched in Estonia in 2009. The main idea of the New Employment contract was that the termination of employment relations became less expensive for employers. Although empirical evidence show that the Employment Contracts Act entered into force at a time when most lay-offs had already been effected.JEL codesJ08, J21, J50, J63

Where Have all the Jobs Gone? Gross Job Flows in Estonia

This paper documents and analyses gross job flows and their determinants in Estonia over the years 1995–2001, using a unique database from the Estonian Business Registry. This database contains all (including also micro and small firms) officially registered firms in Estonia, the total number being almost 52,000. There are several important findings in the paper. Our results show that job flows (job creation and job destruction rates) have been extremely high in Estonia and are comparable to the levels documented for the US. These rates have not decreased recently, although worker flows (transitions between labour market states) have dropped. We also found that the firm-specific component in job flows excess of employment change had relatively lower importance than in western studies due to the emergence of small and medium-sized enterprises and labour reallocation between the economic sectors. The high inter-sectoral mobility has helped maintain high levels of job flows, while both are high also due to a favourable institutional environment, especially due to low start-up costs and a large share of micro enterprises in Estonia.