This article deals with labour mobility in Georgia during economic transition. We use quarterly 1998-99 panel data to examine mobility across six labour market statuses (inactivity, unemployment, formal wage employment, informal wage employment, self-employment and farming). Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis of labour market segmentation. Formal employment is preferred to informal employment. Unemployment is largely a queuing device for individuals with higher education waiting for formal jobs. Some self-employment is subsistence activities and consistent with a segmented labour market, while other is high risk and potentially high return activities. Age, gender and education are significant determinants of labour mobility. Finally, informal employment serves as a buffer in times of recession - with farming and informal wage employment absorbing labour shed by other statuses during the Russian financial crisis. Copyright (c) 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation (c) 2009 The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Article provided by The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in its journal Economics of Transition.