Ownership and Employment in Russian Industry: 1992-1995

Using data collected from a panel of 6,205 civilian manufacturing firms located in the Central, Volga, North Caucasus, Northern and Western Siberian regions of Russia, this paper examines the hypotheses that in the first stage of the transition process (1) Russian industry exhibited a low labor elasticity, and (2) employment changes were highly correlated with ownership structure. The first section summarizes what we know about output and employment patterns in Russian industry between 1992 and 1995. In section two, characteristics of the panel are described. Section three describes the methodology employed to test the two hypotheses. Section four presents the empirical results. In particular, given the socialist production and employment patterns Russia inherited, the results from the panel data regressions indicate that manufacturing firms in Russia experienced an unsustainably low elasticity of labor in the first stage of the transition process. However, ownership structure tends not to be a major influence on employment change for these Russian firms. Section five offers concluding remarks.