We present new tests of three theories of the labor market: intertemporal substitution, hours restrictions, and implicit contracts. The intertemporal substitution test we implement is an exclusion test robust to many specification errors and we consistently reject this model. We model hours restrictions as part of an endogenous switching model. We compare the implicit probit equation to an unrestricted probit equation for unemployment and reject the hours restriction model. For the implicit contracts model, we estimate nonseparable within-period labor-supply and consumption equations. We test a cross-equation restriction of the model and cannot reject the implicit contracts model.

The Central and East European (CEE) countries are completing the first decade of a dramatic transition from a centrally planned economic system to a market system. Although economic outcomes have been diverse, all CEE countries (except for the Czech Republic) have experienced rapidly rising and persistently high unemployment rates, which have been accompanied by long spells of unemployment. By contrast, in the Czech Republic the unemployment rate has remained low and unemployment spells have been short (Table 1). The unemployment crisis in the CEE countries has contributed to a political backlash as disenchanted voters often ousted the first reform governments after a few years. This experience underscores the importance of two questions. First, why has the unemployment problem in the Czech Republic been much less severe? Second, how can economies in transition strike a balance between (i) reducing government intervention and introducing market incentives, and (ii) providing an adequate social safety net that ensures public support for the transition? In addition to being of academic interest, answers to these questions are essential for policy makers in the CEE countries, in Western governments, and at international institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

We investigate the remarkably short unemployment spells in the Czech Republic compared to Slovakia and other Central and East European economies. We estimate hazard functions and find that 40 to 50 percent of the difference in unemployment durations between the two republics is accounted for by differences in demographics and demand conditions. The remainder is explained by differences in coefficients, proxying the behavior of firms, individuals, and institutions. In both republics the unemployment compensation system has a moderately negative effect on the exit rate from unemployment. Policy makers hence have latitude in providing adequate social safety nets without jeopardizing efficiency.

The past 20 years have seen important changes in public policy with the potential for significant impacts on health insurance for children. These changes included both those explicitly intended to expand access to public insurance for children, including expansions in eligibility for Medicaid and the introduction of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), and other changes in antipoverty policy. Since health insurance coverage among children is entwined with parental welfare participation and employment, shifts in policy designed to encourage work in place of welfare participation--such as welfare reform and the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)--may have secondary impacts on children's health insurance coverage. As parents leave welfare, with its guaranteed health insurance through Medicaid, for jobs that may or may not have health insurance coverage offered as a benefit, children may experience a change in the source of their health insurance coverage or may become uninsured. Similarly, changes in health care markets and economic conditions such as rising health care prices and cyclicality in the availability of employment may also affect children's coverage. Despite the potential importance of these factors for coverage, the fraction of children who are uninsured has remained largely constant, particularly through the 1990s. However, this relatively constant level of uninsurance may mask changes in the underlying dynamics of health insurance among children. In this paper, we use monthly data from the 1986–1996 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to examine patterns of health insurance coverage among children during the period 1986–1999, focusing on transitions between public coverage, private coverage, and no coverage. Using these data, we find that over the 1990s the rate of transitions among all three insurance states--public insurance, private insurance, and no insurance--increased, with a particular increase in transitions involving public coverage. We investigate whether there is evidence of a relationship between insurance transitions and various policy and economic variables, focusing on the impacts of expansions in public coverage availability, the effects of other policies directed at the poor that affect employment and insurance coverage, and economic conditions. We find that several of the policy changes that took place over the 1990s had important effects on health insurance transitions for children.

Inexperienced women, along with economics and business majors, are much more susceptible to the winner’s curse, as are subjects with lower SAT/ACT scores. There are strong selection effects in bid function estimates for inexperienced and experienced subjects due to bankruptcies and bidders who have lower earnings returning less frequently as experienced subjects. These selection effects are not identified using standard econometric techniques but are identified through experimental treatment effects. Ignoring these selection effects leads to misleading estimates of learning.