This article is concerned with hours worked per employee in unionized labor markets. First the determination of hours is examined in the context of various bargaining models and, in the process, these models are nested in a general framework. Then cross-section and time-series data are drawn on to quantify the effects of unionism on hours worked. The time-series data from 1920 to 1980 imply a negative impact of unionism on full-time hours while cross-section data for 1978 suggest some notable differences in both the direction and the magnitude of this impact across occupations and industries.

We organize an empirical analysis of Russian wage arrears around hypotheses concerning incentives for firms to pay late and for workers to tolerate late payment. Nationally representative household panel data matched with employer data show that arrears are positively related to firm age, size, state ownership, and declining performance. Constrained multinomial logit estimates reveal intrafirm variation related to job tenure and small shareholdings in the firm. Wage arrears, unlike wage cuts, have a theoretically ambiguous effect on workers' quit behavior, and we show empirically that the effect varies negatively with the extent of the practice in the local labor market.

We present and estimate a model with strategic complementarities in firms' choices of on-time or delayed wage payment. Linked employer-employee panel data from Russia facilitate identification of the endogenous interactions through fixed effects for firms, workers, and local labor markets, and instrumental variables based on policy interventions. The estimated reaction function displays strongly positive neighborhood effects, and the estimated feedback loops—worker quits, effort, strikes, and legal penalties—imply that costs of wage delays are attenuated by neighborhood arrears. We also study a nonlinear case with two stable symmetric equilibria: a punctual payment and a late payment equilibrium.

This paper estimates the effect of privatization on multifactor productivity using comprehensive panel data on initially state‐owned manufacturing firms in four economies. We exploit the data’s longitudinal dimension to control for preprivatization selection and estimate long‐run impacts. The estimates are robust to functional form but sensitive to selection controls. Our preferred random growth estimates imply positive multifactor productivity effects of 15 percent in Romania, 8 percent in Hungary, and 2 percent in Ukraine, but a −3 percent effect in Russia. The foreign privatization effect is larger (18–35 percent) in all countries. Positive domestic effects appear immediately in Hungary, Romania, and Ukraine and continue growing thereafter, but emerge only five years after privatization in Russia.

Why do the reported effects of privatization on firm performance vary so much? This paper provides new estimates of these effects and tests potential explanations for heterogeneity using comprehensive, long-panel data for 70,000 firms in five East European economies. We estimate that privatization raises measures of profitability, productivity, and growth by about 5–12% on average, but with substantial variation across countries and time periods. Analyzing heterogeneity in privatization effectiveness, we find little systematic role for firm size, financial dependence, exchange listing, or technological complexity, but important variation by fraction privatized, ownership concentration, firm quality, and the macroeconomic and institutional environment.

We analyze linked databases on all SBA loans and lenders and on all U.S. employers to estimate the effects of financial access on employment growth. Estimation exploits the long panels and variation in local availability of SBA‐intensive lenders. The results imply an increase of 3–3.5 jobs for each million dollars of loans, suggesting real effects of credit constraints. Estimated impacts are stronger for younger and larger firms and when local credit conditions are weak, but we find no clear evidence of cyclical variation. We estimate taxpayer costs per job created in the range of 21,000–25,000.