This paper presents first evidence on the determinants of unemployment duration in Ukraine between 1997 and 2003, using individual-level data from the first wave of the Ukrainian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (ULMS -2003). It investigates the conditional probability of an individual leaving unemployment to employment or economic inactivity in any particular month of his spell out of work by estimating it in a discrete time independent competing risks framework with flexible baseline hazard rates and gamma-distributed unobserved heterogeneity. The results in all specifications indicate no significant effect of receiving unemployment benefits but significant negative effect of having income from casual activities, subsidiary farming, household income or pension on the hazard of reemployment. Multivariate analysis also suggests that policies to reduce long-term unemployment should focus on older workers, less educated individuals, residents of small towns and rural area in the regions with relatively high unemployment rates. Olga Kupets NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARYThe persistent and stagnant character of unemployment over the last decade in Ukraine has become an overwhelming concern for policymakers and for society in general. The problems of unemployment are aggravated even more because the incidence of long-term unemployment and the average duration of unemployment appear to have decreased slowly in response to increases in labor demand in previous years. This implies that there are potentially serious barriers existing between long-term unemployed and new job opportunities. Consequently, one possible way to tackle the problem of long-term unemployment in Ukraine is to combat the inflow into long-term unemployment by offering more assistance to job losers before they reach the stage of long-term unemployment (i.e. preventive measures). A second important way is to apply measures focused on the needs of the more disadvantaged groups which aim at reducing the existing stock of chronic unemployed. In this context, it is of vital importance to understand the forces which tend to shape the structure of unemployment duration and its dynamics in order to properly design the social and economic policy model. The main purpose of this study is to determine factors which affect the probability of reemployment or withdrawing from the labor force after a period of unemployment in Ukraine over the last years. In particular we look at the impact of unemployment benefits and alternative sources of income during an unemployment spell, various individual and local labor market characteristics.The theoretical framework of our empirical study is job search approach. This paper builds on previous works in developed countries by estimating the conditional probability of leaving unemployment in a discrete time independent competing risks framework with flexible baseline hazard rates and gamma-distributed unobserved heterogeneity. The data base is a sample of unemployment spells experienced by individuals over the period

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