Data Watch: Research Data from Transition Economies

Abstract

Ten years into the transition from communism in the countries of the former Soviet Union and central and eastern Europe, a cursory search of the EconLit database turns up hundreds of empirical studies published in refereed journals that deal with various issues in transition economies. Even so, we suspect that many economists are prevented from making full use of the possibilities offered by the transition by the difficulties of obtaining and interpreting data from the region. The purpose of this brief essay is to indicate some possible sources for data that can be used for economic analysis, as well as some cautions regarding the use of these data.

Ownership and Firm Performance after Large-Scale Privatization

“…More detailed summary statistics of performance indicators by ownership type and ownership extent are presented in appendix tables A1 and A2. We have also carried out a number of checks against official and private records to verify that our ownership information is reliable and that we hence meet the criticism of earlier privatization studies raised by Filer and Hanousek (2002).…”

“…As is known from empirical studies on transition and emerging market economies, firm-level data often suffer from accounting deficiencies and they usually contain missing values and outlier observations that may bias the estimated coefficients (e.g., Filer and Hanousek, 2002). Firms operating in the Czech Republic started adopting international accounting (IAP) standards in 1992, and our discussions with international accounting firms located in the country indicate that this process was by and large completed in 1995.…”

“…4 They may hence at best capture the short-term effects of privatization, namely those associated with defensive (reactive) restructuring of firms, rather than the medium and long-term effects of a switch from state to a relatively stable form of private or mixed ownership. 5 Second, the early studies (a) use small and unrepresentative samples of firms, (b) are often unable to identify accurately ownership because privatization was still ongoing or because the frequent post-privatization changes of ownership were hard to detect (Filer and Hanousek, 2002), and (c) often combine panel data from different accounting systems. As a result, the adequacy of data of the early studies is unclear.…”

Household survey data for research on well-being and behavior in Central Asia

“…1 We restrict ourselves to individual or household surveys (hence, no enterprise surveys are included), which include at least 1,000 observations 2 and for which we had sufficient information. In Tables A1-A5 of the Appendix, we provide an overview of these surveys, separately for each one of the five 1 An earlier review of datasets for all transition countries, including those of Central Asia, can be found in Filer and Hanousek (2002). 2 For some surveys, we do not know the exact sample size.…”

Central Asia Since 1991

“…Filer and Hanousek (2002) emphasise the improved capabilities of national statistical offices, but these have improved at varying speeds and to varying degrees so that cross-country comparisons are distorted by the stage which statistical office upgrading has reached in each country at each point in time.…”