Production Networks and Varieties of Institutional Change: The Inequality Upswing in Post-Socialism Revisited

Abstract

In this article, we elucidate two new mechanisms for the rise in earnings inequality during postsocialist transition. First, the integration of transition country firms into globalized production networks (GPNs) should increase inequality independently of foreign direct investment (FDI). Second, because EU integration hastened the transition from Soviet era labor market practices, the distributional effects of private markets and world-economic integration should be larger among acceding countries. A longitudinal analysis of Gini coefficients among 16 transition countries from 1991 to 2009 supports these interventions: GPN integration increases inequality independently of FDI, and both private markets and world-economic integration have stronger effects in EU transition countries. These results are robust to a host of alternative explanations, to varying operationalizations of the labor-market effects of EU integration, and to alternative estimators. Through counterfactual analysis, we show that inequality would have increased less dramatically in the absence of EU integration.

Income Inequality and Carbon Emissions in Post-soviet Nations, 1992–2009

“…The limited availability of the independent variable of interest (i.e., income inequality measured as the Gini coefficient) restricts the sample to this time frame for these eleven nations. Ideally, we would prefer to include all post-Soviet nations in the analysis and for a wider time frame, but, like other research on the same category of nations (e.g., 2015;Mahutga and Bandelj 2008;Mahutga and Jorgenson 2016;York 2008), data availability precludes us from doing so.…”

“…Consistent with other recent studies of postSoviet nations (e.g., Jorgenson et al 2014;Mahutga and Bandelj 2008;Mahutga and Jorgenson 2016), we use the Gini coefficients for earnings based on employer surveys that are supplemented with Gini coefficients for income based on household surveys, which we obtained from TransMonEE (2012). Like all national-level data, these income inequality measures have their limitations in how they are measured and the extent to which they are valid for comparisons between nations and within nations through time.…”

“…This limitation is surprising, given that a notable amount of research in recent years has focused on other human drivers of carbon emissions for these nations (Jorgenson, Clark and Giedraitis 2012;Jorgenson, Longhofer, Grant, Sie and Giedraitis 2017;York 2008) as well as various politicaleconomic and demographic factors that influence their rising levels of income inequality (Mahutga and Bandelj 2008;Mahutga and Jorgenson 2016).…”

“…According to the World Bank, 2 the average electric power consumption in the post-Soviet nations had increased from 3169 kilowatt hours per capita in the year 2003 to 3648 kilowatt hours per capita in the year 2013 (the most recent year for which these data are currently available for all post-Soviet nations), which is higher than the global averages of 2491 kilowatt hours per capita (in 2003) and 3104 kilowatt hours per capita (in 2013). An important note is that most post-Soviet nations have experienced an upswing in domestic income inequality as well (Mahutga and Jorgenson 2016).…”

The effects of economic and political integration on power plants’ carbon emissions in the post-soviet transition nations

“…With few exceptions (i.e. Azerbaijan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan) these nations have all increased their per person electricity consumption in recent years as they pursue various pathways of development to enhance their collective human well-being [31][32][33] Prior to the post-communist transition, environmental policies in the region were relatively weak and pollution levels remained high [27,34]. However, with EU accession, new Member States worked to harmonize national laws with existing EU environmental directives, and public officials, nongovernmental organizations, and energy policy consultants all played important roles in these efforts [35][36][37].…”