Two Essays on Urban Unemployment in Russia

Sammanfattning: Paper 1: Evaluation of Government Sponsored Vocational Training Programs for Unemployed in Urban Russia This is the first study on the effects of active labor market programs such as training in Russia. We use the data from official unemployment register combined with the information from the follow-up survey in a big industrial city in the year 2000. The method of propensity score matching was applied to learn whether participation in the training programs increased monthly salaries of participants. The findings suggest that individuals tend to benefit from the participation in the training programs. However, one year later this effect disappeared. Paper 2: Duration of Registered Unemployment in Urban Russia We investigate issues of unemployment duration in urban Russia using individual-level data from the Public Employment Office combined with the information from the household survey in the year 2000. Our findings show that the risk of transition to a job is non-monotonic and tends to decrease at longer duration intervals. Important finding is that only 290f the unemployed obtained a job simultaneously with deregistering from the Public Employment Office. Others continue to search for job on their own. Intensity of the job search increases after individuals leave the Public Employment Office.