The Labour Market in Bulgaria

Iskra Beleva, Richard Jackman and M Nenova-Amar

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: The fall in output and employment, and the rise in unemployment, during the transition in Bulgaria have been exceptionally severe. This paper examines possible causes, including the role of the financial stabilisation package, collective bargaining and the excess wage tax, the gradual emergence of the private sector, and the unemployment benefit system. The paper concludes that economic activity in Bulgaria has been depressed relative to other transitional economies by weak export growth as a result of its unfortunate geographical location. On the supply side, there has been a continuing vulnerability to wage inflation resulting from the slow privatisation of state enterprises and the continuing political; strength of the trade unions. A small-scale private sector (some of it "informal") is flourishing, aided in part by the very restrictive unemployment benefit regime, but remains of secondary importance. A sustained recovery will depend both on a return to economic stability in neighbouring economies and on more determined domestic policies, in particular on privatisation, to complete the transition to a market economy.

Date: 1995-10
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp0268

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().