Grime and Punishment: Insecurity and Wage Arrears in the Russian Federation

Hartmut Lehmann (), Jonathan Wadsworth and Alessandro Acquisti

No 65, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Using information from two complementary household survey data sets, we show that the dominant form of labor market adjustment in the Russian transition process has been the delayed receipt of wages. More than half the workforce is experiencing some form of disruption to their pay. Wage arrears are found across the private, state and budgetary sector. Workers in the metropolitan center are less affected by delayed and incomplete wage payments than workers in the provinces. There is less evidence that individual characteristics contribute much toward the incidence of wage arrears, but the persistence of arrears is concentrated on a subset of the working population. We show that workers can only exercise the exit option of a job quit from a firm not paying wages in full or on time if the outside labor market is sufficiently dynamic.

Keywords: wage arrears; Job security; transition process; Russia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J30 J6 P20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 1999-10
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (91)

Published - published in: Journal of Comparative Economics, 27 (1999), 595-617

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