Research

"The End of Slovakia’s Convergence in GDP per Capita at PPP: Role of Shortcomings in Input Data Submitted to Eurostat" 

Inštitút sociálnej politiky (Social Policy Institute): Bratislava, December 2023 [pdf]

According to official statistics, Slovakia’s GDP per capita at PPP has been declining compared to the EU-27 average since 2016. This unfavorable evolution is influenced by shortcomings in the input data provided to Eurostat – especially in expenditures on housing rentals and in housing stock data. Using the Eurostat-OECD methodology for calculating purchasing power parities, we estimate alternative scenarios that correct these shortcomings. Our results still suggest that Slovakia’s convergence level has been stagnating since 2016. They are less optimistic than those by other Slovak institutions, and are not very sensitive to changes in assumptions about the prices of rentals.

"Is Slovakia Still Converging to Richer EU Countries in GDP per Capita at Purchasing Power Parity?" 

Inštitút sociálnej politiky (Social Policy Institute): Bratislava, October 2023 [pdf]

According to official Eurostat statistics, Slovakia‘s GDP per capita at purchasing power parity (PPP) has been declining compared to the EU-27 average since 2016. Having achieved a convergence level of 79% of the EU average in 2015, it has fallen to 68% in 2022. Slovakia now occupies, along with Greece, the second-to-last place in the EU in this statistic, and ranks ahead only of Bulgaria. The unfavorable evolution of Slovakia’s official PPP statistics is influenced by shortcomings in the input data to Eurostat calculations. The most important factors are changes in the methodology for estimating expenditures on housing rentals in the national accounts after their benchmark revision in 2019, as well as a change in the reporting of the surface area of dwellings, and – in the past – not accounting for intermediate consumption in rentals expenditures. We estimate that, after correcting the shortcomings in the data, Slovakia’s convergence level to the EU average would be at 73% in 2019, and only at 71% in 2022. These estimates are not very sensitive to changes in assumptions about the prices of rentals. Compared to estimates of other Slovak institutions, they are less optimistic, as they still indicate that the convergence of the Slovak economy has been stagnating, or even declining. Our estimates indicate that Slovakia is, contrary to what official Eurostat statistics report, not in the last place among EU Member States when it comes to the net earnings of households. Nevertheless, net household earnings in Slovakia have been among the lowest in the European Union. 

"Dobieha slovenské HDP na obyvateľa v parite kúpnej sily bohatšie krajiny EÚ?" [in Slovak]

Inštitút sociálnej politiky (Social Policy Institute): Bratislava, October 2023 [pdf]

Podľa oficiálnych štatistík Eurostatu sa Slovensko od roku 2016 v HDP na obyvateľa v parite kúpnej sily (PKS) vzďaľuje od priemeru krajín EÚ-27. Z dobiehania európskeho priemeru na 79 % v roku 2015 sme padli na 68 % v roku 2022, čo znamená predposledné miesto v EÚ – spolu s Gréckom a len pred Bulharskom. Nepriaznivý vývoj v oficiálnych štatistikách je však ovplyvnený nedostatkami vo vstupných dátach do výpočtov Eurostatu. Najdôležitejšími faktormi sú zmeny v metodike odhadu výdavkov na nájomné na bývanie v národných účtoch po ich benchmarkovej revízii v roku 2019, ako aj zmena vo vykazovaní plochy obydlí pre účely výpočtu parít kúpnej sily a v minulosti aj nezaúčtovanie medzispotreby do nájomného. Odhadujeme, že po oprave nedostatkov v dátach by sme priemer EÚ 27 dobiehali na 73 % v roku 2019 a len na 71 % v roku 2022. Tieto odhady nie sú veľmi citlivé na zmenu predpokladov o výške nájomného na Slovensku. V porovnaní s odhadmi iných slovenských inštitúcií sú naše odhady menej optimistické, keďže stále naznačujú stagnáciu až pokles. Hoci vo výške čistých zárobkov domácností nie sme podľa našich odhadov na poslednom mieste spomedzi členských štátov Európskej únie, ako uvádza Eurostat, v porovnaní so zvyškom EÚ čisté zárobky na Slovensku patrili medzi najnižšie.

"A Very Uneven Road: US Labor Markets in the Past 30 Years"

(with Harry J. Holzer [bio]), in Diversity and Disparities, America Enters a New Century (Ed. John Logan) [link], Russell Sage Foundation: New York, 2014 [chapter pdf]

In the past three decades, the American economy has experienced large swings in performance, over shorter and longer time periods, and has undergone major structural changes. During the 1980s, we first endured a severe recession, engineered by the Federal Reserve Bank to fight high rates of inflation, and then recovered with a lengthy period of expansion and economic growth. Another and milder recession in the early 1990s was followed by an even more robust period of expansion, often called the “Great Boom” or the “Roaring Nineties,” during which high productivity and income growth returned to the U.S. economy. But in the decade of the 2000s, which once again began with a mild recession, the economic picture was more mixed; a shorter period of recovery, during which productivity growth was high but income growth was much lower, was followed by the most severe economic downturn since the 1930s, which is commonly known as the “Great Recession.”  How did all of these economic forces play out in the U.S. labor market during this time period? In each economic cycle, how did trends in wages, employment and annual earnings reflect these economic developments? Which groups of workers benefited from economic growth, and which did not? Despite the periodic ups and downs in the economy, what long-term trends do we find in the labor market? And does the current severe downturn, from which our recovery will likely be painfully slow, change our long-term perceptions? 

"An Uneven Road, Then A Cliff: U.S. Labor Markets, 2000-2010" 

(with Harry J. Holzer [bio]), [report pdf]

The Great Recession of the past few years follows a complete economic cycle (2000-07) during which employment outcomes improved just barely for most Americans, while actually deteriorating for some. Hourly wages rose modestly but employment rates fell from their peaks in 2000, leading to overall earnings stagnation. Highly educated workers, those with the very highest earnings levels and women gained relatively more than others; less educated, male and/or younger workers fell behind, especially in the Midwest. During the Great Recession unemployment rates have risen most for younger, less educated, and minority workers, especially men. Unemployment durations are very lengthy while labor market recovery is likely to be gradual. Policy responses should help unemployed workers during the short term, while raising worker skills and job quality in the longer term, and providing additional supports for those who will be forced to take low-wage jobs. 

"Do People with Social Jobs Fear Immigrants Less? Evidence from the European Social Survey"

May 2017 [link] [pdf]

Immigrants face higher barriers to entry into occupations that rely on social skills. As a result, they are less likely to pose a labor market threat to workers who hold social skill-intensive jobs in the recipient country. Using data from the 7th round of the European Social Survey and the O*NET occupational database, I find that individuals in social occupations exhibit more favorable attitudes towards immigration, and favor less restrictive immigration policies. The opposite pattern holds for individuals whose occupations rely on technical, rather than social, skills. These findings are consistent with political economy explanations of immigration attitudes that focus on the role of competition in the labor market.

"Social Capital, the Quality of Social Networks and Redistribution Preferences: Evidence from the International Social Survey Programme"

May 2017 [link] [pdf]

Social capital can be a useful asset in the labor market. Individuals who have more or better-quality connections in their social networks have an easier time finding employment. Since they face a lower probability of unemployment, one might expect them to express less support for redistributive tax policies. Using survey data from 20 advanced industrialized countries included in the 2006 Role of Government module of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), I find some evidence that individuals with better-quality social networks tend to oppose increasing taxes on the rich and lowering taxes on the poor, and that they believe the government ought to be responsible for providing jobs to those who want them, and for ensuring a decent living standard for the unemployed. At the same time, I find that higher social network quality does not appear to correlate with an individual’s belief that the government ought to reduce income differences, or increase spending on unemployment benefits. The social network quality measures do not, however, appear to increase the explanatory power of regression models significantly, indicating that any implied effects are fairly tenuous. 

"The Political Economy of Multilateral Foreign Aid: UNICEF as a Tool of U.S. Foreign Policy"

working paper presented at the Political Economy of International Organizations conference at Princeton University in January 2012,  [link] [pdf]

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has long been controlled by the United States. I show that countries that are politically closely aligned with the United States receive more foreign aid from UNICEF. In addition, UNICEF provides more aid to U.S.-friendly governments in recipient countries' election years, but only if those elections are competitive. I conclude that the United States uses UNICEF as a tool of its foreign policy. It uses its influence in an international organization to help aligned governments win elections, but does not want to waste aid money on elections whose result is known ahead of time. None of these findings hold for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) or the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), two U.N. organizations that have not been dominated by the United States. 

"Political Ideology and Individual-Level Attitudes Towards Immigration in the European Union: Evidence from the European Values Study, 2008/2009" 

April 2011 [SSRN] [summary maps and tables]

Using data from the 2008/2009 wave of the European Values Study, I examine the determinants – demographic, socio-economic and ideological – of individual-level attitudes towards immigrants and of preferences over variously restrictive immigration policy regimes in the European Union (EU-27). In addition to testing the predictions of factor-proportions models with new data, I perform an innovative analysis of the role of political ideology: Using principal components analysis (PCA), I decompose political ideology along three dimensions – social traditionalism, national pride and attachment to laissez-faire views.  My results confirm that predictions from factor-proportions models generally hold, but there appears to be a great deal of variation in the effect of individuals' political ideology: In the pooled EU-27 sample, higher degrees of social traditionalism, national pride and, perhaps surprisingly, stronger attachment to laissez-faire views are associated with less favorable views of immigrants, and with a higher likelihood of supporting restrictions on immigration. There is, however, a great deal of heterogeneity across countries in both the direction and magnitude of these ideological components' effects. 

" 'Right' Choice: Restorative Nationalism and Right-Wing Populism in Central and Eastern Europe" 

(with Iza Ding, University of Pittsburgh), Chinese Political Science Review, Vol. 2,  2017 [pdf]

What are the facilitating conditions for right-wing populism? This paper explores the moral and nationalist foundations of right-wing populist appeal. Using European Social Survey data, we demonstrate that voting for right-wing populist parties is not associated with anti-elite, anti-establishment sentiment, but instead with moral beliefs in the cultural purity of nationhood and its centrality to the preservation of national identity, which we call restorative nationalism. We draw on qualitative data from Central and Eastern Europe to demonstrate how narratives of restorative nationalism can bolster right-wing populist politicians.

"Dimensions of Democracy in Slovakia: The Long View, 1918-2012" 

September 2016 [link]

This paper presents an overview of Slovakia’s democratic development from 1918 to 2012, based on data from key indices and their constituent indicators from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project. It analyzes the historical development of the five Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) principles of democracy – electoral, liberal, egalitarian, deliberative and participatory – and provides an overview of the female rights index. The most apparent pattern is the U-shaped trajectory of democracy in the country. Two periods of relatively high achievement on democratic indices (during the first Czechoslovak Republic until 1938 and after the end of communism in 1989) bracket an era of autocratic rule (first within the fascist Slovak State and during the communist era). This overarching pattern can be seen not only in the high-level principles of democracy indices, but also in many – albeit not all – of their component indicators. 

"Performance of political parties in the 2016 parliamentary election in Slovakia: regional comparisons and district-level determinants"

Regional and Federal Studies, Vol. 26, No. 3, April 2016 [link]

This paper explores the results of the 2016 parliamentary election in the Slovak Republic, with a special emphasis on the regional aspects of participating political parties’ election campaigns. It summarizes the election results for the country as a whole, as well as separately by region. An empirical analysis of party electoral performance at the district level suggests that the incumbent Smer party tended to do well in districts with higher rates of unemployment and a lower proportion of university-educated population. Similar patterns hold for the Slovak ethnic nationalist Slovak National Party and the far-right People’s Party Our Slovakia. By contrast, the two parties that presented themselves as being starkly opposed to the Smer government’s policies—Freedom and Solidarity and Ordinary People and Independent Personalities—exhibit greater support in districts with more university-educated voters and lower unemployment rates.