Transition Economics focuses on the transformation of a socialist economic system to market economy, which is of interest both because of its policy relevance and its importance to economic theory. As transition was one of the most important economic events of the last century, the study of Transition Economy may help us to understand the difficulties, surprises, and obstacles when a society undergoes profound change. Moreover, it may develop our knowledge of the capitalist economic system and its institutions. The dissertation consists of two different topics within Transition Economics. The first three papers, based on three different data sets, focus on various aspects of the Russian labour market. Theses papers include analyses about the ways people search for work, how unemployment duration is affected by different characteristics, but also how people divide the time outside the paid labour market. This may provide new insights on the Russian labour market, and hopefully also deepen our understanding of labour markets in general. The fourth paper, based on a fourth data set, takes a macro perspective and is concerned with transition and terrorism. It has been claimed that with new democracies, an increased risk of terrorism follows. Therefore, in the final paper, the potential connection between terrorism and transitional progress is analysed.

This thesis sets out to explore some of the key dimensions in the process of socio-technological change inherent in the shift to a low carbon economy. This is done in two parts, the first focusing on theory, the second, empirical case studies. Out of the diversity of interactions between actors, technologies, and policies surrounding this process, one key question emerges: can societies really shift the structure of their economies so fundamentally to achieve a low carbon future within a reasonable timeframe? Chapter One develops an integrated approach to economic and political change to interrogate this question. This synthesizes a review of literature (Part One) examining the role of technology within some of the main theories of economic change in the social sciences. Two broad paradigms are distinguished. First, a paradigm based around the notion of equilibrium, notably the standard welfare approach of neoclassical economics; and secondly, an evolutionary paradigm, which views the economy as a complex adaptive system – such as exemplified by theories of path dependency. This theoretical background provides a broad narrative to frame and inform Part Two of the thesis. First in Chapter Four, socio-technical change is investigated in the context of the diffusion of energy efficient lighting in Germany. This study investigates the relationships between human behaviour and attitudes, lamp technology and the evolving nature of institutions, to provide a framework with which to consider the contentious issue of individual freedom versus government control in the politics of change to lower-carbon emissions. In Chapter Five, the case for the creation of a market for CO2 pollution permits is developed. In making this case, the strengths and weaknesses of emissions trading are compared and contrasted with other policy instruments and the broader political economy of the various policy options discussed. Chapter 6 builds on this to examine the political economy of implementing an emissions trading scheme in Australia and the impact the Kyoto Protocol has had on domestic politics and GHG mitigation. Chapter Seven continues with the theme of building ‘a political ecology of the state’ by investigating the politics and economics of greenhouse gas mitigation in Russia. Finally, Chapter Eight recapitulates the aims, nature and conclusions of this research and draws out its implications for policy as well as mapping out some areas for further research. In particular, the need to bring a greater sense of politics back into the study of the economy is highlighted as a vital part of building a renewed, more sustainable economic paradigm in the wake of the financial crisis and, as a way of strengthening the connection between social values and market outcomes.

This work proposes a new theory of authoritarian regimes: responsive authoritarianism. Most existing theories of autocracies take as their point of departure elite politics or the state’s repressive apparatus to explain the rise and fall of regimes. I argue that, for many states, regimes also have to consider the consent of the governed when designing policies. Specifically, when regime legitimacy is low but the central leadership maintains a long time horizon, autocratic regimes are predicted to become more responsive to the needs of citizens. This theory is tested against a number of aspects of the Chinese fiscal system dealing with public goods provision during the period of 2002-2011 and generally finds in favor of the theory. Chapter 4 tests the fiscal transfer system, Chapter 5 tests the fiscal expenditure data, and Chapter 6 tests data on the results of the transfer and expenditure data: actual public goods provision. This theory has a number of implications that suggest that scholars begin to rethink how they conceptualize power dynamics within an authoritarian regime, in particular paying closer attention to the relationship between the ruler(s) and the ruled. It suggests that, at least in the political science literature, power be returned to the people.

During the transition era, economic resurgence in post-Soviet petro-states, such as Russia and Kazakhstan, was decisively fuelled by an abundance of oil and gas resources during a time of high and long-sustained demand for hydrocarbons in the world market. Thus, these states' energy sectors acted as the cornerstone of their post-Soviet economic and political development. However, in regard to foreign investment in their energy sectors, the governments of the different former Soviet states took strikingly different approaches: Russia for instance imposed restrictions on foreign economic groups, while Kazakhstan was more receptive to foreign investment in the sector. Given their shared economic and political background in the Soviet era discovering what accounts for this policy trend helps understand the divergence in the transition experience and more deeply rooted differences. This policy-oriented study examines perceptions, chiefly by interviews, and foreign investment strategies in the energy sector. It assesses institutional, economic and social background factors shaping perception and, to the degree that it can be determined, policy-making in post-Soviet Russia and Kazakhstan.

This D.Phil. thesis develops a new agent-based simulation model to improve the results of analysis, which solely uses discrete choice modelling, as well as to analyse the effects of a road user charging scheme for the Upper Derwent Valley in the Peak District National Park. The advantages of discrete choice analysis are well known. However, results with these conventional conventional approaches, which conduct analysis solely with discrete choice models, can be biased if interaction and learning effects are significant. The Minority Game, in which agents try to choose the option of the minority side, is an appropriate tool to deal with these problems. The situation in the Upper Derwent Valley can be explained with economic game theories and the Minority Game. The two approaches mutually help to analyse the situation in the Upper Derwent Valley leading to the development of a stochastic Minority Game. The stochastic Minority Game was tested with an online game (questionnaire), which was played 3,886 times by response in all around the world. The practical part of this thesis examines the components of the stochastic Minority Game with the data collected around the Upper Derwent Valley. The main data was collected using a stated preference survey. Overall, 700 questionnaires were distributed and 323 of them were returned (i.e. a return rate of 46.1 %). In the practical part, the agent-based model has four sub modules: 1) Multinomial mixed logit model for mode choice, 2) Binary logit model for parking location choice, 3) Markov queue model for parking network, and 4) the Minority Game for parking congestion and learning. This simulation model produces comprehensive outputs including mode choices, congestion levels, and user utilities. The results show that the road user charging scheme reduces car demand in the Upper Derwent Valley and ensures a reduction in congestion at the parking areas. The model also shows that an exemption will increase the utilities of elderly visitors without substantially sacrificing those of younger visitors. In conclusion, the simulation model demonstrated that oversimplification in conventional approaches solely using discrete choice models gave significant biases when real world problems were analysed.

This thesis examines the political process of health care reform between 1989 and 1998 in the most advanced sizable political economy in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) – the Czech Republic. Its aim is to explain the political process bringing about post-Communist health policy change and stimulate new debates on welfare state transformation in CEE. The thesis challenges the conventional view that post-Communist health care reform in CEE was designed and implemented to improve the health status of the people, as desired by the people themselves. I suggest that this is a dangerous over-rationalisation, and argue that post-Communist health care reform in the Czech Republic was the by-product of haphazard democratic political struggle between emerging elites for power and economic resources. The thesis employs the analytical narrative method to describe and analyse the actors, institutions, ideas and history behind the health policy change. The analysis is informed by welfare state theory, elite theory, interest group politics theory, the assumptions of methodological individualism and rational choice theory, and Schumpeter’s doctrine of democracy. Its focus is on the interests of health policy actors and how they interacted within an unhinged, but fast-consolidating, institutional framework. The results demonstrate that, while historical legacies and liberal ideas featured prominently in the rhetoric accompanying health policy change, in Realpolitik, these were merely the disposable, instrumental devices of opportunistic, self-interested elites. The resultant explanation of health policy change stresses the primacy of agency over structure and formulates four important mechanisms of health policy change: opportunism, tinkering, enterprise, and elitism. In conclusion, the relevance of major welfare state theories to the given case is assessed and implications for welfare state research in CEE are drawn.

Despite their similar size, material resources, shared geopolitical conditions and common history, the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have pursued remarkably different policies towards Russia in the 1994-2010 period. Complex patterns of differentiation are evident across issue areas and over time. Given the static structural similarities between the Baltic states, how can we explain their divergent policies towards Russia and the change in these policies over time? This puzzle informs the central research question of this study: Why did Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian foreign policies towards Russia diverge in the 1994 to 2010 period? This work analyses the foreign policy of the Baltic states using typologies based on two axes: cooperative/adversarial and pragmatic/principled. Relying primarily on the liberal approach to international relations, the theoretical framework identifies six independent variables: the left/right political orientation of the government, instrumental usage of principled policies, the ethnic factor, business interests, membership in the EU and NATO, and, finally, Moscow’s own policies. It suggests that these factors played causal roles in determining Baltic policy towards Russia. Three case studies on the oil and gas sectors, as well as historical tensions, provide the empirical evidence to trace and explain the differentiated pathways of Baltic foreign policies. The empirical analysis provides evidence to argue that due to domestic political differences Lithuania pursued the most adversarial and principled policy towards Russia. Estonia, by way of contrast, pursued cooperative and pragmatic policies regarding energy issues. On political questions, however, it maintained a principled and adversarial stance, though this was less pronounced that that of Lithuania. Finally, Latvia pursued moderately principled and relatively adversarial energy policies placing it in between Lithuania and Estonia. With regard to history, Estonia’s and particularly Latvia’s policies experienced a notable evolution from adversarial and principled to more cooperative and pragmatic policies. In sum, this work demonstrates that the typologies of Baltic policies differed across sectors and experienced both divergence and at times convergence in rhetoric if not policies.

The collapse of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989-1990 heralded the beginning of an economic transition from central planning to market economies. The subsequent period was marked by malfunctioning of these countries’ social sectors, including their health care systems, raising serious issues of equity. This thesis examines the impact of the transition period and the introduction of social insurance on equity in health care provision in Bulgaria. Equity in health care is investigated with respect to function - i.e. financing (according to ability to pay) and delivery (according to need) - and outcomes - i.e. health status, income inequality and poverty. Differences in health, health care financing and delivery are explored by income, education, ethnic, employment, marital status, age and sex groups. Furthermore, the thesis outlines the impact of health care provision, in particular social insurance, on poverty and health inequalities. The thesis employs empirical analysis based on household data. Its methodology includes concentration and decomposition analysis, and provides new ways of modelling health care financing and delivery, as well as the link between health and health care delivery. The thesis concludes that social insurance does not provide a uniform means of improving equity and that the root cause of the problem lies in the large proportion of out-of-pocket payments and the rather limited size of the health insurance sector. Inequity in health care provision leads to poverty and untreated illness. The data suggests that there are differences between socio-economic groups as regards their likelihood to seek treatment for their ill health, which result in differences in their health status. The social factors that have impacted the most on health are low education and low income.

Diese Arbeit hat zum Ziel, marktunterstützende institutionelle Reformen im Transformationsprozess zu analysieren. Als Einstieg in die Thematik wird die Aufnahme mittel- und osteuropäischer Länder in die Europäische Union mit der zurückliegenden Süderweiterung der Europäischen Gemeinschaft verglichen. Die folgenden Kapitel befassen sich mit der Bedeutung weicher Budgetbeschränkungen in Transformationsökonomien. Zunächst werden anhand von Daten bulgarischer und rumänischer Unternehmen theoretische Erklärungsansätze für weiche Budgetbeschränkungen getestet. Im anschließenden Teil wird analysiert, ob Handelskredite einen Teil der normalen Geschäftspraxis darstellen oder ob Handelskredite starke Handelsverflechtungen zwischen Unternehmen unterstützen und damit die Wahrscheinlichkeit von weichen Budgetbeschränkungen erhöhen können. Im empirischen Teil werden Daten aus Ungarn und Rumänien verwendet, die aus Unternehmensbefragungen stammen. Im letzten Kapitel wird die Unternehmensebene verlassen und mit makroökonomischen Daten gearbeitet. Ziel ist es hier, den Einfluss institutioneller Reformen auf das Wirtschaftswachstum zu testen. / Main objective of this work is to analyse market-supporting institutional reforms in the transition process. In the first part of the dissertation, the upcoming enlargement of the European Union towards the east is compared with the earlier southern enlargement. Research in the following chapters is devoted to the problem of soft budget constraints in transition countries. Firstly, theories on the causes of soft budget constraints are empirically tested. Therefore a panel data set consisting of company account data for Bulgarian and Romanian firms is used. Secondly, firm-level survey data from Hungary and Romania is used to test whether trade credits are just part of normal business practice or whether trade credits are representing a systematic phenomenon supporting soft budget constraints of firms in transition. Thirdly, macroeconomic data is utilised to illustrate the impact of implementing institutional change on economic performance.

This study explores the changing nature of filial piety in contemporary society in rural China. With the economic, social and political upheavals that followed the Revolution, can 'great peace under heaven' still be found for the rural Chinese family as in the traditional Confucian proverb,"make yourself useful, look after your family, look after your country, and all is peaceful under heaven"? This study explores this question, in terms not so much of financial prosperity, but of non-tangible cultural values of filial piety, changing familial and gender roles, and economic migration. In particular, it examines how macro level changes in economic, social and demographic policies have affected family life in rural China. The primary policies examined were collectivisation, the hukou registration system, marketization, and the One-Child policy. Ethnographic interviews reveal how migration has affected rural family structures beyond the usual quantifiable economic measures. Using the village of Meijia, Sichuan province, as a paradigmatic sample of family, where members have moved to work in the cities, leaving their children behind with the grandparents, the study demonstrates how migration and modernization are reshaping familial roles, changing filial expectations, reshuffling notions of care-taking, and transforming traditional views on the value of daughters and daughters-in-law. The study concludes that the choices families make around migration, child-rearing and elder-care cannot be fully explained by either an income diversification model or a survival model, but rather through notions of filial piety. Yet the concept of filial piety itself is changing, particularly in relation to gender and perceptions about the worth of daughters and the mother/ daughter-in-law relationship. Understanding these new family dynamics will be important for both policy planners and economic analysts.