Productivity, employment and labor demand in Polish industry in the 1980s: Some preliminary results from enterprise-level data

Abstract

The paper uses annual data from a panel of 334 Polish industrial enterprises over the period 1983–1988 to test empirically a simple neoclassical approach to the socialist labor market. First, an enterprise production function is estimated. The paper finds that for most enterprises, the resulting estimated marginal product of labor exceeds the wage paid by the enterprise by a considerable margin, suggesting general excess demand for labor. The paper then looks at how the difference between the MPL and the wage is related to the rate of change of employment, and finds that firms where the MPL is higher than the wage — firms which in a neoclassical model would have a large excess demand for labor — do not shed labor any more slowly than other firms.