کارآفرینی و تکامل توزیع درآمد در لهستان و روسیه

Differences in the evolution of Polish and Russian income distributions in the post-socialist era can be attributed to different rates of entry of new enterprises. Using regional differences during early privatization as instruments to estimate the impact of this entry, we find that a one-standard-deviation increase in the share of the workforce in new or small enterprises increases the share of income earned by the lowest forty percent of the population by 1.4% and by 1.25% in Polish and Russian regions, respectively. Poland's greater success in de novo firm entry contributes to its more equitable income distribution during the transition. Journal of Comparative Economics34 (2) (2006) 338–356.

In our empirical work, we find a strong positive relationship between the size and the growth of the de novo sector and the income share of the bottom two quintiles of the distribution in both Poland and Russia. The average impact of a one-standard-deviation increase in any measure of new enterprise activity on the income share of this group is approximately 1.6%. Finding consistent evidence for these two countries having two quite different transition experiences lends credibility to the proposition that new firm creation leads to a more equitable distribution of income in post-socialist countries. In addition, Berkowitz and DeJong (2005) find that a one–standard-deviation increase in the size of the small firm sector is associated with a one and a half percent increase in annual income growth from 1993 to 2000 in Russia. In a similar analysis for Poland, we find that each measure of de novo firm activity used in this paper is significantly related to income growth with a one-standard-deviation increase associated with a one percent higher annual income growth rate.14 Taken together, these results indicate that new firm creation is associated with both larger income and a larger portion of income distributed to the lower quintiles, making the members of this group better off in both absolute and relative terms. These results also suggest that a positive association between per capita income and income distribution is due in part to small enterprise activity. In addition, according to United Nations (2005), overall growth in Russia since 2001 is associated with some improvement in the income distribution. Investigating these interesting issues requires additional data and sophisticated systems tests so that we leave it to future research. Our empirical work allows us to make inferences about the strikingly different changes in the income distributions in Poland and Russia during the first decade of their respective transitions. A critical aspect of the differences in the experiences of the two countries is the rate and character of new private firm creation. Kornai (2000) considers Poland's transition to be based on a high level of organic de novo firm creation and of spin-offs from old state firms in contrast with Russia where the emphasis was on privatization with much lower rates of de novo creation and of spin-offs. Our Polish and Russian data are not comparable because the former measures new firm creation and their employment growth while the latter measures the size of the small enterprise sector, although most of this activity is likely to be new firms. However, the evidence presented in this paper demonstrates strong growth of the de novo sector in Poland by 1997. Employment in these firms more than doubled between 1993 and 1997 and the most successful regions exhibit very dynamic de novo sectors. In contrast, the small enterprise sector in Russia actually decreased between 1995 and 2001. Hence, our data indicate that the small private enterprise sector is a much more dynamic part of the Polish transition relative to Russia, as Kornai contends. Our empirical results show that these new firms are also crucial to promoting aggregate economy growth, to creating an economic middle class, and to maintaining a relatively equitable income distribution. Hence, we conclude that the different experiences with the creation of new small firms are a major reason why the income distributions in Poland and Russia diverged so dramatically during the 1990s.