The article focuses on regional diversity of the Polish Labor Market from institutional perspective. The Polish Labor Market is geographically diverse in terms of unemployment and employment rates, and also in terms of economic development. At the end of 2013 the difference between the lowest and the highest unemployment rate in the Polish regions was 12.1% (Wielkopolska located in the West Poland has unemployment rate of 9.6% and Warmia - Mazury in the East has unemployment of 21.7%). The question arises whether this difference comes from the structural or institutional sources. The paper describe the character of Polish Labor Market, whereas in the second part, it traces the impact of institutional variables such as real wage, Kaitz index and Gender gap on the regional unemployment rate in 2002–2012 in Poland.
The article focuses on presentation of ideas of institutions and transaction costs by original and new institutional economics with particular emphasis on J.R. Commons’s and O.E. Williamson’s views in terms of the economics of the labor market. Institutional economics assume the interaction between people and organizations and examine the rules of this interaction. It proves that the economic analysis should be interdisciplinary and focus on social, cultural, political, historical and other aspects. This is especially important for the analysis of the modern labor market, where cultural factors play a major role. The analysis of institutions (formal and informal) that determine the behavior of economic agents in the labor market and the study of the process of the transaction and the factors that influence the transaction costs may be the key to understand today’s labor market problems. The paper describes the differences of original and new institutional economics, presents the concept of institution, transaction and transaction costs by J.R. Commons and O.E. Williamson, and finally identifies the components of their achievements in relation to the labor market.
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