Helpful friends? Personal contacts and job entry among youths in transformation societies

This article’s aim is to explore the role of personal contacts at the transition from school to work and compare these effects across countries with various levels of market development. Using data from school-leaver surveys for Ukraine and Croatia and applying propensity score matching, we focus on the probability of finding initial employment and the quality of this employment among those youths who adhered to personal contacts compared to those relying on formal methods of job searching. Our results reveal that personal connections yield greater economic benefits for job entry in transformation countries with more developed market structures.