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Simon Commander

Altura Partners, UK, IE Business School, Spain, and IZA, Germany

IZA World of Labor role

Author

Current position

Managing Partner, Altura Partners and Professor of Economics, IE Business School

Website

http://legacy.iza.org/en/webcontent/personnel/photos/index_html?key=81

Positions/functions as a policy advisor

Adviser to Governments at Altura Partners; Senior Adviser, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and Adviser at the World Bank

Qualifications

PhD, Cambridge University, 1980

Selected publications

  • Diversifying Russia. London: EBRD, 2013 (with A. Plekhanov).

  • A Guide to the Political Economy of Reforming Energy Subsidies. IZA Policy Papers No. 52, 2012.

  • "Educational scores: How does Russia fare?" Journal of Comparative Economics 40:3 (2012): 508–527 (with C. Amini).

  • "ICT and productivity in developing countries: New firm-level evidence from Brazil and India." Review of Economics and Statistics 93:2 (2011): 528–541 (with R. Harrison and N. Menezes-Filho).

  • "Business environment, exports, ownership, and firm performance." Review of Economics and Statistics 93:1 (2011): 309–337 (with J. Svejnar).

article(s)

  • One-company towns: Scale and consequences

    One-company towns concentrate employment but their ability to adapt to adverse events is often very limited

    Simon Commander, March 2018
    One-company towns are a relatively rare phenomenon. Mostly created in locations that are difficult to access, due to their association with industries such as mining, they have been a marked feature of the former planned economies. One-company towns typically have high concentrations of employment that normally provide much of the funding for local services. This combination has proven problematic when faced with shocks that force restructuring or even closure. Specific policies for the redeployment of labor and funding of services need to be in place instead of subsidies simply aimed at averting job losses.
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