nep-cis New Economics Papers
on Confederation of Independent States
Issue of 2015‒03‒05
thirteen papers chosen by



  1. Open Data for Economic Growth in Russia By World Bank
  2. Do Initial Conditions Matter? A comparative analysis of SME Development in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan By Kan, Viktoriya
  3. Look For People, Not For Alpha: Mutual Funds Success And Managerial Intellectual Capital By Iuliia N. Naidenova; Petr A. Parshakov; Marina A. Zavertiaeva; Eduardo Tome
  4. Russian Federation Gender Assessment By World Bank
  5. Corporate Governance Country Assessment : Russian Federation By World Bank
  6. School Of Autocracy: Pensions And Labour Reforms Of The First Putin Administration By Ivan S. Grigoriev; Anna A. Dekalchuk
  7. Institutional Efficiency and Processes of Institutional Changes (as Seen by the Russian Academic Tradition) By Kuzmin, Evgeny A.; Barbakov, Oleg M.
  8. The long-term trends on Russian electricity market: comparison of empirical mode and wavelet decompositions By Afanasyev, Dmitriy; Fedorova, Elena
  9. On the nature of shocks driving exchange rates in emerging economies By Galina V. Kolev
  10. Globalisation, Structural Change and Labour Productivity Growth in BRICS Economy By Jagannath Mallick
  11. Education in transition and job mismatch: Evidence from the skills survey in non-EU transition economies By Olga Kupets
  12. Strengthening Kazakhstan's Education Systems : An Analysis of PISA 2009 and 2012 By World Bank Group
  13. Содействие переходу к формальной экономике на примере некоторых государств - участников СНГ Арман Саргсян, Болат Татыбеков, Ирина Соболева, Елена Кубишин, Марина Баскакова By Sargsyan, Arman; Tatybekov, B; Soboleva, I; Kubishin, E; Baskakova, M

  1. By: World Bank
    Keywords: Education - Knowledge for Development Information Security and Privacy Science and Technology Development - Innovation Private Sector Development - E-Business Information and Communication Technologies - ICT Policy and Strategies
    Date: 2014–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wboper:21320&r=cis
  2. By: Kan, Viktoriya
    Abstract: This paper considers the economic factors behind major differences that emerged in the extent of development of SMEs in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan during the transition period. Taking into account problems of the Soviet-type centrally planned economic system as its initial conditions and using primary sources including laws and regulations, as well as data sources including the national statistical agencies for each country, the paper analyzes the determinants of development trends for SMEs across these three countries. Special attention is paid to macroeconomic factors such as the initial level of development of cooperatives, the impact of transition policies on business activity, the initial level of industrialization, and some demographic factors related to both demand- and supply-side determinants of entrepreneurship that are implicated in either inhibiting or promoting SME development during the transition period in each country.
    Date: 2015–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hit:cisdps:639&r=cis
  3. By: Iuliia N. Naidenova (National Research University Higher School); Petr A. Parshakov (National Research University Higher School); Marina A. Zavertiaeva (National Research University Higher School); Eduardo Tome (Universidade Europeia)
    Abstract: This is the first paper to explore which characteristics of Russian fund managers are connected with a higher abnormal return (measured by Jensen’s alpha) and risk (beta) for mutual funds. While only some fund managers publish biographic sketches we use the Heckman procedure to control for self-selection issues. The results support the idea that individual characteristics indicate the possibility to earn abnormal alpha. The relationship between both fund performance measures and manager experience has inverted U-shape. The results can be used as a simple screening system that helps to choose a mutual fund to invest in without sophisticated calculations
    Keywords: Russia, equity funds, individual intellectual capital, Jensen’s alpha
    JEL: J24 G11 G23 M50
    Date: 2015
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:42/fe/2015&r=cis
  4. By: World Bank
    Keywords: Agricultural Knowledge and Information Systems Gender - Gender and Development Gender - Gender and Law Gender - Gender and Health Health, Nutrition and Population - Population Policies Agriculture
    Date: 2014–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wboper:21121&r=cis
  5. By: World Bank
    Keywords: Finance and Financial Sector Development - Microfinance Governance - National Governance Law and Development - Corporate Law Private Sector Development - Emerging Markets Finance and Financial Sector Development - Debt Markets
    Date: 2013–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wboper:21422&r=cis
  6. By: Ivan S. Grigoriev (National Research University Higher School of Economics); Anna A. Dekalchuk (National Research University Higher School of Economics)
    Abstract: The early 2000s marked a surge in uncertainty in Russian politics caused by the succession crisis and the profound political turnover it triggered. This uncertainty could resolve in a number of ways, each leading to a different political development. We trace the actual way out of this uncertainty and suggest that the major factor to condition the further regime trajectory was the way reforms were conducted. The article questions the teleological approach that sees government as knowingly and purposefully building autocracy, and contributes to the tradition emphasizing the plurality of possible regime developments (Golosov 2011) and the role of contingency therein (Hale 2004) by providing a more systematic treatment of such contingency. We use insights from basic coordination game theory and cognitive institutionalism to show how local reform practices become accepted as a trusted way of interaction by political actors and stick with the regime in a path dependent manner. This intuition is substantiated with a case-study of pensions and labour reforms. Course of these reforms determined the major features of the Putin regime, such as building up a single party of power, crowding out the political market, opposition decay, and informal institutionalisation
    Keywords: autocratic learning; policy feedback; uncertainty; labour reform; pensions reform; Putin's Russia.
    JEL: H55 J58
    Date: 2015
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:24/ps/2015&r=cis
  7. By: Kuzmin, Evgeny A.; Barbakov, Oleg M.
    Abstract: Research in changes to the institutional environment has set a scientific problem of a balance between consequences from such changes and a need to sort out differences across imperfect standards and regulations. Approaches to solve the abovementioned issue are not the same. In a review of scientific papers, we present an original view of scientists, who are committed to the Russian academic tradition. To clarify this, the paper summarizes theories on the efficiency of economic agents and institutions. The paper also demonstrates ambiguity in approaches to a definition of efficiency conditions. It justifies factors of an increase or a decrease in transaction costs in a horizontal and vertical institutional expansion, as well as a change to the transformational function. In the course of the research, existing saturation and sparsity as features of the institutional environment are discussed.
    Keywords: economic agent efficiency, institutional efficiency, saturation and sparsity of the institutional environment, borders of economic agents, institutional changes
    JEL: B52 L14
    Date: 2015–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:62404&r=cis
  8. By: Afanasyev, Dmitriy; Fedorova, Elena
    Abstract: The problem of trend-cyclic component filtering from price time-series arises in many commodity market studies, including those of wholesale electricity market. The long-term component filtering is an important part of price analysis since incorrect determination of this component may result in substantial risk underestimation, distorted expectations of both consumers and power generating companies, as well as financial losses. A great strand of literature on this topic proposes quite a lot of approaches and procedures for solving this problem, but all of them suffer from two principal flaws: (1) inability to deal with non-stationary and nonlinear processes; (2) assumption of an "a priori", knowledge of the phenomenon being studied. The complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise (CEEMDAN) allows to effectively overcome these flaws and is expected to produce more adequate results as compared to other methods. In order to check this, we compare the performance of CEEMDAN with the ordinary EMD and yet another well-known approach - the wavelet-decomposition, with an example of the Russian day-ahead electricity market (price zones Europe-Ural and Siberia). Our results shows that the CEEMDAN is much more effective than the standard EMD and is comparable with the wavelet-decomposition (in terms of trend estimation error). At the same time, we found that there are some real data problems with the criterion of the number of low-frequency modes that are included into trend.
    Keywords: electricity market, trend-cyclic component, complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise (CEEMDAN), wavelet-decomposition
    JEL: C14 C63 C90 L94
    Date: 2015–02–24
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:62391&r=cis
  9. By: Galina V. Kolev
    Abstract: The paper analyzes the sources of exchange rate movements in emerging economies in the context of monetary tapering by the Federal Reserve. A structural vector autoregression framework with a long-run restriction is used to decompose the movements of nominal ex-change rates into two components: one component driven solely by the adjustment of the real exchange rate to permanent shocks and one resulting from transitory shocks such as monetary policy measures. Imposing the restriction that temporary shocks should not affect the real exchange rate in the long run, the analysis shows that the recent depreciation of the Russian ruble and the Turkish lira is largely driven by transitory shocks, like for instance monetary policy measures. Furthermore, the response of the lira to transitory shocks is sluggish and further depreciation is possible in the next months. In Brazil and India, on the contrary, nominal exchange rate behavior is mainly driven by permanent shocks. The recent depreciation is not caused by short-lived shocks but rather by changing long-term macroeconomic fundamentals. The foreign exchange interventions of the central bank to avoid large depreciation are therefore largely misplaced, especially in Brazil. They aggravate the use of nominal exchange rate flexibility as an efficient adjustment mechanism for real exchange rate changes, i.e. changes in relative prices across borders, and efficient allocation of resources.
    Keywords: Exchange rates, emerging economies, SVAR, monetary policy
    JEL: F31 E58
    Date: 2015–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wsr:wpaper:y:2015:i:146&r=cis
  10. By: Jagannath Mallick
    Abstract: Globalisation, has intensified the demand preference for quality labour, that embodies more knowledge and competency/skill to maximise the production in one hand, and it has also changed the life style and consumption behavior of the society on the other. As a consequence, this has led to significant changes in the composition and structure of the economy, and also, the reallocation of labour. The study examines the reallocation effect (or structural change) and the direct effect of globalization on labour productivity growth in BRICS countries. The study also examines the relative role of consumption factors and other factors for the structural development during globalization. The study uses shift–share analysis, dynamic panel data method and input-output tables for the empirical analysis during 1990-91 to 2011-12. The findings show that the contribution of structural change is relatively significant in China and India. The globalization measures including international trade and FDI are found to have significant impact on the upsurge of labour productivity growth in BRICS, where the consumption demand predominates among the factors of structural development.
    Keywords: Globalisation, FDI, Trade, Labour productivity, Structural Change, BRICS
    JEL: F1 J01 J08 R1
    Date: 2015–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wsr:wpaper:y:2015:i:141&r=cis
  11. By: Olga Kupets (Associate Professor, Department of Economics, National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy”)
    Abstract: This paper explores the incidence and determinants of education‐job vertical mismatch in four non-EU transition economies, namely Armenia, Georgia, Macedonia and Ukraine. It uses cross‐section data from the recent World Bank’s Skills toward Employment and Productivity (STEP) surveys of working-age urban population and applies several methods of measuring the incidence of education‐job mismatch. The particular interest is to examine whether the young generation that acquired education in modern economic environment is different from the older generation that studied before or shortly after the onset of transition, and whether overeducated and undereducated workers are different from those who are well-matched in terms of cognitive and non-cognitive skills. Our study shows that although workers from the older pre-transition cohort have relatively higher incidence of overeducation in Georgia and Armenia and lower incidence of overeducation in Ukraine and Macedonia as compared to younger workers from the transition cohort, the effect of cohort and age is rarely significant when other important characteristics are taken into account. Overeducated individuals seem to possess a relatively worse bundle of skills than workers who are adequately matched to their jobs in terms of formal education, undereducated individuals often perform better than well-matched workers, but the differences are not always significant.
    Date: 2015–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kyo:wpaper:915&r=cis
  12. By: World Bank Group
    Keywords: Secondary Education Teaching and Learning Education - Education For All Education - Primary Education Tertiary Education
    Date: 2014–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wboper:21101&r=cis
  13. By: Sargsyan, Arman; Tatybekov, B; Soboleva, I; Kubishin, E; Baskakova, M
    Abstract: Analyzes the main reasons of informal employment at SMEs and looks for decisions to stimulate formal employment in the CIS countries.
    Keywords: employment, informal employment, informal economy, role of ILO, international labour standards, employment policy, social protection, CIS countries, emploi, emploi informel, économie informelle, rôle de l'OIT, normes internationales du travail, politique de l'emploi, protection sociale, pays CEI, empleo, empleo informal, economía informal, papel de la OIT, normas internacionales del trabajo, política de empleo, protección social, países CEI
    Date: 2014
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ilo:ilowps:485091&r=cis

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