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on Confederation of Independent States |
| By: | Vinokurov, Evgeny |
| Abstract: | The paper is focused on the official Kazakhstani position towards Russia and its development over 1991-2000, i.e. the two post-Soviet decades. We draw upon speeches by the representatives of the state, most importantly by Kazakhstan president Nursultan Nazarbayev, and the intergovernmental acts. The paper provides substantive analysis and structurisation of the evolution of the Kazakhstani official position towards relations with Russia. It also provides various aspects of interpretation of this process, as we set the rhetoric against the economic cycles and exogenous events. |
| Keywords: | Kazakhstan; Russia; CIS; foreign policy |
| JEL: | F15 F13 P20 |
| Date: | 2010–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:22187&r=cis |
| By: | Eteri Kvintradze |
| Abstract: | The health of the Russian economy still depends heavily on natural resource revenues. The history of the economic collapse and recovery in 1970–2004 provides new evidence on the sources of Russian economic growth, while a survey of the economic literature suggests that the Russian economy could be viewed as a weighted combination of virtual and normal forces. If the Russian economy is considered to be dominated by normal market economy forces, higher energy export receipts provide an opportunity for structural reforms while compensating for social costs, making the economy less vulnerable to decline in world energy prices. However, the domination of virtual forces—value transfers from the energy sector to strategic enterprises—suggests that high world energy prices are masking an inefficient manufacturing sector, and that the Russian economy is highly vulnerable to energy price declines. |
| Keywords: | Economic growth , Economic models , Economic recovery , Industrial sector , Political economy , Production growth , Productivity , Russian Federation , Transition economies , |
| Date: | 2010–04–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfwpa:10/89&r=cis |
| By: | Rafis Abazov (Harriman Institute/SIPA at Columbia University) |
| Abstract: | This paper assesses recent migration trends in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Within the last decade (1999-2009) the Russian Federation became the world’s second largest recipient of migrants after the United States, while the Ukraine became the fourth largest and Kazakhstan became the ninth largest. Such large-scale population movement, which includes a significant number of labour migrants from resource-poor to resource-rich states in the region, has had an inevitable impact on the social, economic and human development in both source and host countries. By 2007-2009 Moldova, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have develop a high dependency on international money transfers from their labour migrants, having the world’s highest ratio of remittances to their GDP. During last few years numerous studies focused on migration issues within the CIS region, yet there are a number of problems to be still explored: What are the “push” and “pull” factors that motivate this large-scale migration? What are the current trends in the labour migration in the CIS? What are the short-term and long-term implications of the current migration trends for migrants and their families? What is the impact of the migration on human development in the region, including poverty reduction, social and gender equality, education and health? The paper addresses these and other questions. First, it evaluates the historical, political and social background and demographic context of the population movement in the region, which has become one of the most important determinants of migration during the recent times. Second, it overviews the most important push and pull factors that have affected migration during recent years and different types of migration responses to the social and economic pressures in sending and receiving countries. Third, it reviews the major impacts of the population movement on human development in the CIS region. In conclusion the paper summarizes the major findings and provides policy recommendations. |
| Keywords: | labour migration, regional labour market, human development, poverty, migration policy, remittances, rural-urban migration, urbanization, CIS, Kazakhstan, and Russia |
| JEL: | O1 O15 J0 F22 |
| Date: | 2009–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hdr:papers:hdrp-2009-36&r=cis |
| By: | Natalia Kyui (Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne) |
| Abstract: | This paper makes a thorough analysis of the returns to tertiary education and education-occupation matches within a transition economy and compares these returns to similar returns in a developed economy. This study shows through the example of the Russian Federation that the increase in the returns to education which happened in previous years does not indicate that the labor market is becoming closer to that of developed countries. The standard estimation of the returns to education is deconstructed in three parts characterizing the labor market : education-occupation match, payment for occupations and payment for productivity within occupations. First, I compare the non-parametric estimation of wage distributions by educational and occupational groups within the Russian labor market and a developed country's labor market (I take France as an example). Second, I estimate a joint reduced-form model of the educational choice, labor market participation, placement of employees among occupational categories and wage formation. This joint model allows us to take into account correlations between unobservable factors that simultaneously influence the educational choice, occupational choice and final wage. A wide range of explanatory variables is used, characterizing not only individuals, but also their households, job, industries of work and regions. This allows us to analyze the influence of the family's network on the placements among occupational categories and wage formation. I take into account the observed heterogeneity of returns to education among the analyzed population. The results show the advantages of the proposed approach for the analysis of transition labor markets when compared with the standard approaches to transition economies. |
| Keywords: | Returns to education, occupational choice, transition economy. |
| JEL: | J24 J30 J31 |
| Date: | 2010–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mse:cesdoc:10031&r=cis |