|
on Confederation of Independent States |
| By: | Pall, Zsombor; Perekhozhuk, Oleksandr; Teuber, Ramona; Glauben, Thomas |
| Abstract: | Significant changes have taken place on the world wheat market over the last decade. Russia, a former net wheat importer has become a leading exporter with a world market share of 13.8 percent in 2009/2010. Though there are several studies on the pricing behaviour of Canadian and US wheat exporters, there is none on the pricing behaviour of Russian wheat exporters. The present paper tries to fill this lack of research by providing a quantitative analysis of the pricing behaviour of Russian wheat exporters. We employ a pricing-to-market (PTM) model on annual Russian wheat export data, covering the period 2002-2009 and 22 export destinations. Our findings indicate that Russian wheat exporters behave rather competitively and exercise pricing to market behaviour only in five export destinations. -- |
| Keywords: | Russia,wheat export,international trade,pricing to market |
| JEL: | L13 Q17 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:iamo11:15&r=cis |
| By: | Prishchepov, Alexander V.; Radeloff, Volker C.; Müller, Daniel; Dubinin, Maxim; Baumann, Matthias |
| Abstract: | Socio-economic and institutional changes may accelerate land-use and land-cover change. Our goal was to explore the determinants of agricultural land abandonment within one agro-climatic and economic region of post-Soviet European Russia during the first decade of transition from a state-command to market-driven economy (between 1990 and 2000). We integrated maps of abandoned agricultural land derived from 30 m resolution Landsat TM/ETM+ images, environmental and socioeconomic variables and estimated logistic regressions. Results showed that post-Soviet agricultural land abandonment was significantly associated with lower average grain yields in the late 1980s, higher distance from the populated places, areas with low population densities, for isolated agricultural areas within the forest matrix and near the forest edges. Hierarchical partitioning showed that average grain yields in the late 1980s contributed the most in explaining the variability of agricultural land abandonment, followed by location characteristics of the land. While the spatial patterns correspond to the classic micro-economic theories of von Thünen and Ricardo, it was largely the macro-scale driving forces that fostered agricultural abandonment. In the light of continuum depopulation process in the studied region of European Russia, we expect continuing agricultural abandonment after the year 2000. -- |
| Keywords: | agricultural land abandonment,institutional change, land use change,spatial analysis,logistic regression,remote sensing,Russia |
| JEL: | Q15 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:iamo11:1&r=cis |
| By: | Teng, Faxin; Kamenev, Dmitry; Meier, Claudia; Klein, Martin |
| Abstract: | China is widely seen as one of the sources of global macroeconomic imbalances. Its persistent current account surplus and capital exports to the United States are even cited as one of the causes of the global financial crisis. The most common explanation traces China's current acca ount surplus to a mismatch between saving and investment due to inefficiently low domestic demand. We challenge this explanation. Our argument rests on an analogy that we construct between two countries generally thought to be very different: Russia and China. Russia, a raw materials exporting country, has been running current account surpluses similar to China's in relation to GDP. As for most raw materials exporting countries this is considered normal, reflecting efficient reinvestment of wealth from natural resources in financial assets. We show that a similar efficiency argument can be constructed for China, although the nature of wealth that is reinvested in financial assets is different in the two countries. Our analysis implies that China's current account surpluses can be expected to disappear over the long horizon - although the time when this will happen may still be very far away. Moreover, an appreciation of the Chinese currency may not have the desired effect of mitigating the country's current account surplus as a weakening in competitiveness is counterbalanced by a strengthening of investment motives. -- |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:iamo11:16&r=cis |