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on Confederation of Independent States |
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Issue of 2019‒09‒23
eight papers chosen by |
| By: | Iwasaki, Ichiro; Kumo, Kazuhiro |
| Abstract: | The aim of this paper is to empirically examine the regional determinants of fertility rate in Russia using panel data for the period of 2005–2015. The estimation results of a system GMM dynamic model revealed that economic growth, employment opportunity, favorable local business conditions, educational opportunity, quality of social infrastructure, and housing supply serve to increase the fertility rate in Russian regions, while the presence of a Slavic population, migration inflow, poverty and ecological risks tend to suppress it. Furthermore, we found that combinations of factors that strongly affect the reproductive behavior of Russian women vary greatly among age groups and regions. To mitigate the declining trend of fertility in Russia, it is necessary to implement policies that take generational differences and regional heterogeneity into serious consideration. |
| Keywords: | total fertility rate, age-specific fertility rate, dynamic panel data analysis, Russian regions |
| JEL: | C23 J11 J13 P25 R23 |
| Date: | 2019–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hit:hitcei:2019-6&r=all |
| By: | Nino Tabeshadze (Georgian Institute of Public Affairs, Tbilisi, Georgia) |
| Abstract: | Modern Georgian history knows two devastating conflicts which happened in recent years bringing much confusion and disorientation to local Georgian Community. Given article tries to explore the identity crisis which took place after the two wars. As a result of military actions great number of people was obliged to leave their homes and move in temporary shelters. It took only several days to become IDP’s (Internally Displaced Persons) from regular citizens. This naturally led to questioning the role of self in community. Such major events as mass trauma generally change the perception of reality and Georgia was no exception. In an attempt to overcome painful experiences individuals create different responses to traumatic experiences but we have the opportunity to compare two narratives depicting the emotions of IDPs from two different conflicts. Major aim of the article is to see whether there are any similarities between the perceptions of two different historical events: How IDPs explain the events and their own emotions. |
| Keywords: | War, Trauma, Coping, PTSD, Identity |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smo:cpaper:26nt&r=all |
| By: | Vsevolod Nikolaiev; Oleksii Kucherenko |
| Abstract: | The whole housing stock in Ukraine is practically private. Social housing fund is almost absent. In the 1990s most of the flats in the multi-apartment buildings have been privatized by the tenants free of charge. About 80% of all buildings in the cities have been built up to 1980, are not yet repaired and require urgent modernization with the cost equal to the actual State budget revenue. By the law of 2015 the responsibility for carrying out capital repairs has been transferred to the flat owners who are co-owners of the buildings. Maintenance management is organized only on the level of separate houses (no-associations) and is unprofessional. The tariff for housing services is enormous low because the component of capital repairs traditionally has been excluded. In the worst homes live exactly the poorest families which do not have any means to maintain and repair their houses because one half of all families in the country receive subsidies to pay their utility bills. Taking into account other urgent and costly needs to maintain public infrastructure the State is also unable to accumulate sufficient funds to renovate the housing stock. At the same time there is a difficult question of the justice of additional state assistance to homeowners for repairing their assets at the expense of all taxpayers. Another question is how to operate this private property on the market. Governments of the country that often replace each other are afraid to raise this problem, which requires extraordinary decisions. It becomes obvious that homeowners are mostly inefficient but the idea of re-privatization can cause social rejection. There are no analogues in the history or in other post-Soviet countries, where either the condition of privatized houses was better, or household incomes were higher, or state aid was regular and where, due to the tariff, funds for capital repairs has been always accumulated and used.Unfortunately, in Ukraine there is no tradition of real estate professional management as a scientific branch, university specialization or profession. Our first attempts to find right decisions which will be described in the paper need approbation. Therefore, we want to draw attention of the best European real estate managers and researchers to the resolution of this problem. |
| Keywords: | capital repair; Financing; housing stock; Privatization; Tenants |
| JEL: | R3 |
| Date: | 2019–01–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arz:wpaper:eres2019_191&r=all |
| By: | International Monetary Fund |
| Abstract: | With the support of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) European Department (EUR), the IMF’s Statistics Department (STA) conducted a financial soundness indicators (FSIs) technical assistance (TA) mission in Chisinau, Moldova, during March 18 29, 2019, to improve Moldova’s FSI compilation. The mission was financed by Netherlands Capacity Development Partnership Program. The mission worked with staff of the National Bank of Moldova (NBM) (i) to review available source data for deposit takers (DTs) and other sectors including other financial corporations (OFCs); and (ii) to review the current FSIs compiled by the NBM with a view to ensure methodological consistency of the FSI compilation with the IMF’s FSI Compilation Guide 2006 (FSI Guide). In collaboration with staff of the NBM, the mission delivered these objectives and agreed with the authorities on an action plan to improve FSIs in Moldova. The improvement of FSIs contributes to enhancement of policy analysis and decision-making by the NBM. |
| Date: | 2019–09–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfscr:19/284&r=all |
| By: | Vasily Astrov (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Sebastian Leitner (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Isilda Mara (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Leon Podkaminer (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Hermine Vidovic (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw) |
| Abstract: | This publication is available in German language only. For a brief English summary see further below. Erst in den letzten Jahren kam es im Zuge der allgemeinen Erholung der Wirtschaft zu einem deutlichen Anstieg der Reallöhne in den Westbalkanländern, Moldau und der Ukraine. Trotzdem sind die Lohnquoten kaum gestiegen bzw. zum Teil sogar leicht gesunken. Nur im Kosovo ist es zu einer deutlichen Annäherung an das österreichische Lohnniveau gekommen. Die Verbesserung der Arbeitsmarktbedingungen hatte einen nur mäßig positiven Effekt auf die Lohnentwicklung. Die Arbeitslosenquoten bleiben – trotz jüngster Rückgänge – oft im zweistelligen Bereich, so dass sich die Verhandlungsmacht der Arbeitnehmer nur geringfügig verbessert hat. Auch die schrittweise Dezentralisierung der Lohnsetzungsmechanismen hat das Lohnwachstum gebremst. Generell sind kollektivvertragliche Mechanismen in den Ländern der Region wesentlich schwächer entwickelt als etwa in Österreich. Deren Reichweite wird durch den geringen Anteil der unselbständig Beschäftigten an der (formellen) Gesamtbeschäftigung begrenzt. Hohe Arbeitslosigkeit und ein großes Lohngefälle, vor allem im Vergleich mit Westeuropa, hatten eine beträchtliche Abwanderung und einen Rückgang der Bevölkerung vieler dieser Länder zur Folge. Mit der Fortsetzung dieses Trends wird auch für die Zukunft gerechnet. Langfristig gesehen geht dadurch ein wichtiger Teil von Humankapital verloren, was die Aussichten auf eine Annäherung an das westeuropäische Niveau – unter anderem in puncto Löhne – beeinträchtigen dürfte. English Summary Wage developments in the West Balkans, Moldova and Ukraine In recent years, the general economic recovery has finally fed through to a significant increase in real wages in the Western Balkan countries, Moldova and Ukraine. Nevertheless, wage shares have barely picked up, and even declined slightly in several places. Significant convergence towards the Austrian wage level has only been registered in Kosovo. The improvement in labour market conditions in the countries covered has had only a moderately positive effect on wage developments. Despite recent declines, many countries continue to record double-digit unemployment rates, meaning that the bargaining power of employees has improved only slightly. The gradual decentralisation of wage-setting mechanisms has also slowed wage growth. In general, collective bargaining mechanisms are much less developed than, for example, in Austria. Their scope is limited by the low share of employees in total (formal) employment. High unemployment and large wage gaps, especially in comparison with Western Europe, have led to considerable outward migration and population decline in many of these countries. This trend is expected to continue in the future. In the long run, this will result in the loss of an important share of the human capital of these countries, which might affect their prospects for convergence towards Western European levels, including in wages. |
| Keywords: | Löhne, Lohnquote, demographische Trends, Migration, Phillips-Kurve, Lohnfindungsmechanismen, wages, wage share, demographic trends, migration, Phillips curve, wage-setting |
| JEL: | J11 J31 J4 J50 |
| Date: | 2019–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wii:ratpap:rpg:15&r=all |
| By: | Sebastian-Gabriel Popescu (Captain (N) Eng. HQ of the Naval Forces, Bucharest) |
| Abstract: | One of the geopolitical and geostrategic synthesis key areas on the strategic axis Black Sea - Baltic Sea reluctance re-opened following the Ukrainian crisis is the more or less extensive Black Sea region. The historical, political, economic and civilian arguments, as well as the new challenges of the regional security environment, but also cross-border and global, leave the great powers on both sides of the strategic axis Black Sea - Baltic and riparian countries a chance that we consider not only an alternative to ... war, otherness, but also a way of transforming divergences into confluences and confluence in unity, prosperity and security. Even though the complicated and tense realities at this point seem not to encourage such a prospect, we believe that the Black Sea area can become − and indeed become − an East-West welding space, a true geopolitical and geostrategic, economic, social synapse and inter-civilization, which will put an end to the strategic flaw effect here in bitter weather. In the following, we will present this point of view. |
| Keywords: | Black Sea, confluence, connection, divergence, geopolitical and geostrategic pivot |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smo:cpaper:25ps&r=all |
| By: | Kaia Kask |
| Abstract: | The paper aims to explore the productivity and value added in Estonian construction sector, by implementing value chain analysis, based on the real estate asset life-cycle concept. The present study tackles the added value-based labor productivity as the proxy to total productivity, where the sum of labor costs, depreciation and net income is divided with the number of workers in the relevant sub-sector. In its narrow definition, the construction sector alone forms by average ca 5% of GDP and in its broad definition, i.e., construction sector along the whole value chain together with real estate sector, form by average ca 10% of the GDP, employing also by average ca 10% of workforce in each country. As the construction sector along its value chain affects both directly and indirectly many other sub-sectors in the economy, the total impact of the construction sector value chain to the overall economy is estimated to be approximately 45% of the GDP. However, despite of the high importance of the construction sector, its contribution to the overall economy in terms of productivity and value added is rather scarce, remaining unchanged during the last decades and lagging many times behind from manufacturing and also agriculture. Many scholars have referred to the lack of innovation as one of the main reasons for low productivity growth in construction sector compared to the other fields. By exploring the productivity and value added issues within the Estonian construction sector value chain, then the results of the empirical analysis revealed that along the real estate asset´s life-cycle based U-curve, the most value adding activities are real estate development on the left side of the U-curve (closer to the producer) and real estate services in the right side of the U-curve (closer to the customer) and the least value adding activity was the construction activity of buildings (production), according to its narrow definition. In general, the level of productivity in construction of buildings is approximately 2.5 times less than for the real estate development and services. In order to increase the productivity of the construction sector along its value chain, Estonian government has set a strategic goal to fully digitize real estate and construction sector by implementing systematically a vision of e-construction. E-construction system will be connected with the X-Road ecosystem of e-Estonia, which links up various public and private sector e-service information systems (i.e., e-identity, e-Land Register, e-Justice, e-Tax, e-Business Register, e-Banking, e-Health Records, e-governance, etc.) to function in a full harmony. In addition, the Estonian government aims also to develop on a long-run strategic plan of counter-cyclical public investment for construction sector. The current study revealed also that in order to achieve the average level of labor productivity in EU 28 construction sector by year 2030, it requires for Estonian construction sector at least 7% growth in labor productivity per each year, which may be regarded as an achievable task due to the strategic plans of Estonian government. However, it also requires a sharp implementation of innovative technology (Technology 5.0) with disruptive change in private real estate and construction sector business models. |
| Keywords: | construction sector; Estonia; Productivity; value added; value chain analysis |
| JEL: | R3 |
| Date: | 2019–01–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arz:wpaper:eres2019_271&r=all |
| By: | Elena Deryugina (Bank of Russia, Russian Federation); Alexey Ponomarenko (Bank of Russia, Russian Federation) |
| Abstract: | We estimated a Non-Stationary Dynamic Factor model and used it to generate artificial episodes of disinflation (permanent change in the mean inflation rate). These datasets were used to test the forecasting abilities of alternative underlying inflation indicators (i.e. the measures that capture sustained movements in inflation extracted from information in a disaggregated set of price data). We found that the out of sample forecast errors of the benchmark underlying inflation measures (based on unobserved trend extraction) are more severely affected by disinflation than the alternative simpler methods (based on exclusion or reweighting approaches). We also show that a Non-Stationary Dynamic Factor model may be employed for extraction of the unobserved trend to be used as an underlying inflation measure. |
| Keywords: | Underlying inflation, Non-Stationary Dynamic Factor model, Russia. |
| JEL: | E31 E32 E52 C32 |
| Date: | 2019–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bkr:wpaper:wps44&r=all |