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on Confederation of Independent States |
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Issue of 2019‒10‒28
eight papers chosen by |
| By: | Amat Adarov (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Vasily Astrov (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Alexandra Bykova (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Olga Pindyuk (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw) |
| Abstract: | Chart of the month Remittances in CESEE countries, as % of GDP in 2018 by Vasily Astrov Opinion corner ‘Integration of integrations’ Is there a way forward? by Vasily Astrov Technically and given the political will, economic integration between the EU and the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) should not be overly difficult to implement, and there are good reasons to believe that it could be beneficial not only for EAEU countries but also to some extent for the EU. However, realistically this may require a change in the current political elites either in Russia or in the EU (or both). Trade effects of Eurasian economic integration to date by Amat Adarov Eurasian economic integration was initiated in 2010 with the establishment of the Eurasian Customs Union, and its successor, the Eurasian Economic Union, was formed in 2015. However, there is still little awareness about the economic content of the Eurasian bloc, rather often seen as a ‘paper tiger’ and a geopolitical project led by Russia. Likewise, empirical analysis of its actual impacts to date is lacking. The article reviews key developments to date and trade-related effects associated with the Eurasian integration. The economic outcomes are mixed, with Belarus being a major beneficiary, Russia generally gaining and mixed performance for Kazakhstan. The positive effects of integration on mutual trade, while initially notable, diminished significantly towards the year 2015. Regional trade integration in Central Asia Current status, challenges and prospects by Alexandra Bykova and Olga Pindyuk Trade integration in Central Asia remains rather low, only Kyrgyzstan is relatively well integrated with the region. The reasons behind this are (i) a low degree of complementarity and export specialisation in natural resources; (ii) deficient transport networks; (iii) low quality of institutions and diverging trade policies; and (iv) political conflicts regarding border delimitations and resources management. However, the situation seems to have changed recently and interaction among the regional states has intensified considerably. Monthly and quarterly statistics for Central, East and Southeast Europe |
| Keywords: | remittances, migration, economic integration, European integration, CIS, Central Asia |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wii:mpaper:mr:2019-04&r=all |
| By: | Maya Lavrinovich (National Research University Higher School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper deals with a collection of portraits that used to be located at the Moscow Archive of the College of Foreign Affairs and has not previously attracted attention of scholars. The Archive’s administrator Nikolai Bantysh-Kamenskii began putting this collection together in the 1780s on. The portraits presented all the heads of Posol’skii prikaz and the College of Foreign Affairs beginning from the 1660s. The portraits were placed in the Archive's chambers and served to visually represent the involvement of Archive's administrators in the highest politics of the empire. At the same time, creating this gallery involved the mechanics used a decade earlier by Catherine II as she worked on setting up the gallery at the Chesme Palace. Whereas she supplied her gallery with a literary description, the secretary of the Archive Aleksei Malinovskii composed the biographies of the administrators portrayed at the Archive's gallery – from Afanasii Ordyn-Nashchokin to Mikhail Vorontsov. The composition of the manuscript, subsequently presented to the emperor Alexander I, echoed the structure of the gallery as it existed in the 1780s – the decade which was a turning point in the Archive's institutional development, and in Aleksei Malinovskii’s career as well. |
| Keywords: | visuality, spatial turn, Russia, 18th century, portrait gallery, Moscow Archive of the College of the Foreign Affairs, the heads of the Russian foreign policy, officialdom, career strategies |
| JEL: | Z |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:180/hum/2019&r=all |
| By: | Valentina Kalygina (RUDN University, Moscow); Anna Chernysheva (RUDN University, Moscow) |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this study is to determine the most effective marketing strategies that would be effective for the international companies in the Russian FMCG market under the import substitution policy. The condition of FMCG market is one of the main indicators of the economic situation in any country. Moreover, this market is very sensitive to any changes in the external environment. That is why it requires from the companies a special approach to the development of marketing strategies. To achieve the goal, analytical alignment methods, statistical methods, methods of analysis and synthesis were used. The study covers the period from 2015 to 2018. The marketing strategies of the 4 largest TNCs (Nestle, Coca Cola, Danone and P&G) are analyzed. The results of the study prove that the Russian FMCG market continues to be of undoubted interest for foreign companies. Their investments to the Russian economy are growing, the number of provided jobs is increasing. The most appropriate marketing strategy in the Russian FMCG market for international companies is the glocalization strategy. The import substitution does not deny the creation of a special mechanism for attracting direct foreign investment, which opens up great opportunities for foreign companies. The study contributes to researches in the field of marketing strategies of international companies in the FMCG markets in the period of global economic instability and sanctions wars. The study can open a new discussion on the feasibility of applying a glocalization strategy in emerging markets in the context of import substitution. |
| Keywords: | FMCG market, glocalization, international marketing strategy, import substitution |
| JEL: | F23 M31 L19 |
| Date: | 2019–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:ibmpro:8612010&r=all |
| By: | Arthur Mustafin (National Research University Higher School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This article uses the records of monastic account books to assess the level of prices in Russia in the second half of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The data from these books allow us to construct salt and rye price series, and identify prices of other goods for single years. The resulting numbers demonstrate that the prices remained largely unchanged. The exceptions were the mid-1640s and the early 1660s, when the price fluctuations were driven by the failed financial reforms. The available data shows the prices did not change synchronically in Russia and Europe. Our assumption, therefore, is that Russia stood apart from the price revolution of Western Europe in the seventeenth century |
| Keywords: | price revolution, monastic account books, price lists, price series, Alexei Mikhailovich’s reforms |
| JEL: | Z |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:179/hum/2019&r=all |
| By: | Nina Ladinskaya (National Research University Higher School of Economics); Anna Chrabaszcz (National Research University Higher School of Economics); Anastasiya Lopukhina (National Research University Higher School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | While different researchers agree that the acquisition of Russian nominal cases proceeds somewhat sequentially, there is no consensus about the exact order of case acquisition in the literature on L1 acquisition (see Ceitlin, 2000; Gvozdev, 1981, 2007; Gagarina & Voeikova, 2009). Besides, accumulated longitudinal data are sparse and disparate, coming from children of different ages, socio-economic statuses, and language acquisition backgrounds. We adopt a psycholinguistic approach to examine acquisition of Russian nominal case inflections by Russian monolingual children (2-5 years old). The goal of the study is twofold: it sets out 1) to examine at what age children learn to generalize rules of noun case usage, and 2) to identify the order of acquisition of Russian oblique case inflections. Children perform a picture-based sentence completion task in which they have to finish the sentence by naming real or non-existing objects in the pictures. Five sentence frames are constructed to bias the children’s responses towards the use of a noun form in one of the five oblique Russian cases, across three declensions plus plural forms. Data collection is in progress, but interim results show that monolingual Russian-speaking children learn to generalize morphological rules to novel nouns by the age of 2 and that nouns in the plural form are acquired later in language development compared to singular forms. Within the singular forms, 3rd declension cases, especially the instrumental case, present most difficulty. Additionally, 2-3-year-old children tend to substitute oblique cases with the nominative case forms. The results corroborate some of the previous findings and add additional insights into the acquisition of Russian case. |
| Keywords: | noun case, morphology, L1 acquisition, Russian. |
| JEL: | Z |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hig:wpaper:81/lng/2019&r=all |
| By: | Alexandra Bozhechkova (The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration) |
| Abstract: | As a rule, the economic policy of various countries of the world, regardless of its specialization, is aimed at maintaining the competitiveness of the national economy. The nature of the relationship between the real exchange rate and competitiveness parameters essentially depends on the level of development of the economy, degree of development of the financial market, institutional environment, exchange rate regime, degree of dependence of the economy on the export of raw materials, accumulation of sovereign funds, etc. Thus, for developed countries, output dynamics are less affected by fluctuations in the real exchange rate, given the wide range of opportunities to diversify currency risks, as well as attracting external financing because of developed financial markets. In developing countries, underestimation of the exchange rate in the context of weak institutions, insufficient development of financial markets, and restrictions on borrowing can stimulate economic growth, increasing the profitability of producers of the traded sector of the economy.It would be logical to assume that under the conditions of the inflation targeting regime, when economic agents while making decisions are less focused on expectations regarding the dynamics of the exchange rate and more take into account inflation expectations. Nonetheless, as the experience of developing countries targeting inflation shows, the monetary authorities continue to conduct currency interventions aimed at curbing the excessive strengthening of the national currency. Such measures, on the one hand, hinder the decline in the competitiveness of national goods on world markets, and on the other, they contribute to the expansion of investment opportunities of firms.These theses are confirmed in our study. Econometric assessment of the degree of influence of the real exchange rate and its overvaluation / underestimation on economic growth rates, growth rates of total factor productivity (TFP), as well as the export diversification rate indicator was implemented by the system generalized method of moments for a group of CIS countries, countries of exporters of raw materials, developing countries that target inflation, on different subperiods: 1990s, 2000s, 2010s. |
| Keywords: | exchange rate, economic growth, total factor productivity, export diversification, system generalized method of moments |
| JEL: | C01 F00 E52 |
| Date: | 2019–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:9412103&r=all |
| By: | Samya Beidas-Strom; Marco Lorusso |
| Abstract: | We build and estimate open economy two-bloc DSGE models to study the transmission and impact of shocks in Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom. After accounting for country-specific fiscal and monetary sectors, we estimate their key policy and structural parameters. Our findings suggest that not only has output responded differently to shocks due to differing levels of diversification and structural and policy settings, but also the responses to fiscal consolidation differ: Russia would benefit from a smaller state foot-print, while in Saudi Arabia, unless this is accompanied by structural reforms that remove rigidities, output would fall. We also find that lower oil prices need not be bad news given more oil-intensive production structures. However, lower oil prices have hurt these oil producers as their public finances depend heavily on oil, among other factors. Productivity gains accompanied by ambitious structural reforms, along with fiscal and monetary reforms could support these economies to achieve better outcomes when oil prices fall, including via diversifying exports. |
| Date: | 2019–10–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfwpa:19/214&r=all |
| By: | A.O. Karas; William Pyle; Koen Schoors |
| Abstract: | Using evidence from Russia, we explore the effect of the introduction of deposit insurance on bank risk. Drawing on within-bank variation in the ratio of firm deposits to total household and firm deposits, so as to capture the magnitude of the decrease in market discipline after the introduction of deposit insurance, we demonstrate for private, domestic banks that larger declines in market discipline generate larger increases in traditional measures of risk. These results hold in a difference-in-difference setting in which state and foreign-owned banks, whose deposit insurance regime does not change, serve as a control. |
| Keywords: | deposit insurance, market discipline, moral hazard, risk taking, banks, Russia |
| Date: | 2019–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:use:tkiwps:1902&r=all |