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on Confederation of Independent States |
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Issue of 2020‒02‒24
four papers chosen by |
| By: | Brian Fabo |
| Abstract: | The Maidan uprising and the successive fall of president Yanukovych has been a subject of substantial scholarly attention. Nonetheless, the focus has been largely on political aspects of these events, which the economic implications have not been tackled nearly to the same extent. This study aims to contribute to filling this gap by analyzing the post-Maidan changes to the Russian language earnings premium in the country. Past research has identified sizable advantage of earnings enjoyed by Russian language speakers over Ukrainian language speakers. Meanwhile, the literature on Maidan suggests, that the upheaval has strengthened Ukrainian speaking, pro-Western forces in the society over the interests rooted in the Russian speaking community and thus is could be expected that this premium could have disappeared. Our analysis, nonetheless, shows that it remains present. Additionally, we test the effect of proficiency in English, the main commerce language of the West, to see whether the proWestern orientation of the new Ukrainian government generated effect a similar effect to the Russian language premium. However, once we control for characteristics of the respondent, we found no strong evidence of such an effect. |
| Keywords: | Maidan, earnings differences, ethnic premium, foreign language skills, Ukraine |
| JEL: | J15 J70 J82 |
| Date: | 2020–02–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cel:dpaper:57&r=all |
| By: | Md Gyasuddin Ansari (Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode); Rudra Sensarma (Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the effect of US monetary policy, oil price and gold price on stock indices of BRICS countries. Vector Auto Regression model is applied to study the stock indices of all BRICS countries as a group overthe period 1996-2018. We find that the Bombay Sensex responds positively to the Federal Funds Rate. The stock index of South Africa—FTSE JSE of Johannesburg—responds negatively to shocks in oil price while stock indices of Russia and Brazil—RTSI of Moscow and BVSP of Sao Paulo respectively—respond positively to gold price changes. We provide managerial and policy implications of these results. |
| Keywords: | Monetary Policy; Stock Indices; Gold Price;Brent Crude; Federal Fund Rate |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iik:wpaper:343&r=all |
| By: | Girard, Victoire; Kudebayeva, Alma; Toews, Gerhard |
| Abstract: | We document that an oil price boom triggers dissatisfaction with one's income, and that this dissatisfaction is independent of the effect of the boom on real economic conditions. Unique data from Kazakhstan allows us to exploit time, sectoral and spatial variation to identify the impact of the recent oil boom on reported satisfaction with income. Oil related households { whose heads are employed in the private sector of the oil rich districts { report a decrease in satisfaction with their income during the boom compared to other households (whose heads work in other sectors and/or districts). The estimated drop in satisfaction is statistically and economically significant: a 20% increase in the price of oil decreases satisfaction with income by 1/3 of a standard deviation. We discuss different interpretations of this drop in satisfaction. The only interpretation consistent with our results is that an oil price boom creates a gap between people's expectations of the benefits from the boom and the observed economic conditions. Our results call for devoting more attention to the dynamic of satisfaction, not only during resource busts, but also during resource booms. |
| Keywords: | Expectations,Labor Conflict,Oil boom,Resource Curse,Satisfaction |
| JEL: | J52 N55 Q33 Q34 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:469&r=all |
| By: | Congressional Budget Office |
| Abstract: | The Department of Defense (DoD) has expressed concern that potential opponents such as Russia and China could prevent the United States from easily gaining air and naval superiority in future military campaigns. In this report, CBO examines some of the challenges U.S. forces might face in the current threat environment and the extent to which DoD could mitigate those challenges by procuring and fielding ground-launched long-range missiles. CBO identifies several types of existing weapon systems that DoD could adapt, at an up-front cost of $1 billion to $6 billion, to give U.S. |
| JEL: | F52 F53 H41 H56 H57 H60 L64 N42 N62 N72 Y91 |
| Date: | 2020–02–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cbo:report:56068&r=all |