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on Confederation of Independent States |
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Issue of 2021‒05‒17
four papers chosen by |
| By: | Lukin, Artyom |
| Abstract: | This paper examines political and economic dimensions of the Russia-China relationship, with an emphasis on Russia's involvement in Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Being the largest, and trans-continental, Eurasian country, Russia occupies an important place in China's BRI. The current relationship between the two great Eurasian powers can be characterized as an entente, or quasi-alliance. Moscow welcomes the BRI, but, unlike many other governments across the world, it has never signed an agreement to formally join the initiative. This signals Russia's stance that Eurasian integration should not be dominated by China, as well as the Kremlin's insistence on status equality with China. In recent years there has been a noticeable rise in shipments from China to Europe, and in the reverse direction, using the rail routes via Russia. However, despite the increase in its trans-continental freight traffic going via Russia, China still refrains from investing in the upgrade of Russia's transport networks, such as railroads, ports and highways, and is overall reluctant to invest in the Russian economy. The reasons are both economic, such as the relatively high risks and low profit margins in the Russian market, and political ones, related to Russia's insistence on parity and equality with China. |
| Keywords: | Russia-China relations,the Belt and Road Initiative,Eurasia |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:opodis:20213&r= |
| By: | Anatoliy Kostruba (Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University) |
| Abstract: | Individual and corporate responsibility is the basis for sustainable development of society and the world. Environmental responsibility of business entities is a prerequisite for the survival of people, which is why it is an important aspect of corporate responsibility. The purpose of the paper is to determine the content of corporate and social responsibility of business entities in the field of environmental protection in terms of its interaction with the state on the basis of public-private partnership. The general scientific method of comparison made it possible to compare the Ukrainian legislative base on environmental protection with the legal framework of regulation and practice in foreign countries. Through the structural and functional analysis, it was possible to consider the features of the interaction between the state and business structures and between other institutions the activities of which are related to environmental protection. The analysis revealed the necessity to consider and include elements of environmental and social responsibility of business in the mechanisms of public-private partnership. The study shows that public-private partnership is an imperative element in the composition of social responsibility. The author proposes a definition of environmental responsibility that encompasses three factors: legal, economic and social. In the future, this research area will be of interest as a comparison of the legislative support of the types of responsibility for foreign and international standards in the context of implementing the relevant standards in the Ukrainian legislative framework and their implementation on practice. |
| Keywords: | Corporations,Corporation law,viešojo ir privataus sektoriaus partnerystė,aplinkosaugos įstatymai,public-private partnership Raktažodžiai: socialinė atsakomybė,environmental legislation,social responsibility |
| Date: | 2021–04–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03214257&r= |
| By: | Rustam Ibragimov; Paul Kattuman; Anton Skrobotov |
| Abstract: | Empirical analyses on income and wealth inequality and those in other fields in economics and finance often face the difficulty that the data is heterogeneous, heavy-tailed or correlated in some unknown fashion. The paper focuses on applications of the recently developed \textit{t}-statistic based robust inference approaches in the analysis of inequality measures and their comparisons under the above problems. Following the approaches, in particular, a robust large sample test on equality of two parameters of interest (e.g., a test of equality of inequality measures in two regions or countries considered) is conducted as follows: The data in the two samples dealt with is partitioned into fixed numbers $q_1, q_2\ge 2$ (e.g., $q_1=q_2=2, 4, 8$) of groups, the parameters (inequality measures dealt with) are estimated for each group, and inference is based on a standard two-sample $t-$test with the resulting $q_1, q_2$ group estimators. Robust $t-$statistic approaches result in valid inference under general conditions that group estimators of parameters (e.g., inequality measures) considered are asymptotically independent, unbiased and Gaussian of possibly different variances, or weakly converge, at an arbitrary rate, to independent scale mixtures of normal random variables. These conditions are typically satisfied in empirical applications even under pronounced heavy-tailedness and heterogeneity and possible dependence in observations. The methods dealt with in the paper complement and compare favorably with other inference approaches available in the literature. The use of robust inference approaches is illustrated by an empirical analysis of income inequality measures and their comparisons across different regions in Russia. |
| Date: | 2021–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2105.05335&r= |
| By: | Dan Cao (Department of Economics, Georgetown University); Roger Lagunoff (Department of Economics, Georgetown University) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies a dynamic model of property ownership and appropriation in modern autocracies. An autocrat represents the interests of an elite ``in-group." It chooses whether and how much to appropriate from public assets and from private assets of an ``out-group" at each date. To maintain the appearance of the rule of law, the autocrat implements an ownership assignment only if it is accepted by the affected citizens. However, because its enforcement of property rights is tied to the duration of its commitment, the autocrat's enforcement is conditional and temporary. Consequently, the autocrat systematically appropriates property from the out-group and from public assets. Under some initial conditions, the autocrat initially implements popular land reform only reverse course later on. More generally, wealth shares of both public property and private property of the out-group decline monotonically after an initial adjustment period. The model rationalizes the connection between increasing wealth inequality and privatization in autocracies such as Russia and China. Simulations of these countries' wealth distributions to mid 21st century display widening gaps in wealth between elites and the rest of the populace. Finally, we show that the ruling group under anocracy, an autocratic system that admits civil society groups, will generally be better off than under a traditional autocracy. The dilemma is that the anocratic system might enable the growth of an opposition party that eventually displaces the ruling group. Classification-C73, D72, H13, H41, P5 |
| Keywords: | Authoritarian legalism, autocracy, anocracy, property rights, appropriation constraint, takings, civil society groups, Samuelson condition |
| Date: | 2021–05–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:geo:guwopa:gueconwpa~21-21-12&r= |