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Transition Countries (transition + country)
Selected AbstractsBanking System Failures in Developing and Transition Countries: Diagnosis and PredictionECONOMIC NOTES, Issue 1 2000P. Honohan First page of article [source] Foreign Banks in Transition Countries: To Whom Do They Lend and How Are They Financed?FINANCIAL MARKETS, INSTITUTIONS & INSTRUMENTS, Issue 4 2006Ralph De Haas We use focused interviews with managers of foreign parent banks and their affiliates in Central Europe and the Baltic States to analyze the small-business lending and internal capital markets of multinational financial institutions. Our approach allows us to complement the standard empirical literature, which has difficulty in analyzing important issues such as lending technologies and capital allocation. We find that the acquisition of local banks by foreign banks has not led to a persistent bias in these banks' credit supply toward large multinational corporations. Instead, increased competition and the improvement of subsidiaries' lending technologies have led foreign banks to gradually expand into the SME and retail markets. Second, it is demonstrated that local bank affiliates are strongly influenced by the capital allocation and credit steering mechanisms of the parent bank. [source] Reducing Child Poverty with Cash Transfers: A Sure Thing?DEVELOPMENT POLICY REVIEW, Issue 5 2006Armando Barrientos Children are disproportionately represented among the income-poor, many suffer from severe deprivation, and their poverty and vulnerability have cumulative and long-term consequences. This article provides a comparative examination of the poverty-reduction effectiveness of cash transfer programmes targeting children, focusing on three types of such programmes: the Child Support Grant in South Africa, family allowances in transition countries, and targeted conditional cash transfer programmes in Latin America and the Caribbean. It finds that, despite differences in design, cash transfer programmes targeting children in poor households are an effective way of reducing poverty. [source] Social assistance and minimum income benefits in old and new EU democraciesINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WELFARE, Issue 4 2010Kenneth Nelson Nelson K. Social assistance and minimum income benefits in old and new EU democracies Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 367,378 © 2009 The Author, Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. In this article, social assistance developments are analysed in a large number of European Union (EU) member states, including European transition countries and the new democracies of southern Europe. The empirical analysis is based on the unique and recently established SaMip Dataset, which provides social assistance benefit levels for 27 countries from 1990 to 2005. It is shown that social assistance benefits have had a less favourable development than that of unemployment provision. Hardly any of the investigated countries provide social assistance benefits above the EU near-poverty threshold. Social assistance benefit levels have not converged in Europe. Instead, divergence can be observed, which is due mainly to lagging developments in eastern and southern Europe. [source] International Migration and the Role of Remittances in Eastern EuropeINTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 4 2004Miguel León-Ledesma In this paper we analyse the effect of remittances on employment performance for Central and East European (CEE) economies. We show that the impact of remittances on unemployment depends on its effect on productivity growth and investment. In order to empirically analyse the impact of remittances we estimate a productivity equation using a set of 11 transition countries during the 1990 to 1999 period. Our results show support for the view that remittances have a positive impact on productivity and employment both directly and indirectly through its effect on investment. [source] The Causes and Consequences of Albanian Emigration during Transition: Evidence from Micro Data,INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW, Issue 1 2002Dhori Kule This note reports the results of a field survey of individuals and firms in Albania, carried out during 1998. The surveys were designed to analyze the size, causes and consequences of emigration from Albania during the 1990s. Our results show that emigrants are motivated mainly by the ease of access of neighboring countries and by the prospect of high financial returns. Although most emigrants worked illegally and had part-time, low-skilled jobs, the majority found the overall experience positive, and the skills and earnings abroad have contributed to setting up businesses on return. These results have important policy implications for both EU countries and other transition countries in the region. [source] Reforms And Performance of the Medical Systems in the Transition States of the Former Soviet Union and Eastern EuropeINTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SECURITY REVIEW, Issue 2-3 2001Christopher Davis The States of the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe inherited acute health problems and introduced numerous reforms in their health sectors in the 1990s. In the initial years of transition most countries experienced increases in morbidity and mortality that were caused by deterioration in health conditions (demographic, consumption, social, environmental) and deficiencies in medical systems. The latter were the result of malfunctioning economies, continued low priority status of health, and ineffective health reforms. Although health trends in the East have become more positive in recent years, they are unlikely to converge rapidly with those in western Europe unless health sector institutions in transition countries are allocated more resources and improve their efficiency and effectiveness. [source] Determinants of foreign direct investment in the food industry: The case of PolandAGRIBUSINESS : AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL, Issue 3 2001Peter Walkenhorst; In this article, a statistical model is developed to analyze determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Polish food industry. Data on FDI inflows from three investor home country clusters is related to characteristics of 12 food industry branches. The results indicate that firm size, privatization speed, value-added, and import share are important determinants of food industry FDI. The findings confirm the importance of a swift reduction of state control over agro-industrial enterprises, while pointing to the need for effective competition policies in transition countries to contain potentially emerging market power of foreign multinationals in oligopolistic food industry branches. [Econ-Lit citations: F23 (multinational firms); P33 (international linkages in transition); Q13 (agribusiness)] © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. [source] Credit Market Regulation and Labor Market Performance Around the WorldKYKLOS INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, Issue 4 2006Horst Feldmann SUMMARY Using data from 74 industrial, developing and transition countries for the years 2000 to 2003, this paper empirically analyzes whether and to what extent credit market regulations affect the performance of the labor market. According to the regression results, anti-competitive credit market regulations have an adverse, though generally modest, impact on the labor market. Specifically, restrictions on credit extended to the private sector, on the private ownership of banks, on competition from foreign banks, and on the free determination of interest rates appear to lower the level of employment and increase unemployment, particularly among young people. [source] FDI spillovers in new EU member statesTHE ECONOMICS OF TRANSITION, Issue 3 2010Marcella Nicolini Foreign direct investment; transition countries; spillovers Abstract Using an unbalanced panel of firm-level data in Bulgaria, Poland and Romania, we examine the impact of foreign firms on domestic firms' productivity. In particular, we try to answer the following research questions: (1) Are there any spillover effects of foreign direct investments (FDI), and if so, are they positive or negative? (2) Are spillover effects more likely to occur within or across sectors? (3) Are the existence, the direction and the magnitude of spillovers conditioned by sector and firm-specific characteristics? Our findings show that FDI spillovers exist both within and across sectors. The former arise when foreign firms operate in labour-intensive sectors, while the latter occur when foreign firms operate in high-tech sectors. Moreover, we find that domestic firm size conditions the exploitation of FDI spillovers even after controlling for absorptive capacity. We also detect a great deal of heterogeneity across countries consistent with the technology gap hypothesis. [source] Regional unemployment and its persistence in transition countries1THE ECONOMICS OF TRANSITION, Issue 2 2006Fabian Bornhorst transition; regional unemployment; mobility Abstract We look at the differences in regional unemployment rates in six major transition countries and their persistence over time. We analyse the role various adjustment mechanisms play. While movement out of the labour force seems to be one consequence in many regions with high relative unemployment, there are also signs of emerging wage flexibility. Employment creation, by contrast, has not picked up in regions of high unemployment. Labour mobility also remains very limited in size although it appears to respond to basic economic incentives. Policies addressing housing market imperfections and information asymmetries are necessary to increase worker mobility and to integrate better national labour markets. [source] Export variety and economic growth in East European transition economies*THE ECONOMICS OF TRANSITION, Issue 1 2005Michael Funke Abstract Utilizing panel data for 14 East European transition economies, we discuss the link between product variety and growth. The empirical work relies upon some direct measures of product variety calculated from 5-digit OECD trade data. On balance, the results suggest that the growth patterns of the East European transition countries may be best represented by Ventura's (1997) model of outward orientation and integration with the world economy. [source] The curse of natural resources in the transition economies,THE ECONOMICS OF TRANSITION, Issue 3 2004Tobias Kronenberg Abstract The curse of natural resources is a well-documented phenomenon for developing countries. Economies that are richly endowed with natural resources tend to grow slowly. Among the transition economies of the former ,Eastern Bloc', a similar pattern can be observed. This paper shows that a large part of the variation in growth rates among the transition economies can be attributed to the curse of natural resources. After controlling for numerous other factors, there is still a strong negative correlation between natural resource abundance and economic growth. Among the transition economies the prime reasons for the curse of natural resources were corruption and a neglect of basic education. In order to overcome the curse of natural resources and move to a sustainable path of development, the resource abundant transition countries should fight corruption and ensure that their resource revenues are invested in human capital or the preservation of natural capital. [source] Benchmarking competitiveness in transition economiesTHE ECONOMICS OF TRANSITION, Issue 2 2001Clifford Zinnes This paper constructs an indicator for the current level of international competitiveness of countries in transition. We find that Hungary is the most competitive country in the group while Turkmenistan is the least. Competitiveness measurement, in our view, is a way to use uniform criteria to gauge the extent to which a country makes use of various levers to promote sustained improvements in its well-being. We construct our measure of competitiveness drawing upon both the popular literature on competitiveness as well as modern economic theory. The approach acknowledges the importance of synergies between firms, markets, and government and, above all, the crucial role of institutions. Our choice of variables stresses the special characteristics of transition countries. By bringing to bear all the existing data on these countries, together with new survey data collected for the purpose, we are able to go beyond the mere ranking of countries to decompose the sources of competitiveness into their constituent parts. This allows policy makers to identify areas where their countries are lagging behind relative to other countries in their region. Our indicator is also compatible with the Global Competitiveness Report series categories, thus allowing us to benchmark transition countries against the rest of the world. JEL classification: C82, O47, O57, P27, P52. [source] MODELLING THE SLOW MEAN-REVERSION OF THE CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES' REAL EXCHANGE RATES,THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL, Issue 1 2008GILLES DUFRENOT In this paper we propose a new modelling approach of the exchange rate misalignments in four transition countries: Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. We provide an empirical framework that takes into account two characteristics of these misalignments: while the fundamentals and policies adjust to restore equilibrium towards the long-term exchange rate, there are factors that hinder a fast mean-reverting dynamics. When the exchange rates adjust slowly to their equilibrium long-run values, the standard regressions that assume zero-mean misalignments present some drawbacks and one needs a model that helps to capture the time-varying aspects of the misalignment dynamics. The model proposed in this paper reproduces well the periods of overvaluation and undervaluation observed in the four countries. [source] Child Malnutrition and Mortality in Developing Countries: Evidence from a Cross-Country AnalysisANALYSES OF SOCIAL ISSUES & PUBLIC POLICY, Issue 1 2008Alberto Gabriele In this article, after having identified the main clusters of food-insecure households worldwide, and summarily analyzed their livelihood profiles, we discuss the interaction and relevance of the most relevant key economic and social factors causing child malnutrition and mortality. On the basis of an essential but consistent World Bank database, covering all developing and transition countries, we also carry out a cross-country econometric analysis on relations of income and non-income factors with child malnutrition and mortality. Our main findings are threefold. First, among income factors, each country's overall level of economic development is paramount, but income distribution also plays an important role. Second, taking into account that public provision of basic services tends to increase with economic growth, each country's relative propensity to spend on basic services is significantly and negatively correlated with child malnutrition and mortality. Third, gender-related cultural factors also play a large role. [source] Agricultural productivity growth in traditional and transitional economies in AsiaASIAN-PACIFIC ECONOMIC LITERATURE, Issue 2 2009Supawat Rungsuriyawiboon This paper reports estimates of agricultural productivity growth in Asian countries, with special attention to the transition economies. A parametric output distance function approach is formulated to decompose total factor productivity (TFP) growth into its associated components and to examine how input and output intensities shift in response to the adoption of innovations. The results show that by including the transition economies, Asia achieved healthy TFP growth at an annual average rate of 1.9 per cent. However, TFP growth and its components differ widely across the transition countries and at different stages of the transition periods within these countries. [source] Money Demand in an EU Accession Country: A VECM Study of CroatiaBULLETIN OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, Issue 2 2006Dario Cziráky O42; E13; E41; E51 Abstract The paper estimates the money demand in Croatia using monthly data from 1994 to 2002. A failure of the Fisher equation is found, and adjustment to the standard money-demand function is made to include the inflation rate as well as the nominal interest rate. In a two-equation cointegrated system, a stable money demand shows rapid convergence back to equilibrium after shocks. This function performs better than an alternative using the exchange rate instead of the inflation rate as in the ,pass-through' literature on exchange rates. The results provide a basis for inflation rate forecasting and suggest the ability to use inflation targeting goals in transition countries during the EU accession process. Finding a stable money demand also limits the scope for central bank ,inflation bias'. [source] | |||||||||||||