1,721,105 research outputs found
Political and Economic Institutions, Growth and Poverty – Experience of Transition Countries
Get PDFhuman development, democracy
Reforms and economic growth in transition economies: Complementarity, sequencing and speed
Get PDFGrowth regressions have provided important insights into the impact of economic reforms on growth in transition economies. Using principal components to decompose reform variables and construct reform clusters, we address unsettled issues such as the importance of sequencing and reform speed. The results indicate a broad-based reform policy is good for growth, but so is a policy of liberalisation and small-scale privatisation without structural reforms. Conversely, large-scale privatisation without adjoining reforms, market opening without supporting reforms and bank liberalisation without enterprise restructuring affect growth negatively. Swift reform policies allow transition countries to benefit from higher growth for a longer period of time. The speed of reforms otherwise appears to have only limited effects on short-term and medium-term growth.Economic reforms, growth, principal components, gradualism versus big-bang
Reforms and economic growth in transition economies: Complementarity, sequencing and speed
Get PDFGrowth regressions have provided important insights into the impact of economic reforms on growth in transition economies. Using principal components to decompose reform variables and construct reform clusters, we address unsettled issues such as the importance of sequencing and reform speed. The results indicate a broad-based reform policy is good for growth, but so is a policy of liberalisation and small-scale privatisation without structural reforms. Conversely, large-scale privatisation without adjoining reforms, market opening without supporting reforms and bank liberalisation without enterprise restructuring affect growth negatively. Swift reform policies allow transition countries to benefit from higher growth for a longer period of time. The speed of reforms otherwise appears to have only limited effects on short-term and medium-term growth.economic reforms; growth; principal components; gradualism versus big-bang
Determinants and impact of private sector investment in Malawi: evidence from the 2006 investment climate survey
Get PDFOver much of the last two decades, the economy of Malawi has been characterized by economic turbulence and uncertainty that has done serious damage to the private sector. Rapid liberalization exposed an unprepared private sector to potentially damaging forces. This paper draws upon the most comprehensive enterprise survey carried out in Malawi in recent years to assess the current state of private sector investment. We find the following key results: (1) low labor productivity is explained primarily by lack inputs per worker, rather than insufficient capital employed; (2) foreign competition in either domestic or export markets encourages reinvestment of current earnings; (3) firms with monopoly power are less likely to invest in increased capacity; and (4) high interest rates encourage Malawian firms to invest incrementally and using retained profits.
Trade, Foreign Direct Investment and Growth: Evidence from Transition Economies
Get PDFUsing fixed effects panel data approach, this paper empirically examines the effects of trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) on growth in 13 transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe, and the Baltic region (CEEB). Our analysis suggests that significant positive effect of trade on growth is a robust result for transition economies of this region. In addition, domestic investment appears to be an important determinant of growth. However, in the presence of trade in the growth equation, FDI does not seem to have any significant effect on growth. The estimation of the growth equation without trade renders FDI highly significant suggesting collinearity between trade and FDI. Furthermore, interaction between trade and FDI seems to be important for growth in transition economies. Among other findings, macroeconomic stability as reflected in the rate of inflation and fiscal balance plays a significant role in the growth process.
Household savings in transition economies
Get PDFDuring the transition from central planning to market economies now under way in Eastern Europe, output levels first collapsed by 40 to 50 percent in most countries, then staged a modest recovery in the last two years. Longer-term revival of growth requires a resumption of investment and thus, realistically, of domestic savings. To explore the determinants of household savings rates in transition economies, the authors studies matching household surveys for three Central European economies: Bulgaria, Hungary, and Poland. They find that savings rates strongly increase with relative income, suggesting that increasing income inequality may play a role in determining savings rates. Savings rates are significantly higher for households that do not own their homes or that own few of the standard consumer durables-possibly because, with no retail credit or mortgage markets, households must save to purchase houses and durables. The influence of demographic factors broadly matches earlier findings for developing countries. Perhaps surprisingly, variables associated with the household's position in the transition process-including either sector of employment (public or private) or form of employment-do not play a significant role in determining savings rates.Environmental Economics&Policies,Services&Transfers to Poor,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Safety Nets and Transfers,Rural Poverty Reduction,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Poverty and Inequality in Eastern Europe and the CIS Transition Economies
Get PDFThis paper deals with the causes and consequences of inequality and poverty in the countries east of the new frontiers of the European Union, mainly with the CIS countries. Poverty and inequalities in the former socialist countries were partly mitigated by the social policies of the state. The transition processes, however, have resulted in new distributions of income and wealth. The new structural sources of poverty and inequalities have often been more extreme. Some CIS countries have moderated poverty, which nonetheless persists in most CIS countries, in spite of some economic improvements.transition, Central and Eastern Europe, CIS countries, transformation, poverty, inequality, social policy, health, education
Economic Reform, Democracy and Growth During Post-Communist Transition
Get PDFThis paper explores interactions between growth, economic liberalization and democratization during transition. The results can be summarized as follows: (1) Liberalization has a strong positive effect on growth during transition (also when controlling for endogeneity of liberalization in growth). (2) Democracy facilitates economic liberalization. (3) Because of its effect on liberalization, democracy has a positive overall effect on growth. Nevertheless, the marginal effect of democracy (after controlling for progress in economic liberalization) is negative during early transition. (4) The progress in democratization in turn depends on past economic performance in a surprising manner-the relationship between past growth and subsequent democracy appears negative. (5) Economic performance is an important determinant of electoral outcomes and, in particular, of support for reforms.Democracy, LIberalization, Economic Performance and Elections
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