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on Confederation of Independent States |
| By: | Libman, Alexander |
| Abstract: | The paper discusses the relative importance of the 'real' political actions versus the changes of symbolic nature in the bargaining over devolution, studying the case of personnel decentralization in security agencies in Russia in 2000-2007. While in the 1990s under Boris Yeltsin regional branches of federal ministries in Russia were mostly captured by regional governors, allowing them to pass acts directly contradicting federal law, in 2000s the administration of Vladimir Putin gradually replaced the heads of regional branches by new bureaucrats, supposedly without any connections to the region. The results differ for different security agencies; however, the paper finds, surprisingly, that in several cases the appointment decisions were robustly influenced rather by symbolic gestures made by regional governments in the earlier bargaining process than by the actual devolution policies of the regions. -- |
| Keywords: | Devolution,bargaining,transition economies |
| JEL: | D78 H77 P26 |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:fsfmwp:148&r=cis |
| By: | Christian Dreger; Jarko Fidrmuc (Osteuropa-Institut, Regensburg (Institut for East European Studies)) |
| Abstract: | We investigate the likely sources of exchange rate dynamics in selected CIS countries (Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, and Moldova) over the last dec-ade (1999-2010). Evidence is based on country VARs augmented by a regional com-mon factor structure (FAVAR model). The models include nominal exchange rates, the common factor of exchange rates in the CIS countries, and international drivers such as global trade, share prices, and oil price. Global, regional and idiosyncratic shocks are identified in a standard Cholesky fashion. Their relevance for exchange rates is ex-plored by a decomposition of the variance of forecast errors. The impact of global shocks to in the developments of exchange rates has increased, in particular, if financial shocks are considered. Because of the financial crisis, regional shocks have become more important at the expense of global shocks. |
| Keywords: | Exchange rates, CIS countries, financial crisis, FAVAR models |
| JEL: | F31 C22 G15 |
| Date: | 2010–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ost:wpaper:289&r=cis |
| By: | Beck, T.H.L. (Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research) |
| Abstract: | Legal institutions are critical for the development of market-based economies. This paper defines legal institutions and discusses different indicators to measure their quality and efficiency. It surveys a large historical and empirical literature showing the importance of legal institutions in explaining cross-country variation in economic development. Finally, it presents and discusses three different views of why we can observe the large cross-country variation in legal institutions, the social conflict, the legal origin and the culture and religion hypotheses. |
| Keywords: | Legal institutions;economic development;legal system indicators;property rights |
| JEL: | K1 K4 O16 O43 P14 |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:kubcen:201094&r=cis |
| By: | Strauss, John (University of Southern California); Lei, Xiaoyan (Peking University); Park, Albert (University of Oxford); Shen, Yan (Peking University); Smith, James P. (RAND); Yang, Zhe (Peking University); Zhao, Yaohui (Peking University) |
| Abstract: | We are concerned in this paper with measuring health outcomes among the elderly in Zhejiang and Gansu provinces, China, and examining the relationships between different dimensions of health status and measures of socio-economic status (SES). We use the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) pilot data to document health conditions among the elderly in Gansu and Zhejiang provinces, where the survey was fielded. We use a very rich set of health indicators that include both self-reported measures and biomarkers. We also examine correlations between these health outcomes and two important indicators of socioeconomic status (SES): education and log of per capita expenditure (log pce), our preferred measure of household resources. While there exists a very large literature that examines the relationships between SES and health measures, little has been done on Chinese data to see whether correlations reported in many other countries are replicated in China, particularly so for the aged. In general education tends to be positively correlated with better health outcomes, as it is in other countries. However, unmeasured community influences turn out to be highly important, much more so than one usually finds in other countries. While it is not yet clear which aspects of communities matter and why they matter, we set up an agenda for future research on this topic. We also find a large degree of under-diagnosis of hypertension, a major health problems that afflicts the aged. This implies that the current health system is not well prepared to address the rapid aging of the Chinese population, at least not in Gansu and Zhejiang. |
| Keywords: | health, China |
| JEL: | I10 |
| Date: | 2010–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp5152&r=cis |