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on Confederation of Independent States |
| By: | 久保庭, 眞彰 |
| Abstract: | This paper diagnoses the present Russian situation characterized as the “Russian Disease.” First, it shows that a key symptom of the Russian Disease is a strong positive relation between the country’s real growth and terms-of-trade-effects, which is different from the symptoms of the “Dutch Disease”. This paper also presents three variants (oil prices, terms-of-trade, and trading gains) of the concept of terms-of-trade effects using the SNA framework. Second, it shows a strong positive impact of terms-of-trade effects on the Russian manufacturing, which markedly differs from one of the major symptoms of the Dutch Disease (slower growth of manufacturing through the booming mining sector and real appreciation of exchange rates). This paper also suggests the significance of the manufacturing industry for the Russian economy. Third, this paper shows that the appreciation (depreciation) of real exchange rates of Russia’s rubles induced the boost (decline) of its imports. Fourth, this paper proves that the boost of imports, in turn, induced the GDP growth of the trade sector as one of the major sources of the Russian overall growth. We also present the impact of oil prices on two kinds of real exchange rates (CPI-based and GDP-based real exchange rates). |
| Keywords: | Russian Disease, Dutch Disease, growth, oil price, terms-of-trade, trading gain, manufacturing, imports, real exchange rate, trade |
| JEL: | E31 P24 P28 P59 |
| Date: | 2010–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hit:rrcwps:28&r=cis |
| By: | Kan, Viktoriya |
| Date: | 2010–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hit:piecis:490&r=cis |
| By: | Steve A. Gabriel, Knut Einar Rosendahl, Ruud G. Egging, Hakob Avetisyan and Sauleh Siddiqui (Statistics Norway) |
| Abstract: | Natural gas is increasingly important as a fuel for electric power generation as well as other uses due to its environmental advantage over other fossil fuels. Using the World Gas Model, a large-scale energy equilibrium system based on a complementarity formulation, this paper analyzes possible future gas cartels and their effects on gas markets in a number of regions across the world. In addition, scenarios related to lower transport costs and decreased unconventional gas supply in the United States are considered. |
| Keywords: | natural gas; market equilibrium; complementarity model; energy |
| JEL: | Q41 D43 |
| Date: | 2010–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ssb:dispap:638&r=cis |
| By: | Dmitriy Vorobyev |
| Abstract: | Electoral fraud has become an integral part of electoral competition both in established democracies and less-than-democratic regimes. In this paper I study electoral fraud in the non-democratic setting. First, I present evidence of fraud sustainability and growth over the lifetime of non-democratic regimes in post-Soviet and Sub-Saharan countries. Second, I provide a theoretical model that explains the observed tendency of growing fraud. Specifically, in a probabilistic voting model of electoral competition with falsifications, a corrupt incumbent faces two types of uncertainty: uncertainty about voters’ attitude towards fraud and uncertainty about his true support, captured by a purely random component in the voters’ utility over candidates. The model predicts that when uncertainty is sufficiently large, higher uncertainty about voters’ fraud intolerance provides weaker incentives to commit fraud. Over time the incumbent becomes more certain about voters’ reaction to fraud because of learning through Bayesian updating and, thus, as the deterrent role of fraud intolerance uncertainty declines, the incentives to commit fraud become stronger, providing a growing fraud profile. |
| Keywords: | election; voting; fraud; learning |
| JEL: | D72 D73 D83 |
| Date: | 2010–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cer:papers:wp420&r=cis |
| By: | Chaton, Corinne (Laboratoire de Finance des Marchés d'Energies); Gasmi, Farid (Toulouse School of Economics (ARQADE & IDEI)); Guillerminet, Marie-Laure (Hamburg University (FNU)); Oviedo, Juan Daniel (Universidad del Rosario) |
| Abstract: | Motivated by recent policy events experienced by the European natural gas industry, this paper develops a simple model for analyzing the interaction between gas release and capacity investment programs as tools to improve the performance of imperfectly competitive markets. We consider a regional market in which a measure that has an incumbent release part of its gas to a marketer complements a program of investment in transport capacity dedicated to imports by the marketer, at a regulated transport charge, of competitively-priced gas. First, we examine the case where transport capacity is regulated while gas release is not, i.e., the volume of gas released is determined by the incumbent. We then analyze the effect of the "artifcial" duopoly created by the regulator when the latter regulates both gas release and transport capacity. Finally, using information on the French industry, we calibrate the basic demand and cost elements of the model and perform some simulations of these two scenarios. Besides allowing us to analyze the economic properties of these scenarios, a policy implication that comes out of the empirical analysis is that, when combined with network expansion investments, gas-release measures applied under regulatory control are indeed effective short-term policies for promoting gas-to-gas competition. |
| Keywords: | Natural gas, Gas release, Regulation, Competition |
| JEL: | L51 L95 |
| Date: | 2010–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ide:wpaper:23564&r=cis |