nep-cis New Economics Papers
on Confederation of Independent States
Issue of 2012‒07‒08
two papers chosen by
Alexander Harin
Modern University for the Humanities

  1. THE INFLUENCE OF SERVICES TRADE LIBERALIZATION ON SERVICE FLOWS AND INDUSTRY PRODUCTIVITY IN CIS COUNTRIES AND RUSSIA By Alexander Knobel
  2. Sustainability and human development: a proposal for a sustainability adjusted HDI (SHDI) By Pineda, Jose

  1. By: Alexander Knobel (Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy)
    Abstract: This paper estimates the influence of the service sector’s liberalization on service flows in transition economies and on productivity of the Russian industry that uses these services as intermediate consumption. Empirical analysis of the international statistics shows that service trade between CIS countries and OECD countries is strongly underestimated and could grow 2.5–3 times larger due to liberalization. Modeling of the international service trade shows that services imports into Russia are strongly limited by existing trade barriers. For Russia, according to the estimates, the most liberalized service sector is communication services, and the least liberalized sector is information technology. This paper demonstrates that services are actively used by Russian industry as intermediate consumption. On the basis of the inter-industry empirical analysis, one can conclude that service sector liberalization may have a positive impact on the productivity of various sectors of the Russian manufacturing industry.
    Keywords: : import volumes, services, trade liberalization, gravity model, panel data, labor productivity
    JEL: C23 F12 F14 O14
    Date: 2012
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gai:wpaper:0013&r=cis
  2. By: Pineda, Jose
    Abstract: This paper proposes a sustainability-adjusted HDI in which country’s achievements in human development are penalized, to reflect the over-exploitation of the environment and its relative intensity. The human development approach has been a powerful framework in the past for advancing the measurement of human progress. Today, this approach can help us make more explicit the profound connections between current and future generations’ choices by offering a framework for understanding sustainability that connects inter- and intra-generational equity with global justice. The analysis shows that there are important global sustainability challenges ahead since there are 79 (out of 118) countries with at least one indicator above the planetary boundary. There are 17 countries that lost at least one position in their HDI ranking after adjusting for sustainability. Between these countries, however, the countries that experience the largest drop in ranking were 37 positions for the United States, 26 positions for China, and 17 positions for the Russian Federation.
    Keywords: sustainability; HDI; human development
    JEL: O1 O5 O15 Q56
    Date: 2012–06–19
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:39656&r=cis

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