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on Confederation of Independent States |
| By: | Mauricio Soto; Frank Eich; Charleen Gust |
| Abstract: | Pension reform is a key policy challenge in Russia. This paper examines how pension spending could increase in Russia in the absence of reforms, quantifies the impact of some recent proposals, and suggests some alternatives that would ensure public pension benefits - relative to wages - not fall from current levels while containing spending. |
| Keywords: | Aging , Pension reforms , Pensions , Population , Russian Federation , |
| Date: | 2012–08–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfwpa:12/201&r=cis |
| By: | Chakraborty, Suparna; Otsu, Keisuke |
| Abstract: | What are the economic mechanisms that account for sudden growth spurts? Are these mechanisms similar across episodes? Focusing on the economic resurgence of the BRICs over the last decade, we employ the Business Cycle Ac- counting methodology developed by Chari, Kehoe and McGrattan (2007) to address these questions. Our results highlight that while efficiency wedges do contribute in a large part to growth, especially in Brazil and Russia, there is an increasing importance of investment wedge especially in the late 2000s, noted in China and India. The results are typically related to the stages of development with Brazil and Russia coming off a crisis to grow in the 2000s, while India and China were already on a stable growth path. Our conclusions are robust to alternative methodological extensions where we allow shocks to the trend component of efficiency as opposed to traditional shocks to the cyclical component, as well as to standard modifications where we allow for investment adjustment costs. Relating improvements in wedges to institutional and financial reforms, we find that financial development and improvements in effective governance in BRICs are consistent with improvements in investment and efficiency wedges that led to growth |
| Keywords: | business cycle accounting; efficiency; market frictions; trend shocks; investment adjustment costs |
| JEL: | E32 O57 O4 |
| Date: | 2012–08–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:41076&r=cis |
| By: | Andrew F. Cooper (Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI)) |
| Abstract: | The Group of Twenty (G-20) deserves credit for opening up of the “top table†of global governance to a wider representation of countries on a geographic basis in general and Asia in particular. As both a crisis committee in terms of the reverberations from the 2008 financial crisis and a potential global steering committee for a wider set of economic/developmental issues the summit process includes not only the association of leading association of leading emerging economies referred to as BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, the Republic of China, and South Africa), but key middle powers such as the Republic of Korea. Yet, as a growing body of literature attests, it is clearly the contested nature of the G-20 that has come to the fore. This paper examines both the strengths and weaknesses of the G-20 from the perspective of input and output legitimacy. Notwithstanding some initial successes the constraints with respect to “output†have become more acute. Moreover, the “input†legitimacy of the G-20 has been eroded by the absence of the United Nations in the design and representational gaps. On the basis of this analysis the paper examines the debates and makes specific policy recommendations by which regionalism, the engagement of small states (through the role of Singapore and the 3-G coalition), and the expansion of the agenda can be utilized as a dynamic of reform for the G-20 without eroding the core strengths in terms of informality and issue-specific focus of the forum. |
| Keywords: | G-20, global governance, global steering committee, Regionalism |
| JEL: | D7 F02 G01 F55 |
| Date: | 2012–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eab:develo:23323&r=cis |