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on Confederation of Independent States |
| By: | Victor Gorshkov (PhD student, Graduate School of Economics, Kyoto University) |
| Abstract: | The paper represents a case study of Japanese banks operating on the Russian banking market. We particularly analyze motivation, organizational representation, entry modes and strategies of Japanese banks. We argue that in case of Japanese banks both the specificity of the home country (Japan) (relationship banking, main bank system) and host country (Russia) indeed plays an important role in expanding their businesses abroad. The shares of Japanese banks in total banking assets, deposits and lending rate of the Russian banking sector remain low, and in general Japanese banks in Russia might be regarded as “followers” of the Japanese business in Russia. Meanwhile, we also provide evidence that PULL factors are the driving forces providing reasoning for the exceptions from this rule in the behavioral patterns of Japanese banks. The paper summarizes history of foreign expansion of Japanese banks into the Russian market and aims to conduct analysis under the framework of the multinational banking theory. |
| Keywords: | foreign banking, Japanese banks, motivation, entry modes, strategie |
| JEL: | F21 F23 P31 |
| Date: | 2013–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kyo:wpaper:864&r=cis |
| By: | Eamets, Raul (University of Tartu) |
| Abstract: | The purpose of the paper is to analyse how labour market and labour market institutions reacted during recent crises. In early 1990s Estonia introduced a set of rather unique policy options like currency board as a ground for monetary policy, low taxes, open foreign trade policy, low public sector debts, annually balanced state budget etc. These measures caused very limited options to implement both monetary and fiscal policy. Macroeconomic adjustment will take place in such situation through the labour market. In the case of Estonia, we can observe a very high labour market flexibility, which played a crucial role in recent economic recession. The measures taken included a reduction of nominal wages, working hours and redundancies among employees. This indicates that the traditional institutional factors that protect workers and also could decrease the flexibility of the labour market, such as labour market regulation, social protection and union activities, are not very well developed in Estonia and do not have a significant effect on the outcomes of the labour market. The labour market reform was launched in Estonia in 2009. The main idea of the New Employment contract was that the termination of employment relations became less expensive for employers. Although empirical evidence show that the Employment Contracts Act entered into force at a time when most lay-offs had already been effected. |
| Keywords: | labour policy, Estonian labour market, labour market flexibility, labour market and recession |
| JEL: | J08 J21 J50 J63 |
| Date: | 2013–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izapps:pp60&r=cis |
| By: | Carlos Eduardo Léon Rincón; Karen Juliet Leiton; Jhonatan Pérez Villalobos |
| Abstract: | Since correlation may be interpreted as a measure of the influence across time-series, it may be conveniently mapped into a distance and into a weighted adjacency matrix. Based on such matrix, network theory has attempted to filter out the noise in correlation matrices by extracting the dominant hierarchy (i.e. the strongest linear-dependence signals) within time-series. The aim of this brief paper is to find the current hierarchy in the sovereigns’ CDS market after the structural shift caused by the failure of Lehman Brothers. Thus, based on two different correlation-into-distance mapping techniques and a minimal spanning tree-based correlation-filtering methodology on 36 sovereign CDS spread time-series, the target is to identify which sovereigns are providing the strongest –less noisy- and most informative signals. The resulting sovereigns’ CDS market hierarchy agrees with prior findings of Gilmore et al. (2010) regarding sovereigns’ bonds market, such as the importance of geographical clustering and the idiosyncratic nature of Japan and United States. Additionally, results (i) confirm that a small set of common factors affect the entire system; (ii) identify the relevance of credit rating clustering; (iii) identify Russia, Turkey and Brazil as regional benchmarks; (iv) suggest that lower-medium grade rated sovereigns are the most influential, but also the most prone to contagion; and (v) suggest the existence of a “Latin American common factor”. |
| Date: | 2013–05–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000094:010749&r=cis |
| By: | Francesco Caselli; Massimo Morelli; Dominic Rohner |
| Abstract: | We establish a theoretical as well as empirical framework to assess the role of resource endowments and their geographic location for inter-State conflict. The main predictions of the theory are that conflict tends to be more likely when at least one country has natural resources; when the resources in the resource-endowed country are closer to the border; and, in the case where both countries have natural resources, when the resources are located asymmetrically vis-a-vis the border. We test these predictions on a novel dataset featuring oilfield distances from bilateral borders. The empirical analysis shows that the presence and location of oil are significant and quantitatively important predictors of inter-State conflicts after WW2. |
| Keywords: | Conflict; Interstate War; Border Disputes; Natural Resources; Oil; Asymmetry; Geography |
| JEL: | D74 C72 F51 Q34 |
| Date: | 2013–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lau:crdeep:13.06&r=cis |