nep-cis New Economics Papers
on Confederation of Independent States
Issue of 2021‒11‒08
six papers chosen by
Alexander Harin
Modern University for the Humanities

  1. 북한 대외 채무의 쟁점과 과제: 국제 규범과 해외 사례를 중심으로 (Issues and Tasks Regarding External Debt of the DPRK: Centering around International Rules and Cases Abroad) By Choi, Yoojeong; Han, Halin
  2. Agricultural markets in Ukraine: current situation and market outlook until 2030 By NYKOLYUK Olga; PYVOVAR Petro; CHMIL Alla; BOGONOS Mariia; TOPOLNYCKYI Pavlo; CHEBAN Iryna; FELLMANN Thomas
  3. A Conflict of State-led Initiative and Economic Rationality: Focusing on the State Language and Lingua Franca in Uzbekistan By Masahiro Tokunaga; Ravshan Shomurodov; Okiliddin Alimov
  4. "Wild" Tariff Schemes: Evidence from the Republic of Georgia By Anna Alberini; Levan Bezhanishvili; Milan Scasny
  5. How Bad Is Labor Market Concentration?: Evidence From Soviet (Urban) Satellites By Zhuravleva, Nadezhda
  6. Rechtsrahmen der Geldwäschebekämpfung By Keßler, Daniela; Zerres, Thomas

  1. By: Choi, Yoojeong (KOREA INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC POLICY (KIEP)); Han, Halin (KOREA INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC POLICY (KIEP))
    Abstract: 북한의 대외 채무 문제는 북한의 대외관계 정상화 과정에서 한반도가 직면하게 될 주요한 경제·외교적 사안이다. 본 연구는 북한의 대외 채무 현황을 파악하고 국제 규범과 해외 사례를 종합적으로 분석하여 시나리오별 대외 채무 해소 과정과 이에 따른 정책 과제를 도출하였다. 해외 사례를 체제전환국, 국가통합, 채권국가로 유형화하여 살펴보고, 북한 채무의 쟁점과 해결 방안을 통일과 통합의 두 가지 관점에서 분석한 것이 본 연구의 차별점이다. 연구의 결과는 남북 관계와 북미 관계가 개선되는 상황에 대비하여 우리 정부가 대북 정책을 수립하는 데 주요한 기초자료를 제공할 수 있을 것으로 기대된다. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (hereinafter DPRK) holds external debt against the rest of the world yet has not made its position clear on how to repay this after declaring moratorium in 1984. The magnitude of the debt subject for repayment is increasing annually as the interest for arrears has accumulated. The issues regarding approaches that the DPRK would take in regards to repayment of its debt were raised when Russia relieved it from its duties for repayment of external debt against the former Soviet Union in 2012. In light of the situation in 2018 and 2019, when rapprochement between the DPRK and the United States was burgeoning, once the former shows its willingness to open its economy and to enter the phase of reformation, it is reasonable to believe that the discussion on how to resolve the mounting external debt of DPRK would be expedited when US-DPRK relations enter this new phase. Against this background, the external debt of DPRK will likely be one of the primary diplomatic and economic matters facing the Republic of Korea in the longer perspective, albeit not an imminent issue to be taken care of. Therefore, this study examines the current state of external debt incurred by the DPRK and international norms on how to manage this, as well as cases abroad to identify the tasks at hand for the Republic of Korea's government to respond to various scenarios on changes in circumstances on the Korean Peninsula. (the rest omitted)
    Keywords: DPRK; North Korea; external debt; economic integration; economic cooperation
    Date: 2021–07–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:kiepre:2021_004&r=
  2. By: NYKOLYUK Olga; PYVOVAR Petro; CHMIL Alla; BOGONOS Mariia (European Commission - JRC); TOPOLNYCKYI Pavlo; CHEBAN Iryna; FELLMANN Thomas (European Commission - JRC)
    Abstract: This report presents the current situation and an outlook for the major Ukrainian agricultural commodity markets until 2030 along with the update of the Ukraine country model in AGMEMOD. AGMEMOD is a system of partial equilibrium, medium-term, dynamic, multi-market and multi-country econometric models that is applied for generating projections for agricultural commodity markets of the EU and neighbour countries. In the current work, the database and the behavioural functions representing market agents of the Ukraine country model have been updated. The outlook results for 2030 show that while the quantity of wheat produced in Ukraine will increase only marginally, maize is expected to become the dominant cereal. Adaptation to climate change is the main driving force behind this trend. Domestic soya beans, rapeseed and sunflower seeds production will continue growing, along with the quantities of oilseed oils and meals. Cattle and swine farming is expected to follow its ongoing structural change that shows the replacement of self-subsistent producers (rural households) by specialised farms. However, the specialised larger producers will not compensate the loss in animal numbers from the rural households and, therefore, production quantities of beef and pork are likely to slow down in the next decade. Conversely, poultry meat and eggs production are projected to grow. As the COVID-19 pandemic has been ongoing since early 2020, this report also analyses its impacts on the Ukrainian agriculture. The analysis demonstrates medium to long term resilience of the Ukrainian agricultural commodities production and export to this crisis. Overall, the current report shows that AGMEMOD provides relevant results and enables a structured discussion about key development trends, changes and causes of changes in production and trade of agri-food commodities.
    Keywords: Agricultural markets, Ukraine
    Date: 2021–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:iptwpa:jrc126768&r=
  3. By: Masahiro Tokunaga (Faculty of Business and Commerce, Kansai University); Ravshan Shomurodov (Faculty of Banking, Tashkent Institute of Finance); Okiliddin Alimov (Faculty of Japanese Studies, Tashkent State Institute of Oriental Studies)
    Abstract: To untangle the root of contradictions across linguistic development in post-Soviet Uzbekistan, we explicitly introduce linguistic factors into the transaction cost theory of new institutional economics and the concepts of institutional connectivity and complementarity proposed by comparative institutional analysis in an attempt to construct a theoretical framework for comprehending the dilemma between the state-led initiative and economic rationality regarding linguistic issues in the post-Soviet space. In light of these theoretical considerations, we propose three types of conceptual institutional settings and examine a case study of Uzbekistan that lacks robustness of institutional complementarity for implementing the effective language policies.
    Keywords: transaction costs, institutional complementarity, state language, lingua franca, Uzbekistan
    JEL: P21 P52 Z13
    Date: 2021–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kyo:wpaper:1068&r=
  4. By: Anna Alberini (AREC, University of Maryland, College Park & Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic); Levan Bezhanishvili (Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic); Milan Scasny (Charles University, Institute of Economic Studies at Faculty of Social Sciences & The Environment Center)
    Abstract: Consumers often struggle to grasp complicated pricing plans, including increasing block rate (IBR) schemes, which have been used for decades by utilities in many parts of the world. The assumption that they encourage conservation has, however, recently been challenged (Ito, 2014). We take advantage of the unique IBR tariffs for electricity in the Republic of Georgia - where "overage" is penalized more heavily than in conventional IBR - to ask whether consumers respond to price, and to which price specifically. Based on the data from several waves of the Georgia Household Budget Survey, we find evidence of "notches," namely missing probability mass on the right of the lowest block cutoff and a spike in the frequency of monthly consumption to the left of it. This is in contrast with the "bunching" pattern predicted by Borenstein (2009) when demand is not completely inelastic, and with the empirical evidence in Borenstein (2009) and Ito (2014). During our study period (2012-2019), the tariffs were revised - both downwards and upwards - to a different extent in different blocks and at different times across the regions of the country. We devise difference-in-difference study designs that exploit such natural experiments, finding that consumption did increase when the tariffs were reduced and fell when they were raised. Ours is one of the few studies that exploits quasi experimental conditions to examine whether the response to price changes is symmetric. We find that it is, in that the implied price elasticity of electricity demand is in both cases -0.3. Finally, we fit an electricity demand function, which results in an even stronger price elasticity (-0.5). Households seem to respond to the actual, average price (here equal to the marginal price) rather than to expected price. Our estimates of the price elasticity bode well for a carbon tax, an energy tax, or simple tariff increases to help curb imports of gas-fired electricity from neighboring countries.
    Keywords: residential electricity demand, price elasticity, increasing block rates, tariff schemes, asymmetric response to price changes
    JEL: D12 Q41 Q48
    Date: 2021–10
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fau:wpaper:wp2021_34&r=
  5. By: Zhuravleva, Nadezhda
    JEL: E24 J30 J31 J42
    Date: 2021
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc21:242405&r=
  6. By: Keßler, Daniela; Zerres, Thomas
    Abstract: In den vergangenen Jahren wurden im Rahmen journalistischer Recherchen immer wieder große Datenmengen zu komplexen Firmenkonstruktionen und globalen Finanztransaktionen veröffentlicht, die dem Waschen illegaler Gelder und dem Verschleiern von Vermögenswerten dienten. Als Beispiele seien hierzu die "Panama Papers" oder "Paradise Papers" von 2016 genannt, mit denen zahlreiche Briefkastenfirmen und Finanzgeschäfte in Steueroasen gegenüber der Öffentlichkeit aufgedeckt wurden. Die Recherche der Journalisten ordnete den offenbar illegal erworbenen Vermögenswerten auch prominente Namen zu. Als Folge wurden unter anderem Strafverfahren wegen Steuerhinterziehung eingeleitet. Selbst Minister und Regierungschefs mussten zurücktreten. Auch die Europäische Union wurde in den letzten Jahren immer wieder von Geldwäsche-Skandalen erschüttert. Der mit Abstand umfangreichste Fall ereignete sich in der estnischen Filiale der Danske Bank, welche über Jahre massiv die Sorgfaltspflichten missachtet hatte und so in den Jahren 2007 bis 2015 rund 200 Milliarden Euro aus dubiosen russischen Quellen über die Konten der Bank geflossen sein sollen. Es handelt sich derzeit um den weltgrößten Geldwäscheskandal, der bisher aufgedeckt werden konnte. Auch die Deutsche Bank, die als Korrespondenzbank für das dänische Geldhaus tätig war, soll jahrelang verdächtige Transaktionen im Zusammenhang mit der Dankse Bank nicht offengelegt haben. Ferner hatte im Juli 2018 die Berliner Polizei und Staatsanwaltschaft 77 Immobilien einer kurdisch-libanesischen Großfamilie im Wert von zehn Millionen Euro beschlagnahmt. Durch den Kauf der Gebäude sollen illegale Gelder aus Raub und Drogenhandel gewaschen worden sein. Darüber hinaus hat erst im November 2019 das sog. Hawala-Banking in Deutschland Schlagzeilen gemacht. Mehr als 850 Polizeibeamte aus fünf Bundesländern gingen gegen eine vermutlich international agierende kriminelle Vereinigung vor. Die Behörden ermittelten 27 Beschuldigte, die im großen Stil Bargeld ins Ausland transferiert und so über das Hawala-Bankensystem mehr als 200 Millionen Euro aus illegalen Quellen gewaschen haben sollen.
    Date: 2020
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ouwpmm:48&r=

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