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on Confederation of Independent States |
| By: | Fischer, Sabine |
| Abstract: | So far, 2026 is not proving a good year for the Putin regime. The front line in Ukraine is barely moving, Ukrainian drones and missiles are striking targets deep inside Russian territory, the economy is faltering and public sentiment is deteriorating. Under these difficult conditions, the Kremlin administration has to engineer another victory for the ruling United Russia party, as the State Duma elections are due to take place from 18 to 20 September. Yet the Russian parliament is scarcely able to fulfil its function as a source of legitimacy in Putin's personalised dictatorship. This is evident both from the chronic weakness of the parties loyal to the regime and from the farcical circumstances surrounding the exclusion of the Yabloko party from the election. |
| Keywords: | State Duma, manipulation, Kremlin, russian parties, United Russia, UR, Yabloko, Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, LDPR, Commu |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:swpcom:344116 |
| By: | Schubert, Torben (Fraunhofer ISI; CIRCLE, Lund University) |
| Abstract: | After the invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s exports in ICT services, one of few internationally competitive sectors not based on natural resources, fell from US$7.23 billion in 2021 to US$2.70 billion in 2025, while those of Georgia, Armenia and Montenegro together rose from US$0.72 billion to US$2.99 billion. Relying on synthetic controls, we provide evidence that the gains of these countries were linked to a mass exodus of Russian IT developers, who were able to enter these countries visa-free and stay for extended periods. Our evidence shows that in Georgia, Armenia and Montenegro, ICT exports exceeded their synthetic counterfactuals by about US$3.3 billion in 2022-2024. Additional analyses on a smaller set of control countries show evidence that this effect persists in 2025. Moreover, about 42, 000 additional developer accounts appeared on GitHub, an increase of 40 % over the three countries’ 2021 stock. Finally, we provide evidence that developers also transferred their international networks: collaboration per developer with partners outside Russia and Belarus increased nearly fourfold, while the number of partner economies rose by 19. Most of the new ties lead to Europe and North America rather than to Russia. The effects persisted completely or at least partially until the end of our observation period. |
| Keywords: | Skilled migration; ICT services; Synthetic control; Sanctions; Software developers; Russia |
| JEL: | F14 F22 J61 |
| Date: | 2026–10–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lucirc:2026_011 |
| By: | Jan Morgan; Anchi Xia |
| Abstract: | We provide a theory of optimal trade sanctions with three strategic players: Home (sanctioner), Foreign (target), and Bystander. Bystander may act unilaterally or ally with either party subject to a participation constraint. We derive three novel results. First, members of a coalition generically set different tariffs either under Stackelberg timing or when transfers are imperfect. Second, as sanctions tighten, Home's welfare can improve even beyond the unilateral terms-of-trade optimum due to strategic interactions. Third, we characterize feasible sanctions targets when Home and Foreign compete for Bystander's support. An alternative implementation arises with competition: Home lets Foreign win, but Foreign's transfer to Bystander implements the sanctions target. We apply our model to sanctions against Russian crude. In a calibration exercise, cooperation among India, China, and Russia best matches observed data. Sanctions could have been roughly 70% more effective had China and India acted unilaterally or had the sanctioning coalition made them a better offer. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.22830 |
| By: | Sherstyuk, Nicole |
| Abstract: | Following Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine's EU accession process has advanced rapidly, supported by substantial funding through the Ukraine Facility. This paper examines how accession is shaping Ukraine's social policy trajectory. Using a neoinstitutionalist framework focused on the interaction between formal and informal institutions, it analyses the human capital chapter of the Ukraine Plan against the background of Ukraine's fragmented social protection system and the EU's evolving enlargement priorities. The analysis finds that EU conditionality strongly reinforces rule-of-law and economic benchmarks, while the social principles of the European Pillar of Social Rights remain largely non-binding. At the same time, the securitisation of accession has directed early investment towards priorities aligned with broader European strategic interests. Reforms such as the transition to a purchasing-based model of social services introduce market-oriented governance into a system characterised by entrenched informality and limited administrative capacity. This produces a hybrid welfare configuration that fits neither established welfare-state typologies nor the conventional post-communist regime type, raising doubts about whether accessiondriven reform can generate substantive institutional change rather than formal compliance. |
| Keywords: | Ukraine, EU accession, social policy, welfare state, Ukraine Facility, informal institutions |
| JEL: | H55 I38 P30 F55 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ipewps:344091 |
| By: | Alice Guittard (ICRE8); Ebun Akinsete (ICRE8); Yuliia Kotelnikova; Viktor Komorin; Phoebe Koundouri |
| Abstract: | The war in Ukraine has created unprecedented risks for coastal communities and marine-dependent economic sectors in the region; presenting an existential 'burden' and radically reshaping the conditions under which the blue economy operates along the north-western Black Sea coast. In the midst of this geopolitical instability, the Odessa region, including the Odesa Bay, remains one of the few functioning maritime hubs of Ukraine; albeit plagued by simultaneous pressures from security threats, infrastructure damage, disrupted logistics, restricted access to resources, pollution risks, biodiversity loss, and socio-economic instability. Against this backdrop where survival itself is uncertain, the core question surrounding the development of a sustainable blue economy is framed as one that examines how can equity, environmental sustainability, and economic viability be operationalised in the face of an acute existential crisis. This paper argues that sustaining an equitable and viable blue economy under such conditions depends on two interlinked processes: first, maintaining inclusive dialogue among science, government, business, and civil society to negotiate priorities, trade-offs, while fulfilling responsibilities in real time; and second, developing pragmatic, adaptive packages of action that translate sustainability and equity principles into context-sensitive practice. The paper examines how blue economy objectives are interpreted, constrained, and operationalised in a war-affected coastal region, to see beyond the present in order to co-create sustainable blue transition pathways. The study contributes to broader debates on the burdens and opportunities of being "blue, "; offering insights into how equity, environmental protection, and economic survival can be balanced when idealistic frameworks meet extreme real-world constraints. |
| Date: | 2026–10–13 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aue:wpaper:2624 |
| By: | Kleban, Yurii; Rude, Britta Laurin |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how invasion-related disruption reshapes the demand for digital skills. The analysis uses a novel dataset of millions of online job vacancies in Ukraine from 2021 to 2025 classified with large language models and mapped to the ESCO taxonomy. The paper links vacancy-level skill data to high-frequency ACLED attack intensity measures and estimate time-series models. The findings document a robust positive association between attack intensity and the digital skill share of job postings, consistent across specifications and alternative attack measures. Within- and between-occupation shifts and remote work adoption jointly drive this increase, with within-occupation reskilling and upskilling alone accounting for roughly half of the total rise. The growing digital skill share partly reflects the relative resilience of digital hiring against a broader contraction in the volume of vacancies. These findings carry concrete implications for dig-ital reskilling policy, labor market monitoring, and recovery and reconstruction planning. |
| Date: | 2026–09–14 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11446 |
| By: | Christopher Clayton; Antonio Coppola; Vanessa Hu; Matteo Maggiori; Jesse Schreger; Serdil Tinda |
| Abstract: | The increasing use of geoeconomic pressure is reshaping the global economy. We introduce a methodology using large language models (LLMs) to systematically measure the application of and response to geoeconomic pressure from large textual corpora, classifying which governments apply pressure to which foreign targets, using which in struments, firms, and products. Most importantly, we use LLMs to analyze how and why firms respond to the pressure. We focus on export controls, sanctions, and tariffs as the main instruments of pressure on firms. We find that export controls induce the targeted firms to undertake domestic R&D to build a domestic alternative technology. Western sanctions on Russia cause supply chain re-arrangements, the major beneficiary of which are firms in third-party countries, like China and India, which step into the market vacuum created by the broken business relationships. The threat and impositions of U.S. tariffs cause losses for the majority of U.S. firms, which report absorbing the cost shock on their inputs via their profit margin. Foreign firms are also negatively affected, mostly via the related macroeconomic uncertainty and the cost of relocating production. |
| Keywords: | artificial intelligence, LLMs, economic coercion, economic security, economic statecraft, economic dependency, chokepoints, sanctions, export controls, tariffs |
| JEL: | C4 F3 F4 F5 G3 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bis:biswps:1386 |
| By: | Marco Becht; Juan Mejino-Lopez; Guntram Wolff |
| Abstract: | Defence markets exhibit extreme asset specificity and bilateral monopoly. Transaction-cost economicspredicts state ownership or control in such circumstances. This paper examines what governments actuallydo. Ownership alone does not determine control. A state with zero equity can still have influencethrough governance provisions and legal tools. Using large language model extraction from annual reports, supplemented by hand-coding, we compile a leximetric dataset on corporate governance and state control for107 of the world’s largest defence companies, drawn from the SIPRI Top 100 for 2022–2024, in 24 countries.We construct a novel State Influence Index (SII) aggregating voting power, voting enhancements, boardappointment and veto rights. State ownership is bimodal: full state ownership at one end, no state ownershipat the other. Formal control varies independently. China and Russia combine full ownership with full control.TheUnited States has no ownership and little formal control, relying instead on security agreements, revenuedependence and personnel interchange. The rest of the distribution is dispersed. Some countries combineminority equity with legal devices that amplify formal control well beyond ownership stakes. Others rely onregulatory mechanisms with little or no formal governance authority. In several cases, states have delegatedcontrol to domestic families operating under implicit state leverage. A complementary State Restraint Indexshows that European companies with high state influence tend also to score higher on voluntary self-limitation, consistent with credible commitment to attract private capital. Cross-border cooperation is producing newgovernance architectures that partition operations across national subsidiaries to reconcile economies of scalewith sovereign control. Corporate governance mechanisms matter most when defence entities operate beyondthe home state’s jurisdiction, where regulatory authority alone does not reach. The patterns are consistent withtransaction-cost and property-rights reasoning about asset specificity and bilateral dependence, although theinstitutional form of state control varies with legal tradition and political economy |
| Keywords: | defence industry; ownership and control; corporate governance; state-owned enterprises; national security; transaction costs; golden shares; State Influence Index; leximetrics; large language models |
| JEL: | D23 G32 G34 G38 H56 K22 L33 L64 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eca:wpaper:2013/414991 |
| By: | Tanu M. Goyal (Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER)); Ketaki Gaikwad; Ankit Bansal |
| Abstract: | The paper argues that the outcomes of India's 2026 BRICS Presidency provide a timely opportunity to address this gap. The Jaipur Consensus to Study the Establishment of an Invoice Discounting Mechanism proposes exploring a cross-border digital platform for financing confirmed export invoices, drawing on India's Trade Receivables Discounting System (TReDS) experience. Complementing this, the BRICS Guiding Principles for Credit Assessment Frameworks for Export-Oriented MSMEs promote greater reliance on cashflow and transaction-level information. Implementing these initiatives will require complementary global and domestic reforms to digital trade-finance infrastructure, receivables verification, information sharing, risk assessment and regulatory frameworks. |
| Keywords: | International Trade, MSMEs, Trade Finance, BRICS, icrier |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdc:ppaper:78 |
| By: | Jaghdani, Tinoush Jamali; Fugger, Elisabeth Maria; Glauben, Thomas; Götz, Linde; Svanidze, Miranda |
| Abstract: | The increased uncertainties in the international political landscape have led to a greater perceived danger of disruption in the global food value chain, leading to a stronger emphasis on the resilience of food supply chains. Two measures under examination are the reduction of risk impact through diversification of trade relations on one side and stability of trade relations on the other side. There are doubts about the possibility of having both elements in the food supply chains, as they look to be mutually exclusive. Diversification aims to reduce the impact of shocks in the value chain, while stronger trade relations with stable partners and stronger connectedness with the trade partners reduce the probability for one of the partners breaking the relation, but may simultaneously reduce the potential for diversification. In this study, we test the correlation between diversification and trade duration as an indicator of stability using two micro datasets of the whole Norwegian seafood export for the period 2004-2021 and whole Russian grain and oilseed export for the period of 2008-2023 at the firm-level. Applying the Kaplan-Meier estimator at the firm level, we extracted restricted mean survival time and analysed its correlation with various firm-level diversification indices such as the number of partners, the number of commodities, the partner-commodity index, and the Herfindahl– Hirschman index of the firm-exporter concentration. At the aggregated level, results indicate a weak positive correlation between the stability and diversification indices. Nevertheless, there is limited evidence of exporting firm clusters with a negative correlation between trade stability and diversification. |
| Keywords: | International Relations/Trade |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:eaae25:414516 |
| By: | Adar, Sinem (Ed.); Werenfels, Isabelle (Ed.) |
| Abstract: | Autoritäre und sich autokratisierende Staaten widmen ihrer Diaspora zunehmend Aufmerksamkeit. Die sechs in dieser SWP-Studie untersuchten Fälle zeigen, dass Diasporapolitik immer strategischer und systematischer betrieben wird und auf eine Identifizierung auch postmigrantischer Generationen mit dem Herkunftsstaat zielt. Die Beweggründe staatlicher Diasporapolitik reichen von der Machtsicherung herrschender Eliten oder einer politischen Strömung über wirtschaftliche, regionale und globale Interessen sowie Nation Branding bis hin zur Abwehr politischer Herausforderungen durch Diasporaakteure. Dabei variieren die jeweiligen Schwerpunkte und Instrumente erheblich: Russland begreift Diasporapolitik als Teil seiner Kriegsführung, für China und Indien ist sie eng mit globalen wirtschaftlichen Ambitionen und dem technologischen Wettbewerb verbunden. Der Türkei geht es um postkoloniale Ordnungsvorstellungen und regionale Ansprüche. Für Marokko stehen territoriale Souveränität sowie die Maximierung von Rücküberweisungen und Investitionen im Vordergrund. Eritrea wiederum strebt nach Ertragssteigerungen aus Auslandssteuern zur Stabilisierung des Staatshaushalts. Die Reaktionen der oftmals sehr heterogenen Diaspora fallen nicht immer nach Wunsch aus. Die Politik des Herkunftsstaats kann auf Desinteresse oder gar Widerstand stoßen und Spannungen in der jeweiligen Diaspora begünstigen. Für Deutschland eröffnet Diasporapolitik einerseits Chancen: außen- und entwicklungspolitisch, teilweise auch mit Blick auf Integration und soziale Mobilität. Andererseits ist sie mit Herausforderungen verbunden, insbesondere hinsichtlich transnationaler Repression. Im Umgang mit Diasporapolitik und ihren Auswirkungen sollte Deutschland sich vorrangig an Rechtsstaatlichkeit orientieren. Eine effektive Nutzung der Chancen setzt überdies ein genaues Verständnis der Motivation, Instrumente und Grenzen dieser Politik voraus. Pauschalisierende und ausgrenzende Diskurse gegenüber Diasporagruppen können hingegen destruktiven Strategien von Drittstaaten das Feld bereiten. |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:swpstu:344101 |
| By: | Lopez-Acevedo, Gladys; Camara, Alhassane; Vu, Ha; Rodriguez, Jaime Roche; Uochi, Ikuko |
| Abstract: | Uzbekistan is advancing a comprehensive package of market-oriented reforms as part of its World Trade Organization accession strategy, including the abolition of monopolies, trade liberalization (removal of a range of export-related subsidies and tax incentives), the elimination of domestic producer preferences in public procurement, and an anticipated rise in foreign direct investment. This paper evaluates the macroeconomic and distributional impacts of reforms using an integrated computable general equilibrium–microsimulation framework that combines the World Bank’s MANAGE-WB model with household-level data from the 2024 Uzbekistan Household Budget Survey. The results show that the coordinated reform package generates substantial efficiency gains, raising annual gross domestic product growth by approximately 1.0 percentage point above a 5.8 percent baseline between 2025 and 2040, with an additional 0.4 percentage point gain when complemented by a foreign direct investment boost. Consumer prices fall cumulatively by up to 19.5 percent, and welfare improvements are driven primarily through enhanced purchasing power rather than nominal wage increases. The abolition of monopolies emerges as the dominant macroeconomic driver, while trade liberalization sustains long-term productivity growth and the removal of procurement preferences plays a complementary role. These gains are uneven across groups including gender, sectors, and location, and gender wage gaps remain largely unchanged. The findings underscore the importance of complementarities between competition policy, trade liberalization, and foreign direct investment promotion, as well as the need for targeted human capital, labor mobility, and social protection policies to ensure that reforms translate into broadly inclusive outcomes. |
| Date: | 2026–10–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11482 |