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on Central and Western Asia |
| By: | Oka, Natsuko |
| Abstract: | The June 2010 conflict between the Kyrgyz and Uzbek communities in southern Kyrgyzstan once again demonstrated the complexity of the ethnic question in Central Asia. Little is known, however, about the Uzbeks in Kazakhstan, whose settlements are concentrated in the south of the republic, in areas adjacent to Uzbekistan. What problems did the Kazakhstani Uzbeks face after the collapse of the Soviet Union and how did they seek to address these issues? This paper examines the attempts of Uzbek leaders to secure their share of power in their compact settlements and how they were co-opted or marginalized under the Nazarbaev administration. This paper shows that loyalty to the regime, not migration to the ethnic homeland or political mobilization, is an option available, and also preferable, for this ethnic minority in Kazakhstan. |
| Keywords: | Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Minority ethnic group problems, Immigrants' community, Ethnic minority, Mobilization, Co-optation, Uzbeks |
| Date: | 2011–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jet:dpaper:dpaper286&r=cwa |
| By: | Chani, Muhammad Irfan; Pervaiz, Zahid; Jan, Sajjad Ahmad; Ali, Amjad; Chaudhary, Amatul R. |
| Abstract: | This study aims to investigate the role of economic growth and inflation in explaining the prevalence of poverty in Pakistan. ARDL bound testing approach to co-integration confirms the existence of long run relationship among the variables of poverty, economic growth, inflation, investment and trade openness over the period of 1972-2008. Empirical results show that economic growth and investment have negative and inflation has positive impact on poverty. The effect of trade openness on poverty is insignificant in this study. The short run analysis reveals that economic growth has negative and inflation has positive impact on poverty whereas the role of investment and trade openness in poverty reduction in short run is not significant. |
| Keywords: | Poverty; Inflation; Economic Grovvth; Pakistan; Macroeconomic Policy; Welfare; Trade Openness |
| JEL: | E31 F43 C01 I32 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:34290&r=cwa |
| By: | Antje Kroeger; Kathryn Anderson |
| Abstract: | The Kyrgyz Republic is one of the largest recipients of international remittances in the world; from a Balance of Payments measure of remittances, it ranked tenth in the world in 2008 in the ratio of remittances to GDP, a rapid increase from 30th place in 2004. Remittances can be used to maintain the household's standard of living by providing income to families with unemployed and underemployed adult members. Remittances can also be used to promote investment not only in businesses and communities but also in people. In this paper, we examine the role that remittances have played in the Kyrgyz Republic in promoting investments in children. Based on the capabilities approach to well-being initiated by Sen (2010), we look at the impact of remittances and domestic transfer payments primarily from internal migration on children's education and health. Our outcomes include enrollment in school and preschool, expenditures, stunting and wasting of preschool children, and health habits of older children. We use unique panel data from the Kyrgyz Republic for 2005-2008 and thus control for some of the biases inherent in cross-sectional studies of remittances and family outcomes. We find that overall remittances and domestic transfers have not promoted investments in the human capital of children. Specifically, preschool enrollments were higher in the urban north but secondary school enrollments were lower in other regions in remittance receiving households; expenditures were also negatively affected in the south and the mountain areas. These negative enrollment results were larger for girls than for boys. We also found evidence of stunting and wasting among young children and worse health habits among boys in remittance or transfer receiving households. In the long run, Kyrgyzstan needs human capital development for growth; our results suggest that remittances are not providing the boost needed in human capital to promote development in the future. |
| Keywords: | Children's education and health, remittances, Central Asia |
| JEL: | C23 F22 I21 R23 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1170&r=cwa |
| By: | Murakami, Kaoru |
| Abstract: | In Turkey, social assistance program has been widely criticized for being inefficient in the provision of relief. Yet there are almost no movements among poor people to make demands couched in rational and critical language for a better program, which liberal modernist thinkers idealize as the politics of need interpretation. It is generally believed that poor people are mute and excluded from the process because of their lack of discursive capital. In this paper I discuss the possibility of different varieties of participation in the politics of need interpretation by focusing on the everyday practices of the poor based on ethnographic research conducted in a low income district in Istanbul. I argue that the poor do participate in the struggle over needs, elucidating how the poor negotiate with the officials of the Fund's local branch by assuming the former image and by using religious moral language. |
| Keywords: | Turkey, Social welfare, Social policy, Poverty, Urban societies, Social assistance, Urban poor, Politics of needs interpretation, Everyday politics |
| JEL: | I38 |
| Date: | 2011–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jet:dpaper:dpaper291&r=cwa |
| By: | Petrick, Martin; Wandel, Jürgen; Karsten, Katharina |
| Abstract: | Against the rising global concern of how to achieve sustainable output expansion in food, we document the main outcomes of post-Soviet agricultural recovery and restructuring in the Kazakhstan grain region. Together with an expansion of cropland area and increasing capital input, real agricultural value added has almost doubled within the recent decade. Privatisation legislation has allowed private ownership of land. However, access to state land and capital continues to be strongly regulated, and private lenders even turn away from agriculture. There are now three dominant groups of agricultural producers in the region: large agricultural enterprises and smaller individual farms mostly engaged in grain, and tiny household economies focusing on vegetable and live-stock. While agricultural enterprises have been growing more persistently than individual farms in recent years, average land productivity of both farm types is practically identical and wheat yields are even higher in individual farms. Both vertically and horizontally integrated agroholdings have emerged among the agricultural enterprises and have brought outside investment and management to the region. With stable employment in agriculture, nominal consumption spending of rural households has tripled over the last decade and has risen much faster than the costs of living. While North Kazakhstan looks much like a success story, constrained factor markets are likely to dampen further growth. The Kazakh government should improve the legal conditions for a functioning land rental market, avoid driving commercial lenders out of the market, and make sure that future access to qualified labour in agriculture is warranted. -- |
| Keywords: | agricultural productivity, agricultural transition, farm organisation, Kazakhstan |
| JEL: | O13 P32 Q12 Q15 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:iamodp:137&r=cwa |
| By: | Ahmad, Usman |
| Abstract: | This paper attempts to analyze the performance of the banking sector of Pakistan in the light of second generation reforms on the domestic scheduled banks by using data from 1990 to 2008. For this purpose I used Non Parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The analysis revealed an overall improvement in the efficiency of commercial banks. It implies that financial sector reforms, particularly the second phase of reforms, improved the efficiency of the commercial bank in Pakistan. After the reforms, pure technical efficiency increased as compared to scale efficiency and it was found that the overall efficiency of the industry has increased due to pure technical efficiency. The study concludes that the reforms were successful in improving the efficiency of the domestic commercial banks in Pakistan. |
| Keywords: | Efficiency; Banks; DEA; Pakistan |
| JEL: | E58 G21 |
| Date: | 2011–03–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:34220&r=cwa |
| By: | Ahmad, Usman |
| Abstract: | Microfinance collectively refers to the supply of loans, savings accounts, and other basic financial services like insurance, to the poor. About one billion people globally live in households with per capita incomes of one dollar per day (Morduch J. 1999). Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) are special financial institutions. They have both a social nature and a for-profit nature. Their performance has been traditionally measured by means of financial ratios. The objective of the study has been to estimate the efficiency of microfinance institutions in Pakistan. Non parametric Data Envelopment analysis has been used to analyze the efficiency of these institutions by using data for the year 2003 and 2007 respectively. Both input oriented and output oriented methods have been considered under the assumption of constant return to scale technologies and microfinance should provide services on sustainable basis. A microfinance institution is said to be financially sustainable if it without the use of subsidies, grants, or other concessional resources, it can profitably provide finance to micro enterprises on an acceptable scale. |
| Keywords: | DEA; Efficiency; Microfinance; Pakistan |
| JEL: | D53 E58 |
| Date: | 2011–10–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:34215&r=cwa |
| By: | Gozgor, Giray |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we employ some front page panel unit root tests to examine the validity of the purchasing power parity hypothesis in Turkey. Using monthly observations panel data of nine major county’s currency dates January 2003 through April 2010, we find that panel unit root tests are not rejected the mean-reversion of real exchange rates. Thus, the empirical results indicate significant support for the purchasing power parity holds in Turkey |
| Keywords: | Purchasing Power Parity; Real Exchange Rates; Panel Unit Root Tests; Floating Exchange Rates |
| JEL: | F31 |
| Date: | 2011–01–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:34370&r=cwa |
| By: | ARSLAN, Aykut |
| Abstract: | Contrary to popular belief which sees the government as reactive and resistant to change, the increasing emergence of innovative ideas particularly in the field of local services yielded a wide range of interactions. This was due to address new policy challenges, improve productivity, better serve and more fully engage a changing citizenry. Practicing new ideas triggered more innovativeness. The paradigm of NPM and later the phenomenon of e-government are well studied. However, the relationship among innovative management practices and their impact on e-government performances require a deeper understanding. Thus, our paper seeks to shed some light on this issue by exploring what type of local services were transformed online and at what level. Then, in accordance with the organizational dynamics of innovation, we developed hypotheses to inquire the impact of innovative management practices on local e-government performance of Turkish provinces. Mann-Whitney U statistics were carried out to find out which of the groups that were statistically significant different from one another. The results indicated significant findings. The provincial local governments which adopted innovative management practices tend to have higher local e-government performances. |
| Keywords: | Local e-governments; Turkish provinces; new public management; public innovation; Turkey |
| JEL: | H7 O33 O31 |
| Date: | 2011–10–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:34368&r=cwa |
| By: | Pall, Zsombor; Perekhozhuk, Oleksandr; Teuber, Ramona; Glauben, Thomas |
| Abstract: | Significant changes have taken place on the world wheat market over the last decade. Russia, a former net wheat importer has become a leading exporter with a world market share of 13.8 percent in 2009/2010. Though there are several studies on the pricing behaviour of Canadian and US wheat exporters, there is none on the pricing behaviour of Russian wheat exporters. The present paper tries to fill this lack of research by providing a quantitative analysis of the pricing behaviour of Russian wheat exporters. We employ a pricing-to-market (PTM) model on annual Russian wheat export data, covering the period 2002-2009 and 22 export destinations. Our findings indicate that Russian wheat exporters behave rather competitively and exercise pricing to market behaviour only in five export destinations. -- |
| Keywords: | Russia,wheat export,international trade,pricing to market |
| JEL: | L13 Q17 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:iamo11:15&r=cwa |
| By: | Aysegul KAYAOGLU (UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES)); Ayhan KAYA (Istanbul Bilgi University) |
| Abstract: | There are around 3 million Turkish origin migrants in Germany and 400 thousand in France who have already raised their third generations. Nowadays they are even being named with their hyphenated identities, such as German-Turks and French-Turks. In the meantime, they encounter various obstacles in everyday life due to the stigmatization and securitization of migration and Islam. This is why their integration into the receiving societies is of great importance, as better social cohesion helps nurture the economic, political and social contribution of migrants to their countries of settlement. Using the data derived from a recent micro-level survey on Turkish-origin immigrants residing in Germany and France, the determinants of their social affiliations and employment probability as well as the impact of citizenship acquisition on their socio-economic integration will be analyzed in this article. |
| Keywords: | Turkish migrants, Citizenship, Affiliation, Economic Integration |
| JEL: | F22 O15 Z13 |
| Date: | 2011–07–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctl:louvir:2011033&r=cwa |
| By: | Charles Yuji Horioka; Akiko Terada-Hagiwara |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we present data on trends over time in domestic saving rates in twelve economies in developing Asia during the 1966-2007 period and analyze the determinants of these trends. We find that domestic saving rates in developing Asia have, in general, been high and rising but that there have been substantial differences from economy to economy and that the main determinants of these trends appear to have been the age structure of the population (especially the aged dependency ratio), income levels, and the level of financial sector development. We then project future trends in domestic saving rates in developing Asia for the 2011-2030 period based on our estimation results and find that the domestic saving rate in developing Asia as a whole will remain roughly constant during the next two decades despite rapid population aging in some economies in developing Asia because population aging will occur much later in other economies and because the negative impact of population aging on the domestic saving rate will be largely offset by the positive impact of higher income levels. |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dpr:wpaper:0821&r=cwa |
| By: | Richard Pomfret (School of Economics, University of Adelaide) |
| Keywords: | financial crises |
| JEL: | O53 F40 |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:adl:wpaper:2011-33&r=cwa |
| By: | Kurosaki, Takashi |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the function of various modes of wage payment, focusing on the role of in-kind wages in enhancing household food security when markets are underdeveloped. Historical records from Asian countries, including pre-war Japan and colonial India, demonstrate the importance of in-kind wage payment in the initial phase of economic development. However, there is a paucity of theoretical explanations of in-kind wages in terms of their function and rationale in existing literature. This paper therefore develops a theoretical model that explains labor supply under different labor contracts, by incorporating considerations of food security as the main explanation for in-kind wages. The model predicts that when food security considerations are important for workers, owing to poverty and thin food markets, they tend to work more under contracts where wages are paid in kind (food) than under contracts where wages are paid in cash. This prediction is supported by empirical evidence from rural Myanmar. Estimation results of the reduced-form determinants of labor supply show that workers supply more labor for work paid in kind when the share of staple food in the workers’ household budget is higher and the farmlands on which they produce food themselves are smaller. |
| Keywords: | agrarian contract, in-kind wages, incentive, food security, Myanmar |
| JEL: | J33 Q12 O12 |
| Date: | 2011–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hit:primdp:11&r=cwa |
| By: | Hayakawa, Kazunobu; Tsubota, Kenmei |
| Abstract: | Unlike most existing studies, this paper examines the location choices of MNEs in developing countries. Specifically, we investigate the location choices of Japanese MNEs among East Asian developing countries by estimating a four-stage nested logit model at the province level. Noteworthy results of location elements are as follows. As is consistent with the mechanics of cheap labor-seeking FDI, Japanese MNEs are more likely to invest in locations with low income and low tariff rates on products from Japan. Also, accessibility to other locations and/or ports matters in attracting Japanese MNEs because it is crucial in importing materials and exporting their products. In addition, WTO membership and bilateral investment treaties are important because these contribute to the settlement of trade and investment disputes, which is more likely to be necessary in developing countries. |
| Keywords: | Southeast Asia, China, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Foreign investments, Industrial management, Location Choice, Multinational Firms, Nested-logit Model |
| JEL: | F15 F21 F23 |
| Date: | 2011–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jet:dpaper:dpaper301&r=cwa |
| By: | Meyer, Henning |
| Abstract: | Myths and misinformation feed in to a general lack of ideas about how to save the eurozone. |
| Date: | 2011–05–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ner:lselon:http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/38567/&r=cwa |
| By: | Hélène Latzer; Florian Mayneris |
| Abstract: | This paper contributes to the understanding of the determinants of country-level comparative advantages in terms of quality. More precisely, while the literature has mainly focused so far on supply-side determinants of such comparative advantages, we investigate both theoretically and empirically the role played by income distribution (average income and level of inequalities) of a country on the quality of its exports. Doing so, we provide new insights on the existence of demand-based determinants of the quality content of a country’s exports, in line with the Linder (1961) hypothesis, claiming that firms produce and export goods suited to the specific tastes of their local consumers. We build a model with economies of scale where non-homothetic preferences and within-country income differences determine the quality composition of production and exports. Having neutralized any supply-side comparative advantage, we show that richer countries produce and export higher quality goods, while the level of inequalities has an heterogenous impact, positively affecting the quality content of exports for rich enough countries only. We then corroborate our theoretical predictions on bilateral trade data for the enlarged European Union (EU), an integrated market displaying significant heterogeneity in terms of both average income and within-country inequalities of its members. Furthermore, we are able to show that in terms of magnitude of the effects, inequalities are a second-order demand-based determinant of the quality of exports as compared to average income. |
| Keywords: | Product quality, Income distribution, Trade, Economies of scale, European Union. |
| JEL: | F12 L15 O15 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2011-21&r=cwa |
| By: | Sergey Mityakov (Clemson University); Heiwai Tang (Tufts University and Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research); Kevin K. Tsui (Clemson University and Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research) |
| Abstract: | Does China's quest for oil raise tensions with the United States? This paper examines the effect of international relations on global oil trade patterns. Using voting records for the United Nations General Assembly to measure the state of international relations, we estimate a modified gravity model in a panel data framework over the period 1962-2000. Our presumption is that a divergence in voting patterns reflects misalignment in political interests among pairs of states, and hence an increase in "political distance." Controlling for oil exporters' endowment, potential supply disruption due to civil conflict, other standard gravity controls, as well as exporter and year fixed effects, we first show that private energy companies based in the United States import significantly less crude oil from US political opponents. The result is robust to controlling for economic sanctions and militarized interstate disputes, suggesting that the political oil import diversification is more than a wartime phenomenon. A similar oil import pattern is observed in China, in which case only a few national oil companies control the oil sector. While the incentives to diversify are stronger for both the United States and China when the exporters are nondemocratic, import sanctions have opposite effects on oil imports into the United States and China. Finally, we document that there is no such oil import pattern in other non-major power oil importing countries. |
| Keywords: | Energy Security, International Relations, Oil Trade Diversification |
| JEL: | F13 F51 F59 Q34 |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hkm:wpaper:322011&r=cwa |
| By: | Thai-Ha LE (Division of Economics, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798, Singapore); Youngho CHANG (Division of Economics, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798, Singapore) |
| Abstract: | This paper uses the monthly data spanning from Jan-1986 to April-2011 to investigate the relationship between the prices of two strategic commodities: gold and oil. We examine this relationship through the inflation channel and their interaction with the index of the US dollar. We use different oil price proxies in our investigation and find that the impact of oil price on gold price is not asymmetric but non-linear. Our results show that there is a long-run relationship existing between the prices of oil and gold. Our findings imply that the oil price can be used to predict the gold price. |
| Keywords: | oil price, gold price, inflation, US dollar index, cointegration |
| JEL: | E3 |
| Date: | 2011–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nan:wpaper:1102&r=cwa |
| By: | Gawel, Erik |
| Abstract: | The application and design of public-private partnerships between the extremes of purely public or purely private task fulfilment in public services is, in practice, subject to political processes. Decisions about PPPs (realisation, arrangement) are taken in the political arena and are therefore not theoretical optimisation exercises. The interests and resources of the actors who participate in the political decision-making process as well as the rules of the political process have a powerful influence on whether, in what areas, and in what form PPPs are realised. The distance between this output and solutions that are theoretically desirable given certain ideal goals (e.g. efficiency) and conditions can be referred to as political bias. So what role does the political process play in the realisation of PPPs, in the actual design of PPPs, and in their performance? Using public choice and institutional economics theory this paper analyses what chances of success PPPs have given the existing decision-making structures and the inherent incentives for participating actors, and in what way political influence is brought to bear in the first place. Furthermore, aspects of political science in this field (legitimacy, democratic control) are considered as well. Using PPPs there might be a trade-off between reduced democratic control, but also reinforced market control. It turns out that political involvement might be both an important driver as well as an obstacle for (efficient) PPPs and that it is likely to decrease efficiency either way. A case study for userfinancing PPPs in the transport sector highlights the problems of political renitency. -- |
| Keywords: | public-private partnership,politics,bureaucracy,public choice,contract theory,agency,tax state,transaction cost,governance,legitimacy,transport infrastructure,user financing |
| JEL: | D72 D73 D78 H11 H44 H63 H83 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:leiwps:98&r=cwa |
| By: | Chen, Chia-Ching; Chiu, I-Ming; Smith, John; Yamada, Tetsuji |
| Abstract: | Although there is an increasing interest in examining the relationship between cognitive ability and economic behavior, less is known about the relationship between cognitive ability and social preferences. We investigate the relationship between strongly incentivized measures of intelligence and measures of social preferences. We have data on a series of small-stakes dictator-type decisions, known as Social Value Orientation (SVO), in addition to choices in a larger-stakes dictator game. We also have access to the grade point averages (GPA) and Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) outcomes of our subjects. We find that subjects who perform better on the math portion of the SAT are more generous in both the dictator game and the SVO measure. By contrast we find that subjects with a higher GPA are more selfish in the dictator game and more generous according to the SVO. We also find that the consistency of the subjects is related to GPA but we do not find evidence that it is related to either portion of the SAT. |
| Keywords: | dictator game; Social Value Orientation; altruism; cognitive ability |
| JEL: | D64 C91 |
| Date: | 2011–11–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:34438&r=cwa |
| By: | Jain, Tarun |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the impact of language on economic performance. I use the 1956 reorganization of Indian states on linguistic lines as a natural experiment to estimate the impact of speaking the majority language on educational and occupational outcomes. I find that districts that spoke the majority language of the state during colonial times enjoy persistent economic benefits, as evidenced by higher educational achievement and employment in communication intensive sectors. After reorganization, historically minority language districts experience greater growth in educational achievement, indicating that reassignment could reverse the impact of history. |
| Keywords: | Language; Communication costs; Education; Occupational choice; Reorganization of Indian states |
| JEL: | I20 O43 O15 N95 |
| Date: | 2011–11–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:34423&r=cwa |
| By: | Mario Vozar |
| Abstract: | The rapid growth of internet usage over the last two decades has been influencing many aspects of our life and most noticeably the ways in which people communicate with each other. Therefore, it is appropriate to ask whether the growth of internet usage influences individuals’ marital decisions in modern society. In my study, I concentrate on the effect of the growing internet usage on the gender and age-specific marriage hazard rate for the first time marriages in Europe. The panel data analysis reveals a negative impact of internet usage on male’s as well as female’s marriage hazard rate for those in their twenties. |
| Keywords: | marriage market; divorce; internet; |
| JEL: | J12 L8 |
| Date: | 2011–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cer:papers:wp444&r=cwa |