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on Central and Western Asia |
| By: | Gang, Ira N. (Rutgers University); Gatskova, Kseniia (Institute for East and Southeast European Studies, Regensburg); Landon-Lane, John (Rutgers University); Yun, Myeong-Su (Inha University) |
| Abstract: | We examine vulnerability to poverty in Tajikistan during the global financial crisis, focusing on the roles played by international migration and remittances, using a formal, practical, and easily decomposable vulnerability measure. Our strategy is to estimate a Markov transition probability matrix with the aim of identifying the vulnerability of households to poverty. Importantly, by introducing the index of vulnerability as the weighted probability of a household falling into poverty over a given time horizon, we can use the estimated dynamics to assess the short, medium and long-run vulnerability. We find that during the "recession transition" almost all households were vulnerable to poverty while almost none were during the "recovery period". Overall, urban households, more educated households and households receiving remittances from international labor migrants were less vulnerable to poverty. While households with a current or very recent migrant did not have a significantly lower measured vulnerability to poverty, those households receiving remittances from migrants had a lower vulnerability to poverty. Our findings stress that the international labor migration from Tajikistan may not be considered as a reliable means of welfare security for the households because external economic shocks and internal political decisions may negatively affect Russian economy and lead to a reduction of remittances flow to Tajikistan. |
| Keywords: | mobility measurement, vulnerability, poverty, inequality, measurement, Tajikistan |
| JEL: | J60 D63 I32 |
| Date: | 2016–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10049&r=cwa |
| By: | Bartz, Wiebke (Centre for Development Finance, Frankfurt School of Finance and Management); Mohnen, Pierre (UNU‐MERIT, Maastricht University); Schweiger, Helena (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we compare the impacts of management practices and innovation on productivity, using data from a unique firm-level survey covering 30 mostly developing countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia in the period 2011-2014. We adapt the well-established three-stage model by linking productivity to innovation activities and management practices. Results suggest that both returns to innovation and returns to management practices are important drivers of productivity in developing economies. However, productivity in lower-income economies is affected to a larger extent by management practices than by innovation while the opposite holds in higher-income economies. These results imply that firms operating in less favourable business environments can reap large productivity gains by improving the quality of management practices, before engaging in innovation through imitating and adapting foreign technologies. |
| Keywords: | innovation, management practices, productivity, developing countries |
| JEL: | M21 O12 O32 |
| Date: | 2016–06–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unm:unumer:2016034&r=cwa |
| By: | Adil Khan Miankhel (Embassy of Pakistan) |
| Abstract: | Along with other routes, the Afghanistan-Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement (APTTA) is being used by informal traders for smuggling goods into Pakistan. Despite enforcement measures, smuggling continues. Informal traders import goods into Afghanistan, and then route those goods back to Pakistan through informal channels to take advantage from the arbitrage opportunity provided by the differences in applied tariff/taxes between the two countries. Therefore, in addition to strict enforcement measures, the issue of informal trade needs to be handled through incentive measures. |
| JEL: | F13 O24 O19 |
| Date: | 2016–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eab:tradew:25650&r=cwa |
| By: | Fırat Bilgel; Burhan Can Karahasan |
| Abstract: | This study seeks to estimate the economic effects of PKK terrorism in Turkey in a causal framework. We create a synthetic control group that reproduces the Turkish real per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) before PKK terrorism emerged in the second half of the 1980s. We compare the GDP of the synthetic Turkey without terrorism to the actual Turkey with terrorism for the period 1955-2008. Covering the period of 1988-2008, we find that the Turkish per capita GDP would have been higher by an average of about $1,585 per year had it not been exposed to PKK terrorism. This translates into an average of 13.8 percent higher per capita GDP or a 0.62 percentage points higher annual growth over a period of 21 years. Our estimate is robust to country exclusion, sparse controls, various non-outcome characteristics as predictors of GDP, alternative specifications of the in-space placebo experiments and to other potentially confounding interventions to the sample units in the pre-terrorism period. |
| Keywords: | separatist terrorism, synthetic control, Turkey, economic development, causal inference |
| JEL: | C15 D74 P59 |
| Date: | 2016–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eiq:eileqs:112&r=cwa |