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on Central and Western Asia |
| By: | Aseinov, Dastan (Asian Development Bank Institute); Sulaimanova, Burulcha (Asian Development Bank Institute); Karymshakov, Kamalbek (Asian Development Bank Institute); Azhgaliyeva, Dina (Asian Development Bank Institute) |
| Abstract: | We investigate the factors affecting firms’ ability to adjust production in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. We used firm-level survey data from the enterprise survey implemented by the World Bank Group, including a standard enterprise survey (baseline) and two waves of follow-up surveys conducted in 2020 and 2021, which included questions related to COVID-19 and firm behavior during the pandemic. We used data from four CAREC member countries: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia. Using a probit model, we studied how different factors, including firm characteristics and government policy, affected the probability that a firm would be able to adjust its activities to the changed conditions. The results showed that firms which successfully adapted to the COVID-19 crisis were younger, foreign firms that had been innovative in the recent past, with female managers, a formal firm strategy with key performance indicators, and their own website. |
| Keywords: | COVID-19; micro; MSMEs; digitalization; adaptation; Central Asia; Caucasus |
| JEL: | D22 J63 L25 O53 |
| Date: | 2022–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:adbiwp:1299&r= |
| By: | Azhgaliyeva, Dina (Asian Development Bank Institute); Mishra, Ranjeeta (Asian Development Bank Institute); Long, Trinh (Asian Development Bank Institute); Morgan, Peter (Asian Development Bank Institute) |
| Abstract: | The impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak have heavily affected CAREC member countries, which include Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, Pakistan, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The COVID-19 crisis and the resulting falls in demand and supply due both to uncertainty and policy measures such as lockdowns, “social distancing,” and travel restrictions are having a severe impact on CAREC member countries. In order to better understand these impacts, computer-assisted telephone (CATI) interviews of households were conducted in 10 countries from the CAREC region (excluding the PRC). We estimate the impact of COVID-19 on income declines, expenditure changes, and financial difficulty in December 2020 compared with June 2020. |
| Keywords: | COVID-19; CAREC; Central Asia; household survey; household income; employment |
| JEL: | D14 G51 H12 H84 I10 I24 J60 |
| Date: | 2022–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:adbiwp:1298&r= |
| By: | Kalyuzhnova, Yelena (Asian Development Bank Institute); Holzhacker, Hans (Asian Development Bank Institute) |
| Abstract: | Transportation corridors and reduced trade costs are essential to develop Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) countries’ foreign trade. However, to intensify intra-CAREC trade as well as the region’s global exports, the product portfolio of CAREC countries’ industry and agriculture has to be broadened. Otherwise CAREC countries will just face strong import competition or become pure transit territories. The need and opportunities of change brought about by global decarbonization efforts and green transition, widely discussed now in connection with efforts to revive the global economy after the slump caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, make this even more urgent, especially for hydro-carbon exporters. At the same time, the green transition and the general move to more science-intense production provides opportunities for new products and employment. Broadening and expansion of the export range of products and services require a robust set of measures in areas such as trade policy, coordination of sectoral policies, diversification, and business reforms. In particular, the countries that are in the center of the CAREC region’s trade flows such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan should step up their initiatives for industrial change and closer cooperation among the CAREC countries. We analyze the importance of such initiatives by CAREC countries and discuss the need for further steps in developing production that is based on countries’ natural or historically accumulated comparative advantages. We suggest that initiatives can be clustered into economic corridors that provide economies of scale and scope and good connectivity, and therefore the impact can be scaled up. However, corridor development must be well aligned with the overall economic policies and development plans of the countries involved. We conclude that progress will require redesigning schemes both for local and foreign investments, along with the development of capital markets. Trade facilitation remains an overarching objective. Better coordination of sectoral policies and priorities by measures for collaborative policy formulation and implementation, alignment of national and regional planning, and regulatory convergence in the region are required. Recommendations include suggestions to revise development plans in the light of accelerated technological change, not least due to COVID-19, and to facilitate the social change brought about by the technological change by active requalification and labor market policies. |
| Keywords: | transportation corridors; trade; CAREC countries; COVID-19; connectivity |
| JEL: | F13 O19 P25 P28 Q35 |
| Date: | 2021–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:adbiwp:1271&r= |
| By: | Vasily Astrov (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Alexandra Bykova (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Rumen Dobrinsky (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Selena Duraković; Richard Grieveson (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Doris Hanzl-Weiss (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Gabor Hunya (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Branimir Jovanović (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Artem Kochnev (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Niko Korpar (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Sebastian Leitner (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Isilda Mara (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Bernhard Moshammer (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Olga Pindyuk (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Sandor Richter (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Bernd Christoph Ströhm; Maryna Tverdostup (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Nina Vujanović (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Zuzana Zavarská (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw); Adam Żurawski |
| Abstract: | Our Spring 2022 Forecast comes at a time of pronounced global uncertainty, arising from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and wide-ranging Western sanctions on Russia. To take account of this, we distinguish between two extreme scenarios. In the baseline scenario, which assumes no further major Western sanctions and some kind of a ceasefire by the middle of 2022, recessions this year will be confined to Ukraine and the bulk of the CIS; elsewhere in CESEE, growth forecasts have been revised downwards by 1-2 percentage points compared to Winter. However, in the adverse scenario, which assumes a further war escalation and an immediate EU embargo on Russian energy, half of the CESEE region will slide into recession, while inflation will soar into the double-digit range nearly everywhere. |
| Keywords: | CESEE, economic forecast, Central and Eastern Europe, Western Balkans, EU, euro area, CIS, Ukraine, Turkey, convergence, business cycle, coronavirus, labour markets, unemployment, Russia-Ukraine war, Russia sanctions, commodity prices, price controls, trade disruptions, Ukrainian refugees, energy embargo, monetary policy, fiscal policy, impact on Austria |
| JEL: | E20 E21 E22 E24 E32 E5 E62 F21 F31 H60 I18 J20 J30 O47 O52 O57 P24 P27 P33 P52 |
| Date: | 2022–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wii:fpaper:fc:spring2022&r= |
| By: | Zaman, Kazi Arif Uz (Asian Development Bank Institute) |
| Abstract: | The growing population and climatic uncertainties have compelled producers to undertake faster exploitation of the resources in agricultural production to meet global food security, which, in turn, leads to unsustainable and input-led inefficient production growth. The problem is further exacerbated by the increasing emission of GHGs from this production process. We suggest a solution to this by advocating the role of regional cooperation to increase the technical efficiency level in the agricultural production of countries through technology transfer, knowledge sharing, capacity building, and adequate investment under the regional cooperation framework. Concurrently, we link this improvement of production efficiency with the reduction of emissions both theoretically and empirically for all Asian subregions. We first adopt the stochastic frontier model—a widely used statistical technique that frames the production functions while estimating the inefficiencies of economic units. Using 2010–2016 panel data on agriculture production and five inputs—land, labor, capital, fertilizer, and energy—we estimate the agriculture production efficiencies of the countries under five Asian subregions. Estimations reveal that West Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, East Asia, and Central Asia have agriculture production efficiencies of 70%, 85%, 66%, 92%, and 76%, respectively. Following the estimations and other calculations, we find that with concerted efforts toward optimizing production efficiencies under (sub)regional cooperation frameworks, an annual emission of 384.5 megatons of CO2eq GHG could have been reduced in Asia while keeping the production at the current level. The potential reduction of emissions equals 16.8% of Asia’s total emissions originating from agricultural activities and 7.1% of that of global emissions. |
| Keywords: | agriculture production efficiency; regional cooperation; stochastic frontier model; emission reduction; Asian subregions |
| JEL: | F53 O47 O53 Q15 Q56 R11 |
| Date: | 2022–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:adbiwp:1301&r= |
| By: | Gürel, Burak; Kozluca, Mina |
| Abstract: | Turkey's inclusion in the Belt and Road Initiative in 2015 has raised the expectations of Turkish businesses and government concerning growth-generating investment from China. Existing studies on Chinese investments in Turkey lack sufficient data on the volume of investment, types of firms, and sectoral composition. Based on a novel dataset of Chinese investments in Turkey, this article contributes to filling this gap. We show that although Chinese investment in Turkey has increased considerably in recent years, it remains quite modest compared with investments from the West. Moreover, despite the expanding activities of Chinese technology companies, more than half of Chinese investment in Turkey consists of low value-added manufacturing, extraction of raw materials, and marketing of Chinese products. Overall, the developmental potential of Chinese investment in Turkey has not been radically different from other countries' investments. |
| JEL: | N0 |
| Date: | 2022–01–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:113841&r= |
| By: | Kleiner-Schaefer, Timo; Schaefer, Kerstin J. |
| Abstract: | University-industry collaborations (UICs) are one of the main sources of external knowledge and technologies for industrial firms, particularly in the context of emerging markets (EMs) and firm development. It is thus highly relevant to identify potential barriers internal to the firm as well as in the regional innovation system that might prevent firms from using UICs for innovation, in particular in an EM context. In order to address this issue, we conduct a firm-level study of the R&D-related segment of the manufacturing industry in Istanbul. Logistic regression analysis is used to test the effect of potential barriers on using UICs for innovative activities. With this approach, we are able to identify barriers that prevent innovation-related UICs and thus form a bottleneck to collaborations in the first place. Our findings show that lack of information about UIC opportunities as well as lack of financial support for UICs are the most relevant barriers that inhibit firms’ usage of UICs for innovation. This firm-level evidence points out the importance of university technology transfer offices in regional innovation systems and for fruitful UICs. We further find that administrative barriers have no significant effect, while barriers related to trust and skill matching with scientific partners even have a reverse effect to what we would have expected from the literature. This finding might point towards an effect of perceived versus deterring barriers that has been observed in innovation studies before and might be relevant for studying UICs as well. |
| Keywords: | barrier; emerging market; innovation; research and development; Turkey; university–industry collaboration |
| JEL: | O30 O32 O38 |
| Date: | 2022–02–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:113840&r= |
| By: | Li, Xinmeng (Asian Development Bank Institute); Wang, Kailai (Asian Development Bank Institute); Chen, Zhenhua (Asian Development Bank Institute) |
| Abstract: | With the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR) has received increasing attention. The corridor connects the PRC and Europe via Central Asian countries. Hence, it plays an important role in facilitating international trade through its transportation infrastructure network systems. As the corridor is opening up substantial economic opportunities for transit countries, it is becoming essential to have a proper understanding of the economic impact of potential transportation infrastructure investment on these countries along the TITR corridor. We conduct a regional economic impact assessment of transportation infrastructure investment to fill this research gap, using a computable general equilibrium analysis. To capture the uncertainty of infrastructure investment given the influence of COVID-19, we evaluated different impacts of the shocks, such as different modes of freight transportation (including rail, road, sea, and air), types of trade (exporting and importing), and levels of investor confidence. The results show that infrastructure investment has heterogeneous multiplier effects on the regional economy (due to the differences in infrastructure quality and country endowment). The impacts of infrastructure investment primarily result from the promotion of exports, and the impacts vary substantially by mode. Overall, we suggest that, although TITR countries are facing investment uncertainty due to the influence of COVID-19, strengthening infrastructure investment can be a useful tool to stimulate the economy while reducing the negative impact of the epidemic. |
| Keywords: | Trans-Caspian International Transport Route; transportation infrastructure; trade cost; computable general equilibrium |
| JEL: | F16 H54 J60 |
| Date: | 2021–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:adbiwp:1274&r= |
| By: | Tulun, Teoman Ertuğrul |
| Abstract: | The Eastern Aegean Islands are demilitarized in the framework of the Lausanne Peace Treaty. There is a direct linkage between the possession of sovereignty over Eastern Aegean Islands and their demilitarized status. Greece’s militarization of Eastern Aegean Islands amounts to “material breach” of the Lausanne Peace Treaty since their demilitarized status are essential to the accomplishment of the object or purpose of the mentioned peace treaty. The “material breach” of one of the basic articles of the any peace treaty might end up with an outcome that makes sovereignty over the islands mentioned in the corresponding article of the treaties which their provisions materially breached, questionable. One the other hand, the Dodecanese, which cover large islands such as Rhodes and small islands such as Castellorizo (Meis), which are in close proximity to the south and southwest coasts of Turkey, are also under demilitarized status pursuant to Article 14 of the 1947 Paris Treaty. Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias visited Moscow on February 18, 2022, on the eve of the recent military operation of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. During the joint press conference with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, Dendias, in response to an unrelated question by an unidentified journalist about Turkey's questioning of Greek sovereignty over the large Eastern Aegean Islands conceded that both the Eastern Aegean Islands and the Dodecanese are under demilitarized status. It will not be surprising that Greece's material breach of the provisions of international multilateral treaties will cause unexpected serious problems for her in the coming period. |
| Date: | 2022–03–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:5w63h&r= |
| By: | Watanabe, Daisuke (Asian Development Bank Institute); Shibasaki, Ryuichi (Asian Development Bank Institute); Arai, Hirofumi (Asian Development Bank Institute) |
| Abstract: | The countries in Central Asia are landlocked and without coastlines. Therefore, the Trans-Caspian Transport Corridor (TCTC) will play an important role in facilitating cross-border logistics in Central Asia, particularly with land transport. To promote interregional collaborations between Central Asian countries for managing these handicaps, the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation Program was established through the leadership of the Asian Development Bank. We study the effectiveness of logistics policy and infrastructure development for cross-border transport along the TCTC using a simulation analysis based on a network equilibrium assignment model. The global logistics intermodal network simulation model, which we developed to cover intermodal freight transport networks (including roads, railways, ferries, and maritime shipping across the Eurasian continent) is used for policy simulation in Central Asia. In particular, the simulation incorporates the impact of the logistics policies related to cross-border transport in the TCTC, including the improvement of ferry services and rail networks along the corridor. The simulation results support the Kazakhstani approach, which emphasizes transit time reduction and transport tariffs while simultaneously enhancing cooperation within the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route Association. |
| Keywords: | logistics; network equilibrium model; Eurasian landbridge; Central Asia |
| JEL: | C63 R42 |
| Date: | 2021–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:adbiwp:1269&r= |
| By: | Kumagai, Satoru (Asian Development Bank Institute); Gokan, Toshitaka (Asian Development Bank Institute); Tsubota, Kenmei (Asian Development Bank Institute) |
| Abstract: | We offer a spatial computable general equilibrium model (SCGE) to evaluate the potential regional economic impacts of the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation Program (CAREC) corridors and the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR). We base our model on spatial economics and incorporate sub-national data over the regions. We also equip the model with multimodal choices among trucks, trains, airplanes, and ships, which are crucial for the analysis of landlocked regions like Central Asia. Through scenario-based simulations, we find that economic impacts are not spatially limited to the regions with the projects. It is probable that population and industries may shift to regions with better connectivity by virtue of corridor developments. There would also be synergy effects from the implementation of both the CAREC and the TITR corridor, meaning that the two projects have a complementary relationship. Furthermore, the analysis reveals that the economic impacts of the projects may derive largely from the growth in the service sector, suggesting the need for additional public investments, such as special economic zones, to boost industries other than services. |
| Keywords: | impacts of infrastructures; economic development; spatial computable general equilibrium |
| JEL: | C68 O18 R30 |
| Date: | 2021–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:adbiwp:1270&r= |
| By: | Cevat Giray Aksoy; Christopher S. Carpenter; Ralph de Haas; Mathias Dolls; Lisa Windsteiger |
| Abstract: | We study basic information treatments regarding sexual orientation using randomized experiments in three countries with strong and widespread anti-gay attitudes: Serbia, Turkey, and Ukraine. Participants who received information about the economic costs to society of sexual-orientation discrimination were significantly more likely than those in a control group to support equal employment opportunities based on sexual orientation. Information that the World Health Organization (WHO) does not regard homosexuality as a mental illness increased social acceptance of sexual minorities, but only for those who reported trust in the WHO. Our results have important implications for policy makers aiming to expand the rights of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people worldwide. |
| Keywords: | sexual minorities, information treatments, discrimination, attitudes |
| JEL: | D91 J16 J71 O15 |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9506&r= |
| By: | Demirel-Derebasoglu, Merve (Bilkent University); Okten, Cagla (Bilkent University) |
| Abstract: | The Covid-19 pandemic led to unprecedented disruptions in the labor market. Turkey implemented a worker dismissal ban to mitigate the adverse effects, effective from April 2020 to June 2021. The pandemic and unveiled measures put pressure against recent university graduates' successful transition to the labor market, who are already vulnerable to labor market shocks due to a dramatic increase in their number in the last decade. In this paper, we examine the gendered impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and related employment protection policies on the labor market outcomes of recent university graduates. We find that both males and females are less likely to be employed during the pandemic year, with more pronounced employment losses for females. While gender differences in employment arise from females' high skill employment losses, becoming discouraged workers and staying out of the labor force to invest in self-education led to higher inactivity for females. |
| Keywords: | COVID-19, employment, gender, employment protection policies, Turkey |
| JEL: | I14 J21 J16 J08 |
| Date: | 2022–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15169&r= |