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on Transition Economics |
| By: | de Groot, Oliver; Skok, Yevhenii |
| Abstract: | Were either the exceptional defense spending needs of the government or the sharp increase in the cost-of-living of poorer households factors that rationalize the National Bank of Ukraine’s temporary fix of the Hryvnia when Russia invaded in 2022? To test the validity of these explanations, we develop a small open-economy two-agent New Keynesian (SOE-TANK) model of Ukraine featuring: 1) a government that finances military imports and 2) low- and high-income households. We find that the surge in foreign-currency-denominated military spending alone does not justify a temporary exchange-rate peg. However, when the consumption of low income households is close to subsistence levels, we find that the optimal exchange rate regime becomes state-contingent: exchange-rate flexibility is desirable for small shocks, whereas for a large-scale invasion shock, a fixed exchange rate dominates a floating regime with a standard Taylor rule. |
| Keywords: | Central banking; Monetary policy; Emerging markets |
| JEL: | E44 E52 F31 F41 G01 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21509 |
| By: | Andrej Cupak (National Bank of Slovakia); Pavel Gertler (National Bank of Slovakia); Judita Jurasekova Kucserova (National Bank of Slovakia); Jan Klacso (National Bank of Slovakia); Andrej Moravcik (National Bank of Slovakia); Denys Orlov (National Bank of Slovakia); Stefan Rychtarik (National Bank of Slovakia) |
| Abstract: | The Slovak housing market is strongly ownership-oriented, with renting functioning largely as a transitional state, concentrated among younger and lower-income individuals. This report draws on the 2025 Survey on housing affordability and attitudes towards real estate investment to examine what drives tenure decisions and how individuals perceive affordability. Homeowners reach ownership through three broadly equal routes: (i) outright purchase, (ii) mortgage financing, and (iii) inheritance or gifts. Housing satisfaction is consistently higher among owners, while affordability is perceived as the lowest in large cities and for larger households. Survey evidence from an advisory choice experiment confirms that support for ownership is strong but highly sensitive to financing conditions. The findings highlight that housing affordability is shaped not only by market prices but also by credit access, expectations, life-cycle stage, and household characteristics. |
| JEL: | R21 R31 D12 G51 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:svk:wpaper:1142 |
| By: | Franziska Tinnefeld; Florian Wagener; Florian O.O. Wagener |
| Abstract: | We develop a multi-region, multi-sector Romer-type dynamic partial equilibrium model of endogenous growth. We calibrate on equally sized regions North, East, and South, based on data from Germany, Poland, and China. We compare the effect of trade block formation on innovation outcomes. Integration leads to aggregate increase in both product and process innovation, resulting in aggregate welfare gains. These are concentrated in North: the research sectors of East and South collapse. Our findings explain data from eastern European countries, as well as current R&D policies in China that are designed to avoid downstream lock-in. |
| Keywords: | product innovation, process innovation, economic integration |
| JEL: | F15 O31 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12774 |
| By: | Naneh Hovanessian (Central Bank of Armenia); Elen Khanikiryan (Central Bank of Armenia); Gevorg Minasyan (Central Bank of Armenia); Hovhannes Khachatryan (Central Bank of Armenia) |
| Abstract: | This paper evaluates the impact of a large-scale government cashback program on non-cash payment adoption among pensioners in Armenia, a population traditionally reliant on cash. Using comprehensive administrative data covering all bank accounts of pension beneficiaries, we exploit the staggered rollout of the program across banks to identify causal effects on payment behavior. We document three main findings. First, financial incentives generate a substantial increase in noncash transactions, with effects reaching approximately 21 percentage points for transaction value and 24 percentage points for transaction counts after 18 months. Second, we find no evidence of broad-based digital payment adoption: the increase in non-cash payments is concentrated on the incentivized pension card and is partly offset by reduced use of other cards, suggesting substitution across payment instruments rather than a general increase in digital payment activity. Third, leveraging the removal of cashback eligibility for utility payments, we show that the effects are only partially persistent. Utility payments through pension cards decline sharply once incentives are withdrawn, with limited reallocation to other cards, indicating that a significant share of the observed behavior reflects strategic responses rather than durable habit formation. Overall, the results suggest that while financial incentives are effective in inducing short-run behavioral change, their ability to generate lasting shifts remains limited. |
| Keywords: | Cashback Program; Pensioners; Payment Behavior; Habit Formation; Substitution Effect |
| JEL: | D12 D91 E42 G20 C23 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ara:wpaper:wp-2026-02 |
| By: | Dang, Hai-Anh H.; Kilic, Talip; Abanokova, Kseniya |
| Abstract: | Can imputed poverty estimates be reliably disaggregated by population groups, especially when the interest is monitoring poverty levels for smaller, vulnerable groups that may not be represented as well in large-scale household surveys? The study tackles this question through a comprehensive literature review and empirical analysis that leverages 18 household surveys across four different low- and middle-income countries. The results suggest that the imputation accuracy widely varies by population group, with differences being as high as 10 percentage points in pairwise comparisons of groups. The imputation accuracy for the population groups of interest increases, on average, by 1.3 percentage points in response to increasing the sample size by 1, 000 observations for the target survey that is used for sourcing the predictors for the imputation model. The results are robust to extensive sensitivity analyses and also suggest that incorporating geospatial predictors into the imputation model can help increase imputation accuracy. The discussion provides useful inputs for future survey design. |
| Keywords: | consumption, poverty, survey-to-survey imputation, household surveys, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, Vietnam |
| JEL: | C15 I32 O15 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1780 |
| By: | Tahsin Mehdi; Ping Ching Winnie Chan |
| Abstract: | As Canada and various other countries from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) transition towards a net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emission economy, there may be concerns about the implications on the jobs and, hence, the earnings of workers employed in GHG-intensive industries. To shed light on this issue, the OECD (2024a, 2024b) examined the impact of job displacement on the earnings trajectories of workers using matched employer–employee data across 14 OECD countries: Canada, Australia, Austria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, France and Sweden. The study, which Statistics Canada participated in, considered workers displaced from mass layoffs over the 2005-to-2013 period and their economic outcomes six years later. The study defined mass layoffs as a reduction in employment by at least 30% within a given enterprise. The analysis distinguished workers in “high-emission” industries from those in other industries and compared the earnings trajectories of displaced workers with those of their non-displaced counterparts with similar characteristics. The sample was restricted to paid workers aged 18 to 50 with at least two years of tenure before being laid off from enterprises in the commercial sector with at least 30 employees. The effect of job displacement on annual earnings was estimated using an event study model that accounted for differences in worker characteristics. The outcome of interest was annual earnings relative to pre-displacement earnings two years prior to job displacement. The Canadian Employer–Employee Dynamics Database was used for Canada, and these data classify industries according to the North American Industry Classification System. For international comparability, this classification system was converted to the International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC) system. |
| Keywords: | impact of job displacement, earnings of workers, high-emission industries |
| JEL: | J23 M21 |
| Date: | 2025–08–27 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:stc:stcp8e:202500800005e |
| By: | World Bank |
| Abstract: | This paper provides the first firm-level assessment of agglomeration economies in Mongolia, focusing on Ulaanbaatar, the country’s dominant urban center. Using data from the 2021 Enterprise Census, the paper estimates total factor productivity for a large sample of enter-prises and examines its relationship with localization, urban diversity, and peer productivity. The results indicate robust positive agglomeration effects, alongside suggestive evidence of diminishing returns to localization consistent with an inverted U-shaped pattern. These non-linearities are most apparent in Ulaanbaatar and in manufacturing, although they prove sensitive to alternative agglomeration and productivity measures. Although the cross-sectional nature of the data limits causal inference, the analysis offers new micro-level evidence on how spatial concentration interacts with congestion, infrastructure strain, and potential spatial misallocation. The findings underscore the importance of urban planning, infrastructure investment, and the development of regional hubs to sustain productivity growth in Mongolia’s highly concentrated urban system, with implications for diversification beyond mining in resource-dependent economies. |
| Date: | 2026–06–29 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11415 |
| By: | Minnich, John |
| Abstract: | When do firms trade technology for market access? Theories of foreign investment typically frame host state bargaining power in terms of domestic characteristics like market size. This article examines how the structure of global markets in which firms are embedded and the inter-firm competition this generates shape firm-state bargaining over technology in ways not reducible to host state attributes. I argue that as the number of firms in an industry rises and global market shares become less evenly divided among them, weak market players face strong incentives to transfer technology in return for access to new markets. In this context, host states can “divide and conquer” investors to secure better terms of trade and investment. Case studies of technology transfer in commercial aircraft manufacturing and semiconductor design and fabrication in China show how industry market structure shapes firm-state bargaining over entry terms both across and within industries. |
| Keywords: | technology transfer; market structure; foreign direct investment; China |
| JEL: | F3 G3 R14 J01 |
| Date: | 2026–09–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:138366 |