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on Transition Economics |
| By: | Venkatachalam Anbumozhi (Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)); Chettiyappan Visvanathan |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) indicator framework for assessing provincial circular economy transition and resilience in Viet Nam. Although national strategies identify the circular economy as a strategic pillar of the country’s 2045 development vision, implementation largely depends on provincial governments. However, the absence of an operational sub-national monitoring framework has limited systematic performance assessment, policy alignment, and evidence-based decision-making. First, the paper reviews international circular economy monitoring frameworks and sub-national indicator systems to identify methodological principles relevant to the Vietnamese context. Second, it proposes a structured indicator architecture organised around six pillars: resource efficiency and material flows; waste management and prevention; industrial symbiosis and eco-industrial parks; sustainable consumption and production; circular business models and innovation; and social and economic co-benefits. Third, it develops a consolidated set of indicators specifying definitions, data sources, monitoring frequency, and implementation considerations to support application across provinces with varying institutional capacities. The proposed framework emphasises outcome-oriented indicators, alignment with national statistical systems, and phased implementation. By linking provincial monitoring with national development, climate, and sustainability objectives, the framework provides a practical foundation for strengthening multilevel circular economy governance and enhancing policy coherence in Viet Nam. |
| Keywords: | - |
| Date: | 2026–07–29 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:era:wpaper:dp-2026-04 |
| 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: | Tim Lohse; Salmai Qari; Andreas Stotland; Tobias Börger; Jürgen Meyerhoff |
| Abstract: | Collective defense is a classic public good, yet alliance burden-sharing has almost exclusively been studied at the state level. We investigate its micro-level foundations using original survey data from France, Germany, and Poland, in which respondents report their willingness to defend four targets: their own country, the other two countries, and NATO's eastern flank. Using stacked logit models, we exploit this within-person design to identify defense hierarchies, derive solidarity gaps across defense targets, and examine both the determinants of willingness to defend and the factors that widen or narrow these gaps. We find a pronounced defense hierarchy in all three countries, with homeland defense exceeding alliance defense by 13-41 percentage points, consistent with citizen-level free-riding. Willingness to defend is systematically higher among respondents who perceive a stronger Russian threat (+8.0 percentage points), are aware of the Weimar Triangle (+10.2), have completed mandatory military service (+9.0), or have personal military contacts (+7.3). Yet the resulting solidarity gaps are far from fixed. Where citizens trust the governments of the other countries and perceive them as contributing their fair share to collective defense, these gaps narrow by up to four fifths. |
| Keywords: | willingness to defend, solidarity gap, burden-sharing, collective defense, alliance cohesion, NATO's eastern flank |
| JEL: | D74 F52 H41 H56 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_13060 |
| 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: | 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: | 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 |
| By: | Branimir Jovanović (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw) |
| Abstract: | This note assesses Serbia’s economic performance under the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), which has governed the country since 2012, ahead of the parliamentary elections to be held on 25 October 2026. It compares the SNS years with the 2001-2011 period and with other economies in the region. Average annual growth in Serbia during the 2012-2025 period was 2.4%, against 4.2% in the previous decade, and lower than in most neighbouring countries. Unemployment has fallen, but employment has stagnated since 2019, and most wage gains have been absorbed by higher living costs. Inequality has increased, while social protection spending has declined. FDI inflows have been no higher than before, and the income earned by foreign investors now exceeds new inflows. Public investment has risen strongly but has been concentrated on motorways, while other infrastructure has fallen further behind the EU average and domestic private investment has stagnated. The record is far from the economic miracle often claimed. |
| Keywords: | Serbia, Western Balkans, economic growth, labour market, inequality, foreign direct investment, public investment |
| JEL: | O52 E24 D31 H53 F21 H54 E22 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wii:pnotes:pn:113 |
| 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: | Aya Suzuki (University of Tokyo); Vu Hoang Nam (Faculty of International Economics, Foreign Trade University); Susan Olivia (University of Waikato); Guenwoo Lee (Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences); Kohei Tanaka (Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, University of Tokyo) |
| Abstract: | Maintaining water quality is critical for aquaculture, yet smallholder farmers in developing countries often lack the tools to monitor it. Although earlier digital farming that provides "simple" information to farmers consistently yielded positive effects, when more detailed and personalized information are provided, the results have been mixed. Modern "aquatech" provides complex biophysical data that directly impacts productivity, and the effects likely depend on the capacity of farmers to process the "complex" information. We examine the impact of digital water-quality monitors and a farm-management app through a ten-month experiment involving shrimp farmers in Southern Vietnam. Using primary data from 304 farmers across two survey rounds, we find significant ITT and LATE treatment effects on reducing the disease outbreak as well as increasing revenue and profit, though the financial estimates are weaker evidence than the disease estimates: they sit at the margin of what our sample can detect. While these effects do not differ by human capital indicators of education, experience, and technical knowledge, the recorded data reveals strong association between education and stability of dissolved oxygen (DO) over crop cycles but not experience nor technical knowledge. Further, DO instability is associated with smaller shrimp size, and greater water stress is associated with lower harvest volume and smaller shrimp size. Our findings show that average farmers indeed benefit from even "complex" high-frequency digital information, and while the mechanism is not confirmed, the important role of education in water quality maintenance is suggested. |
| Keywords: | Digital agriculture; Aquaculture; Smallholder farmers |
| JEL: | O12 O33 Q22 |
| Date: | 2026–10–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wai:econwp:26/06 |
| By: | Maria Jose Talayero Schettino (Center for Global Development); Caroline Mallory (Center for Global Development) |
| Abstract: | Lead exposure remains a major but underrecognized threat to children’s health and development globally. In 2018, the Republic of Georgia became the first country to include blood lead level (BLL) testing in UNICEF’s Multi-Indicator Cluster Survey, revealing that 41 percent of children aged two to seven had BLLs above the World Health Organization’s threshold of 5 µg/dL, with no child testing at zero. This case study was built on 20 semi-structured interviews with government, international, nongovernmental, and academic stakeholders, alongside a review of published evidence to document Georgia’s response: building domestic laboratory capacity, identifying adulterated spices as a major source of exposure, and enforcing existing food safety laws, and creating a national surveillance program. Follow-up data shows substantial declines in BLL, though 15 to 20 percent of children remain above the threshold. Georgia’s example shows what is possible once lead exposure becomes a political priority. |
| Date: | 2026–10–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cgd:ppaper:405 |
| By: | Monika Kurian; Nikolaos-Komninos Chlepas |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the system of administrative supervision of local governments in the Western Balkans and assesses its alignment with European standards. It analyses the legislative and institutional frameworks governing supervision, including supervisory procedures, interventions, and sanctions applied in cases of irregularities, with specific regard to the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality. The study identifies key challenges affecting the effectiveness of current supervisory systems and highlights relevant European and OECD practices that may inform future reform efforts. Drawing on selected implementation examples, it identifies both effective approaches and persistent shortcomings across the region. The analysis is grounded in the principles of the European Charter of Local Self-Government and the SIGMA Principles of Public Administration, which emphasise accountable local governance and effective multi-level governance across levels of government |
| Keywords: | accountability, administrative supervision, decentralisation, local autonomy, local government, multi-level governance, public administration, rule of law |
| Date: | 2026–10–26 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:govaac:83-en |
| 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 |