East European Economies Research Articles

Impacts of the CBAM on EU trade partners: consequences for developing countries

ABSTRACT This article analyses the impact of the introduction of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) on European Union (EU) trade partners, focusing especially on its potential socio-economic and external consequences for developing and emerging economies (EMDEs). It uses trade data and Multi-Regional Input-Output (MRIO) matrices to investigate the geographically and sectorally uneven distribution of CBAM’s potential impacts. The introduction of the CBAM by the EU is still under discussion. This mechanism, which seeks to reduce the incentives for firms to outsource their carbon emissions and promote a more generalised low-carbon transition, might disproportionally expose some non-EU economies. In absolute terms, Russia, China, Turkey, and Ukraine are the main EU trade partners in CBAM products, and hence the most exposed countries in external and socio-economic dimensions. In relative terms, the degree of exposure of economies that export CBAM products to Europe varies substantially, with many developing economies having more than 2% of their exports and 1% of their production impacted by this measure. East European economies, mainly in the Balkans, as well as Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Cameroon in Africa, are the most exposed as far as the external dimension is concerned. In socio-economic terms, we can also include Morocco and Tajikistan to the group of most exposed economies. In the end, promoting the substitution of highly polluting technologies with green technologies seems notably easier in Europe than in EMDEs. Many jobs, tax revenues, and export revenues will be lost if the CBAM is implemented without taking into account the specificities of the EU’s trading partners. We discuss options to mitigate adverse consequences on EMDEs.

China connecting Europe?

The significance of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) for Europe is increasing. The diplomatic initiative “16 + 1,” comprising China and 16 Central, East and Southeast European economies (CESEE), expanded to a “17 + 1” format in April 2019, when Greece officially joined the cooperation forum. This expansion revived interest in Chinese activities aimed at better physical and digital connectivity in Europe and their effects. The article descriptively shows a geographical division of Chinese infrastructure development activities in Europe: the “17 + 1” region is targeted more intensively by Chinese construction projects. Moreover, roughly 90% of all construction contracts with the “17 + 1” region are attributable to connectivity sectors, while Chinese activities in other European regions are more diversified. In Europe, the Western Balkans are expected to economically benefit the most from the BRI, as they show particularly high deficiencies in infrastructure, and so far, have limited access to EU grants. Economic effects of infrastructure projects, however, trickle through European production and supply chains, affecting a larger number of countries than information on projects would suggest. EU initiatives presented since 2018 may help to increase complementarity between Chinese and European infrastructure development plans and reduce associated risks, such as unsustainable debt or new trade barriers arising from increased competition for Chinese investments. The BRI is about to change physical and digital connectivity within Europe, while the EU has yet to become an active player engaging in the initiative, in order to enable improved connectivity in Europe to drive economic convergence and not political divergence.

Implications of Brexit for Skilled Migration from India to the UK

In June 2016, the United Kingdom took the world by surprise with the results of its referendum on whether to remain in the European Union (EU). With a 52% majority, the country decided to leave the bloc in which it had been a member since 1973. With this outcome began the long process of Brexit negotiations between UK and the EU. The UK officially ceased to be an EU member on 31 January 2020, with a transition period up to the end of 2020. The decision to leave the EU came on the back of rising bitterness among people. Membership in the EU was seen as expensive and not beneficial to the country. One of the major campaigning points of the leave camp was the issue of immigration. Given that free movement of people is an important part of being in the EU, the party argued that leaving the EU would help the country take back control of its borders. Immigration in the UK has been on the rise since the early 2000s. It shot up further with the accession of the eight East European economies into the EU. Figure 1 shows how, leading up to Brexit, immigration from the EU to the UK was constantly increasing. JEL Codes: F00, F30, F22, F23

Is there a trade convergence between South East European and Central European economies

Given the importance of trade performance to overall economic fundamentals, the question arises as to the extent that South East European Countries (SEEC) have successfully followed the successful transition path of Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC). To address this issue, we use similarity indicators to calculate possible convergence between the export structures of SEEC and CEEC from 2007-2008 to 2018-2019. We then compute the value of the similarity coefficients of SEEC and CEEC export structures and compare them with EU import structures, and intra-industry trade for both SEEC and CEEC. Next, we calculate the qualitative changes of both SEEC and CEEC merchandise trade through the tendency of technology-intensive products. The results of these two groups are compared to determine whether SEEC trade performance is converging to that of the CEEC. The results show structural improvements and an above-average increase in SEEC trade since 2007. However, given the simultaneous, moderate qualitative trade progress in the CEEC, the convergence between these two groups is insufficient to close the gap in the foreseeable future.

Is Inflation a Monetary Phenomenon in the East European Economies? – Multifrequency Bayesian Quantile Inference

Is Inflation a Monetary Phenomenon in the East European Economies? – Multifrequency Bayesian Quantile Inference

Economic Freedom and its Impact on Foreign Direct Investment: Global Overview

Abstract The purpose of this research is to examine the economic freedom (EF) along with its macroeconomic determinants impact on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflow in South Asia, East Asia, Latin America, Middle East, and North Africa, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Sub Saharan Africa. We use Heritage Foundation economic freedom index data over the period of 1999 to 2018 and employ the stepwise multi regression on variables of business freedom, government spending, tax burden, government integrity, property rights, investment freedom, trade freedom and monetary freedom. The results show that EF has a significant positive impact in South Asia, Latin America, East Asia, North Europe and West Europe. However, for the Middle East and North Africa, East European and South European economies EF has an insignificant influence on FDI inflow.

Friend or Foe? On the role of institutional reforms in the investment development path of Central and East European economies

Many existing studies on emerging markets and firms have concentrated on the separate effects of institutional reforms and quality of the institutional infrastructure for attracting inward foreign direct investment (FDI) and fostering outward FDI. We argue that both these perspectives should be considered in an interplay, as there are links between inward and outward FDI in a country's economic development, which is captured by the investment development path (IDP) concept. Moreover, while predominant attention has been paid to emerging markets, little has so far been done to evaluate the sustainability of the institutional development, including later post-transition stages. We extend the IDP with insights from the institutional theory and conduct a comparative analysis of the effects of institutional reforms on IDP paths of ten Central and Eastern European (CEE) post-communist European Union (EU)-members. We find that while most of the studied post-transition economies follow a quadratic relationship between the net outward investment (NOI) position and each country's economic development, the role of institutional reforms is not in all cases accelerating the movement through the stages of the IDP. We attempt to explain the ambiguous role of institutions in an ensuing detailed discussion of the investigated countries.

Disembedded Openness: Inequalities in European Economic Integration at the Sectoral Level

The process of European integration resulted in a marked increase in transnational economic flows, yet regional inequalities along many developmental indicators remain. We analyze the unevenness of European economies with respect to the embedding of export sectors in upstream domestic flows and their dependency on dominant export partners. We use the WIOD dataset of sectoral flows for the period of 1995–2011 for 24 European countries. We found that East European economies were significantly more likely to experience increasing unevenness and dependency with increasing openness, while core countries of Europe managed to decrease their unevenness but increased their openness. Nevertheless, by analyzing the trajectories of changes for each country, we see that East European countries are also experiencing a turning point, either switching to a path similar to the core or to a retrograde path with decreasing openness. We analyze our data using pooled time series models and case studies of country trajectories.

International Presence of the Japanese Study of Russian and East European Economies

In this article, I examine the oversea activities of Japanese researchers in the field of Russian and East European economic studies based on objective data and offer several suggestions for improving their presence in the international academic community. The presence of Japanese scholars of Russian and East European economies as measured by the number of relevant articles published in international journals is still marginal at best, despite their high participation rates in academic conferences abroad. This may partly be due to the fact that many Japanese researchers are not effectively utilizing available international resources. Furthermore, although many of the works produced by Japanese experts have important implications in the research field, only a handful of them are submitted to international journals. In this and many other respects, there is still much room for enhancing the international status of the Japanese study of Russian and East European economies.

Dis-Embedded Openness: Inequalities in European Economic Integration at the Sectoral Level

The process of European integration resulted in a marked increase in transnational economic flows, yet regional inequalities along many developmental indicators remain. We analyze the unevenness of European economies with respect to the embedding of export sectors in upstream domestic flows, and their dependency on dominant export partners. We use the WIOD data set of sectoral flows for the period of 1995-2011 for 24 European countries. We found that East European economies were significantly more likely to experience increasing unevenness and dependency with increasing openness, while core countries of Europe managed to decrease their unevenness while increasing their openness. Nevertheless, by analyzing the trajectories of changes for each country, we see that East European countries are also experiencing a turning point, either switching to a path similar to the core, or to a retrograde path with decreasing openness. We analyze our data using pooled time series models and case studies of country trajectories.

Modelling and Forecasting Business Cycle in CEE Countries using a Threshold Approach

We propose to apply a time-series-based nonlinear mechanism in the threshold autoregression (TAR) form in order to examine business cycles in Central and Eastern European economies and compare them to the entire EU business cycle. The threshold variables, such as consumer price index, short and long interest rates, unemployment rate and an exchange rate vs. the U.S. Dollar, have been considered. The purpose of the paper is to model and to predict business cycles in Central and East European (CEE) economies (the EU Member States) and compare them to business cycles of the entire EU28 area and Eurozone EU19. We found that the exogenous mechanism played an important role in diagnosing the phases of business cycles in CEE economies, which is in line with the entire EU economic area. The results of business cycle forecasting using bootstrap technique are quite promising, while bootstrap confidence intervals are used for diagnosis.

Dynamic Nexus between Exchange Rate and Stock Prices in the Major East European Economies

This paper investigates the dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) between stock returns and exchange rate in four East European emerging markets. Due to persistent long memory and the presence of the asymmetric effect in all asset markets we applied DCC-FIAPARCH model. The estimated negative DCC parameters in all scrutinized countries confirmed that portfolio-balanced theory has predominance in the short run in all selected economies. DCC parameters revealed significant time-varying behaviour, especially during the major crisis periods. By embedding dummy variables in the variance equations, we came to the conclusion that global shocks affect the volatility of DCCs. Particularly, it happened during the Global Financial Crisis and European sovereign debt crisis, but the effects were not linearly equal in all countries. Complementary rolling analysis unveils how conditional volatilities of analysed assets influence DCC. The results suggested that exchange rate conditional volatility has higher influence on DCC than stock conditional volatility.

Where does privatization work? Understanding the heterogeneity in estimated firm performance effects

Why do the reported effects of privatization on firm performance vary so much? This paper provides new estimates of these effects and tests potential explanations for heterogeneity using comprehensive, long-panel data for 70,000 firms in five East European economies. We estimate that privatization raises measures of profitability, productivity, and growth by about 5–12% on average, but with substantial variation across countries and time periods. Analyzing heterogeneity in privatization effectiveness, we find little systematic role for firm size, financial dependence, exchange listing, or technological complexity, but important variation by fraction privatized, ownership concentration, firm quality, and the macroeconomic and institutional environment.

Government Revenues and Expenditures in the East European Economies: A Bootstrap Panel Granger Causality Approach

Using a bootstrap panel Granger causality approach, this article investigates the causality between government revenues and government spending from 1995 to 2012 for ten East European economies that are members of the European Union. It finds unidirectional causality from public expenditures to revenues in Bulgaria. For the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovenia, government revenues explain expenditures, and a two-way causality exists for the Slovak Republic. No Granger causality is found for Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania.

Reaching the Objectives of Sustainable Development on the Basis of the Creative Industries – A South and Eastern European Analysis

The reduction of the development gap of South and East European economy compared with the rest of the developed countries represent an important condition to achieve the goal of „healthy development“ of European Union. High level of competitiveness in West European industries as well as new policy of sustainable development causes a rethinking of strategy of individual countries. Creative industries may contribute to the efficient utilization of local resources and individual characteristics. Using the culture like an “engine” of regional development, in South and Eastern Europe, countries can generate many positive and lasting effects on these economies. This article presents the role and evolution of creative goods and industries in South and Eastern European countries, and aims to prefigure their impact on sustainable development of these regions. The involvement of these goods in international trade may improve or rehabilitate the position of different economies at European level.

Industries in Central and Eastern Europe. Enhancing Competitiveness by Integrating Services into Manufacturing

Abstract During the last two decades, the intra-industry trade between western companies and former socialist enterprises in Central and Eastern Europe gradually shifted from the subcontracting of marginal operations such as final assembly to the outsourcing of products and intermediate inputs. To further enhance their competitiveness, firms in Central and Eastern Europe have yet to take one more step forward: integrate services with manufacturing. Developing such capabilities hinges, aside from intensive training and learning on the existence of functional interactive knowledgebased innovation systems. Whereas Central and East European economies exhibit conspicuous weaknesses in this last respect, they still possess a countervailing advantage that is apt to lure foreign investors into the region: lower wage rates relative to western countries across all industries and skill levels. Offshoring therefore seems to be the most appropriate means to reconcile the two sides of the coin.

Where Does Privatization Work? Understanding the Heterogeneity in Estimated Firm Performance Effects

Why do the reported effects of privatization on firm performance vary so much? This paper re-estimates these effects and tests potential explanations for heterogeneity using comprehensive, long-panel data for 70,000 firms in five East European economies. Estimated average effects are positive, about 5-12%, for measures of profitability, efficiency, and growth, but they vary across countries and time periods. Our analysis of heterogeneity in privatization effectiveness finds little systematic role for firm size, financial dependence, or technological complexity, but shows important variation by fraction privatized, ownership structure, firm quality, and the macroeconomic and institutional environment.

Le economie dell'Europa orientale: aggiustamento forzato per sempre?

This article was written before the impact of recent political and economic changes was fully realised, however, it highlights problems that were simmering before the changes and which must now be tackled head-on. Many years of under-investment and central planning have left inherent problems for many economies. In addition, many of the newly liberated countries have vast external debts which now have to be serviced. The article examines many of these problems in detail and suggests policies that could be adopted. JEL Codes: P11 Keywords: East European economies, Central planning

East European economies: forced adjustment forever?

This article was written before the impact of recent political and economic changes was fully realised, however, it highlights problems that were simmering before the changes and which must now be tackled head-on. Many years of under-investment and central planning have left inherent problems for many economies. In addition, many of the newly liberated countries have vast external debts which now have to be serviced. The article examines many of these problems in detail and suggests policies that could be adopted.

Самозанятость в переходных экономиках

The economic crisis caused the ubiquitous growth of a number of self-employed in total employment. In particular groups of countries the self-employment differs both by its scale and composition. Compared to the Central and East European economies, the CIS countries show a much higher share of dependents in the families while the unit weight of employers using hired workers is considerably lower. One of the most characteristic features of self-employment in the transitional economies is very wide participation of women. This conclusion is especially true for CIS countries where women make up the prevailing part of self-employed and their share demonstrates a steady growth. In the Central and East European economies gender indicators are rather close to those in the developed nations. Men face a higher risk of becoming self-employed than women. As for Russia, in terms of volume, composition and structure of self-employment it stays close to the group of Central and East European countries rather than to CIS nations.