Macroeconomic Context Research Articles

Beyond oil: the international integration of the Russian economy between macroeconomic constraints and sectoral dynamics

ABSTRACT This study provides new insights into the internal dynamics and international integration of non-rentier sectors in Russia. Our approach consists in analysing the evolution of two non-rentier industries (agri-food and software), focusing on three groups of variables characterising their institutional environment, namely the macroeconomic context, public policies, and private strategies pursued by the main players. Based on the analysis of quantitative and qualitative data coming from field surveys and statistical databases, we introduce distinct forms of international integration that shed light on the players’ strategies in adapting to changes in macroeconomic variables. The following paradox emerged: although the macroeconomic constraints stemming from rent should have hindered the development of non-rentier sectors in a scheme characteristic of the classical ‘Dutch disease’ framework, we have observed that these two industries have been able to continue to develop, each following its own path. Our analysis shows that the mix of constraints and opportunities faced by these industries has shaped their partial autonomy vis-à-vis the rent-based ‘accumulation regime’ characteristic of the country.

The emancipatory promise of cooperatives in a historical perspective: Evidence from an ice-cream factory in France

ABSTRACT By popular media, Milkerie worker cooperative in France is foremost described as an alternative to capitalist enterprise. The cooperative managed to preserve jobs that the previous capitalist owner did not. By situating Milkerie as a production site in the broader macro-economic history, I show how cooperatives can and cannot propose an alternative to capitalism. In a cooperative, capital becomes means: it is used for safeguarding the activity of the cooperative and the livelihoods of its members. Similar to class struggle through the labour law, cooperatives provide a form of economic governance through which workers can shape the economy. However, cooperative decision-making and claim-making through labour law surge in different historical circumstances. Their success in safeguarding worker livelihoods depends on the enterprise's capability to create economic wealth through commodity production, which is highly dependent on the macro-economic context. Thus, although, in a cooperative, capital becomes means for other social goals than profit-making, capital above everything remains a relation, i.e. an impersonal mode of social domination that pushes for productivity growth and worker externalization from the economy. For a cooperative to succeed, it needs to be profitable in a capitalist market economy, which makes cooperative enterprises to adopt capitalist-like practices. The evidence presented in this article shows the pitfalls of a timeless theory on cooperatives.

Informal micro-enterprises: What impact does the business environment have on the decision of formalization?

This work studies the impact of the perception of the constraint imposed by the business environment on the disposition of Moroccan informal micro-enterprises to move to the formal sector. We test the hypothesis that this disposition to formalize is based on a profit maximization model consisting in comparing the advantages and costs of setting up in the formal and informal sectors. Using data collected from 100 informal micro-entrepreneurs and using step-by-step logistic regression, we find that the decision of microenterprises to structure themselves is dependent on the socio-economic characteristics of the country in question (macroeconomic context, legal and business regulations, etc.). In addition, we find that the desire for formalization is negatively impacted by perceptions linked to the unavailability of basic infrastructure (electricity, water, telephone, etc.), access to finance, access to premises, access to public contracts, access to information as well as the burden of administrative procedures. These results suggest that improving the business environment and general governance could further drive microenterprises to take the step towards formal entrepreneurship, thus providing a broader tax base and other benefits to society in the future.

ИССЛЕДОВАТЕЛЬСКИЕ ПОДХОДЫ К АНАЛИЗУ ВЛИЯНИЯ ЭКСПОРТА НА ЭКОНОМИЧЕСКИЙ РОСТ

The relevance of this study is determined by the key priority of socio-economic development in Russia — stimulation of nonresource non-energy exports. There is a vast body of research on the influence of exports on the economic growth of countries and their regions. In this study, we provide an overview of the theoretical and empirical approaches to this problem and build their typology. The approaches were compared by looking at the way they interpret the following contradiction: exports form a part of GDP and at the same time influence the type and way of production in the country, which can have a negative impact on GDP. We divided the selected approaches into groups depending on the way they evaluate the effects of exports: as unconditionally positive; as positive when combined with other factors; as neutral, or negative. We also described the mechanisms of exports’ influence, including ‘micro-factors’ and additional factors necessary for a positive effect or to justify its absence. Each of the approaches takes into account a certain factor (or component) of the macro-economic conditions or a certain characteristic of exports as a factor of economic growth. The existing approaches complement each other. The differences between them stem from the macro-economic context and characteristics of national exports. Our findings can be used to design the research methodology of further studies and they can also be of interest to government agencies designing export strategies and monitoring the effects of exports development.

Certain aspects of the legal regulation of joint investment institutions operation in the EU

The scientific article analyzes the peculiarities of the legal regulation of the joint investment insti-tutions of the European Union. The concepts and types of joint investment institutions have been defined, the legal regime and the peculiarities of their activity have been analyzed. The state in which the right conditions for investment funds are created has in their person an ef-fective mechanism for the development of the securities market, which play a significant role in the cross-sectoral redistribution of capital, enhance the stability of the stock market, stimulate both the internal investment process and foreign investment, promote empowering the state with regard to domestic bor-rowing. The positive role of co-investment institutions in the macroeconomic context is confirmed by the preferential nature of investment funds taxation (or lack thereof), which is characteristic of the national legislation of the vast majority of countries.

From cost-optimal to nearly Zero Energy Buildings’ renovation: Life Cycle Cost comparisons under alternative macroeconomic scenarios

Abstract Policies and financial framework aiming to encourage energy efficient building renovations should contribute to “fill” the existing investment gap between Cost-Optimal (CO) solutions, that are more economically convenient, and nearly Zero Energy (nZE) solutions, which have the lower energy consumption, in order to make more convenient to the investors to choose the more energy efficient options. This investment gap depends on the long-term expected value and volatility of several interdependent macroeconomic variables. However, standardized LCC methods used for CO assessments disregard the long-term uncertainty and interdependence affecting these variables and, consequently, misrepresent the impact of the associated risk on the economic convenience. The present work aims to model alternative macro-economic scenarios where to carry out a “stochastic” LCC of predetermined building renovation solutions, in order to provide a useful and effective decision tool for building LCC, and especially to evaluate whether and how much the future macro-economic scenario could influence the investment gap between a CO and a nZE refurbishment solution. At this aim, we estimated the Vector AutoRegressive (VAR) models of four alternative macro-economic scenarios, ranging from a “regular growth” case to more extreme conditions as experienced by major western economies in the last decades, based on real data, i.e. observed time series. The scenarios modelling and its relation to the stochastic LCC is the main result and novelty of the work compared to the conventional approach adopted in most of the literature and suggested by international regulations and standards. The method is illustrated through a case study, which demonstrates the potential of the developed methodology in providing interesting and informative results on the nature of the investment gap between CO and nZE solutions, that the policy should contribute to fill in order to address the environmental challenge in the building sector, and on how much this gap may vary depending on the volatility of the macro-economic context. The novelty of the work mainly lies on the possibility to highlight in which specific macroeconomic conditions the convenience of taking an investment decision under risk-aversion may be jeopardised (augmented), thus requiring a stronger (weaker) compensating public support.

Business Methods for Certification of Government Employees in the Russian Federation: Problems and Prospects

This article provides a brief overview of the ongoing changes in the methodology for evaluating and selecting personnel in government agencies of the Russian Federation. The author analyzes the details of ongoing reforms in the current macroeconomic context. The article covers expected consequences of the planned unified approach to certification of civil servants in all state bodies of the Russian Federation using examples of existing business structures that already use the new methods. The author comes to the conclusion that disproportionate powers of managers in any departments and strictly formalized criteria for certification of civil servants, which came from the commercial sphere, will negatively affect the motivation of civil servants, the quality of their work with citizens, and lead to erosion of the civil service ethics. The ongoing reform may potentially result in a loss of public trust to state institutions.

The Polarising Worlds of Welfare: Political Orientations, Macroeconomic Context, and Support for Redistribution

AbstractPublic support for the welfare state – and the policies constituting it – has long been a topic of research. Previous research on support for redistribution has tended to focus on how either country-level characteristics (particularly those relating to the macro-economy such as levels of economic development or income inequality) or individual-level political factors (such as left-right political orientation and sociodemographic factors) shape support for redistribution. To date, empirical research has insufficiently tested how macroeconomic context and individual political orientations interact. Research has also obscured whether the effects of macroeconomic context hold cross-sectionally (across country contexts) or longitudinally (within countries over time). Drawing on data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), this article examines the cross-sectional (between-country) and longitudinal (within-country) interactive relationships involving economic development and income inequality (on one hand) and left–right political orientations (on the other) in shaping preferences for redistribution. Results indicate that there are larger left–right cleavages in attitudes in wealthier countries, more unequal countries, and countries where inequality is increasing. These findings challenge the dominant practice of focusing exclusively on additive effects of individual-level or country-level factors by showing the importance of paying attention to cross-level interactions.

Employment Vulnerability of People With Severe Mental Illness

Using French longitudinal register data, we compare the evolution of employment rates of persons with severe chronic mental illness, before and after the first medico-administrative recognition of the illness by the Statutory Health Insurance (SHI), with that of people without recognised mental illness. The study focuses on persons of working age having a work history before recognition. Our empirical approach relies on a double difference method with coarsened exact matching. Before illness recognition subjects had lower employment rates than those without mental illness but relatively high, reflecting their initial employment attachment. Results indicate that employment rates decrease sharply after recognition. A large employment rate gap between persons with and without severe mental illness develops during the four years following recognition. We examine whether the magnitude of the decrease is sensitive to the macroeconomic context. Findings show that the decline in employment rates was significantly more pronounced during the Great Recession compared with the pre-crisis period, amongst women. As a conclusion, this study points out that implementing coordinated early health and labour policies in the phase of the entry into the chronic-illness insurance scheme of the SHI might play a key role in preventing the detrimental effects of illness on economic and social conditions of persons with severe mental illnesses.

Анализ применения инструментов концептуального инжиниринга при проектировании системы обустройства активов

In the current macroeconomic context, it is of major importance to assess efficiency and risks of developing assets at early design stages. Engineering design in the oil industry is currently impossible without comprehensive design technologies. Already at the initial setup stage of a facility, it is required to handle the entire package of engineering information for the whole operating cycle of such a facility. Investors have to make decisions based on incomplete and inconsistent baseline data within short timeframes. The objectives set are addressed by using conceptual design tools. This work is intended to assess and analyse the existing approaches to the conceptual design of the field gathering and infrastructure development system. Presented are the methods and tools of the conceptual engineering developed by the following companies: Ingenix Group, Gazprom Neft STC (LLC), Gazprom Neft Development (LLC), RN-UfaNIPIneft (LLC), TomskNIPIneft (OJSC) and PermNIPIneft branch of LUKOIL-Engineering in Perm (LLC). The paper presents applications of the conceptual design tools at priority facilities of the branch, including the development of the Komandirshorskaya group of fields and the feasibility study of the strategic development of the Varandey-Adzvinsky asset. For both projects, multidisciplinary teams were formed; up-to-date re-estimation of reserves and multivariate elaboration of gathering and infrastructure development system plans were performed subject to a probabilistic approach; economic feasibility was estimated and most efficient options were proposed. Based on the analysis, the main conceptual design tools for the design of a new asset infrastructure development system were identified, and the further development options of the methods implementation at PermNIPIneft branch of LUKOIL-Engineering in Perm (LLC) were specified.

Who’s to Blame? The Role of Economic Factors in Organizational Trust

In the current research, we provide evidence that trust between employees and their organizations unfold within a larger macroeconomic context rather than operating in a vacuum. Organizational trust is an essential component in the employee-employer relationship that is often undermined by negative events (i.e., job insecurity). In our research, we hypothesize that employees who are experiencing job insecurity are less likely to attribute the cause of their insecurity to managerial ineptitude or bad intent when they are exposed to poor economic conditions protecting organizational management from losing trustworthiness. Two studies found evidence consistent with our theorizing. With data from 4,612 employees surveyed across 55 regions in Central Europe, Study 1 demonstrates that a poor economic environment mitigates the negative relationship between job insecurity and organizational trust. Study 2 experimentally induced the perception that the U.S. economy is performing poorly with a sample of 538 U.S. employees and found that this perception led employees to attribute their insecure situation to the economy rather than to the management of their organization. By demonstrating that the economic context shapes assessments of organizational trustworthiness, our research opens new avenues for future work to bridge micro and macro levels of theories.

Rural stay: a new type of rural tourism in China

ABSTRACT Rural stay, referring to urban dwellers staying in rural areas temporarily, with tourism activities as a supplement, is an emerging form of urban-rural mobility in China. Through exploring the visitors’ motives and resulting activities, this study aims to reveal the uniqueness of rural stay in China that has received little attention currently. Using a mixed methodology, empirical results show that rural stay intersects with various mobilities in terms of some common characteristics and motivations. Its uniqueness, however, is closely related to the China-specific macroeconomic context and embedded social and cultural values. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The gender effects of the minimum wage under weak compliance with labour regulations: the case of Bolivia

ABSTRACT This paper contributes to the minimum wage (MW) literature by providing new evidence on the gender effects of the MW in the context of weak compliance with labour regulations. We study Bolivia’s case, the country with the highest informal employment share in Latin America according to the International Labour Organization, during a favourable macroeconomic context characterized by a commodities boom that should have eased compliance with an active MW legislation. From a pooled cross-section of household surveys from 2005 to 2013 and a generalized difference-in-difference specification, we find evidence that the MW widened the hourly wage gender gap, and had negative effects on the formalization likelihood. Our findings stress the importance of enforcing compliance with the minimum wage legislation to reduce the gender wage gap.

Designing Unemployment Insurance Systems in Developing Countries: Moral Hazard vs Liquidity Constraints in Chile

One of the most complex social policy issues that developing countries commonly face is the question of how they can protect the unemployed. However, the analysis of unemployment insurance (UI) in developing economies with large informal sectors is in its infancy, with few papers providing solid empirical evidence. This paper makes several contributions to the development literature: first, it applies Chetty’s 2008 landmark work on UI to a developing country (Chile) and shows that the moral hazard effects expected by policy makers, who designed the system are minimal, while liquidity effects were entirely neglected. By means of an RDD, it analyses the Chilean UI system using a large sample of administrative data, which allows for an extremely precise analysis of how the system is working, thus providing invaluable empirical lessons for other developing countries. Second, this paper shows that it is not enough merely to quantify an effect such as moral hazard, but to understand its causes and implications. An extended unemployment period stemming from moral hazard has extremely different welfare implications than one stemming from a liquidity effect and should therefore result in different policy recommendations. Third, our results also highlight that the Chilean UI system is regressive overall, as it protects workers with higher income levels and more stable jobs much more than it protects vulnerable workers, who are also much more likely to become unemployed. Fourth, this paper shows that it is essential that developing countries should take into account the specific labor market and macroeconomic context when designing social policies as the incentives embedded in such a policy may not be enough to compensate for the limitations that arise from the structure of a labor market. This research thus has implications for many developing countries, which may also be considering the implementation of some form of UI and/or the partial or complete replacement of existing severance pay legislation with continuous contributions to individual savings accounts, as recommended by the international development institutions. Furthermore, even high-income developing countries, such as Chile, cannot rely on unemployment insurance alone when it comes to protecting workers from the fallout of an economic crisis or rapid changes in the labor market that generate unemployment. Any UI system must also be linked to other social protection mechanisms to provide complimentary benefits to workers with precarious jobs.

Conducting Management Research in Latin America: Why and What’s in It for You?

We make the case that conditions and timing are right and, despite some challenges, there are many benefits to conducting management research in Latin America. Some of these conditions include an upward trend in the productivity of Latin American researchers, increased collaboration between researchers in Latin America and those in other regions, and societal, cultural, and economic characteristics that make the region an ideal “natural laboratory” to build and test management theories. Demonstrating that our arguments are not just about potential but are founded in reality, we offer a selective summary of recent research conducted in Latin America that made important contributions to micro and macro management domains and theories. These include (a) leadership; (b) small and family businesses; (c) entrepreneurship; (d) social inclusiveness, inequity, and vulnerable populations; (e) strategy and competitive dynamics in natural resource industries; (f) strategy in unstable macroeconomic contexts; (g) public (industrial) policies and business development; (h) hybrid public-private collaborations; and (i) social enterprises and blended social and economic value creation. We also describe opportunities for future research in these domains. Finally, we offer practical and actionable advice on how to address typical challenges encountered when conducting management research in Latin America. Solutions apply to those residing inside and outside of Latin America and include, among others, identifying universities with a research-oriented career path, recognizing credible university rankings and their impact, and capitalizing on local contexts to generate high-quality research. We hope our article will serve as a catalyst for future management research in Latin America.

Trends and Potential of the Reindustrialization of the Mining Region

The aim of this work is to develop theoretical foundations for the reindustrialization of the mining region in the context of trends in the spatial development of the Russian economy. The urgency of the problem is caused by the deepening of regional development unevenness, differentiation of regions by structural, resource and institutional parametric characteristics. As a result, the imperative of spatial development of the Russian economy is a consistent modernization of the regional organization of the economy on the basis of the reindustrialization policy. In the macroeconomic context, globalization is associated with overcoming stagnation consequences and entering the trajectory of sustainable innovative growth, stagnation and development mainly in the scenario; in the mesoeconomic context it is associated with accelerated capitalization of the competitive advantages of each region. The exhaustion of the predominantly export-raw material model of economic growth has put Kuzbass – the mining region of Western Siberia, which is heavily dependent on the state of the world market of fuel and energy resources in the most difficult situation. The task of the accelerated transition to the innovative-resource type of development through structural and technological transformation in the context of the General course of neoindustrialization for the region is actualized. This article presents a theoretical justification of the necessity, possibility and feasibility of neoindustrialization of the mining region in the context of globalization.

The Reform of the EU Neighbourhood Policies and Instruments in the Post-2020 Period

This study aims at a synthesis of European policies, programs, mechanisms and instruments directed at developing a special good neighbourly relationship at the borders of the European Union. Methodologically, we aim to identify the main reforming guidelines concerning primarily the neighbourhood policies and instruments in the post-2020 period. The new multiannual financial framework is thus taken into account. In order to capture the main changes to these policies and instruments, we purpose to diachronically capture their evolution from the launch of the European Neighbourhood Policy until the beginning of 2020. The reform of the European Neighbourhood Policy has been a complex process imposed by the internal realities of the EU, but, naturally, it was marked both by the position of the partners or by the global geopolitical and macroeconomic context. During the period since the launch of the ENP (2004) the context has changed. Some neighbours have since become members of the EU. Then, in 2008 and 2009, the two partnerships aimed at the southern dimension (Union for the Mediterranean) and the eastern dimension (Eastern Partnership) are launched. The instruments are updated, reformed and resized through a constantly increasing allocation for each multiannual financial framework. Moreover, these instruments with which the EU operates in relation to its partners have been diversified to respond to the context, but also to stimulate both the partner state and the society, the population as a whole. The European policy implementation framework has been shaped by the internal and external context. The multilateral dimension of cooperation has increasingly been replaced by the bilateral dimension. The more for more principle applied in this context was intended as a stimulus for partners. This incentive must be understood not only in the sense that a state that reforms more, that integrates more, gets more support, including financially. The process is more complex and includes, as has become increasingly evident after 2015, a sectoral dimension of integration and differentiation. Thus, within the same state, some sectors have received additional support to the detriment of others. The differentiation was made starting from the same principle (more for more).

Городские агломерации: последний рубеж?

The article was prepared on the basis of a communication at a scientific seminar devoted to a discussion of the problems and patterns of development of urban agglomerations in the light of one of the fundamental proposals of the Spatial Development Strategy of the Russian Federation for the period until 2025. The theoretical assumptions laid down in the development of the strategy are analyzed and the real consequences and possibilities of obtaining the designed results are estimated. The declared and actually pursued goals of exploiting agglomeration effects are compared as an institutional tool for creating a homogeneous economic space and increasing the productivity of economic resources in a macroeconomic context. The probability of achieving each of the options in the target area of the strategy is estimated

Financing EU Public Goods: Vertical Coherence between EU and National Budgets

The combination of the challenges emerging from the 2020 pandemic outbreak, amid an unprecedented macroeconomic context, and a limited EU budget, inevitably call for reflections about synergies, or ‘vertical coherence’, between EU and national budgets. The proposals for a larger EU budget, the target of carbon neutrality by 2050, the temporary relaxation of rules for fiscal policy and state aid, would all require greater coordination across government layers. Within this context, this paper studies structural co-movements between EU and national spending over the past two decades, trends that deserve a longer-term assessment, beyond the current response to the pandemic. It finds some synergies, often of a positive sign (leverage rather than substitution), but always very small in magnitude. In light of those results, the paper proposes an “EU public goods rule” for the financing of EU policies, within a commonly agreed and policy-consistent framework.

Faktori koji obrazlažu spredove državnih svopova kreditnih neizvršenja - kvantilni pristup regresiji

This article aims to analyze the main risk factors that explain the manifestation and the aggravation of sovereign risk, particularly through the dynamics of sovereign CDS spreads in euro area member countries. The explanatory factors that will be analyzed are related to general risk aversion, which is explained by the volatility of the stock markets, liquidity risk perceived by the flight to quality phenomenon, idiosyncratic risk, which is explained by the deterioration of the state of macroeconomic fundamentals. We will adopt an econometric approach with the quantile regression method applied to panel data developed by Canay (2011), because it allows to estimate the effect of the independent variables on the different regions of the distribution, of the dependent variable and also makes it possible to overcome the problem of the presence of extreme values. Finally, our model has made it possible to identify, over time and different countries, the factors which significantly explain a sovereign risk, and whose deteriorated situation is likely to lead to payment defaults, which is very important to know, especially in the current unfavorable macroeconomic context. These include the volatility of the stock markets, which shows investor mistrust, the drying up of liquidity in the bond markets, which explains the phenomenon of flight to quality, the budgetary factor, which is explained by the unsustainable debt, and the economic factor, perceived by the level of wealth of a country.