Structural Economic Reforms Research Articles

Türkiye’nin İç Borcu Açısından Mali Alan Analizi

High public debts after the crises have restrict the use of fiscal policies affect the fiscal space of many countries. In consequence, these countries have to adopt structural economic reforms to create a fiscal space. Fiscal policy adopted in 2000’s has created different results in Turkey. The main consequences of these policies, are the huge decrease in budget deficits, public debt ratios and in interest payments. Thus Turkey created fiscal space. Within this framework, first, we clarify fiscal space. Then, we calculated fiscal space for Turkey in the period between 2000:Q1-2015:Q4. Our estimates suggest that although there is ample fiscal space for Turkey to use fiscal policies, increasing public debt might restrain to use such policies and cause fiscal fatigue.

Close Encounters of the European Kind: Economic Integration, Sectoral Heterogeneity and Structural Reforms

This paper addresses two main questions: (a) Has European integration hindered the implementation of labour, financial and product market structural reforms? (b) Do the effects of these reforms vary more across sectors than across countries? Using more granular reform measures, longer time windows and a larger sample of countries than previous studies, we confirm that the euro triggered product but neither labour nor financial market reforms. Differently from previous studies, we find that: (a) the Single Market has similar effects to the euro, and (b) sectoral heterogeneity appears less important in explaining the economic impacts of reforms than country heterogeneity.

Close Encounters of the European Kind: Economic Integration, Sectoral Heterogeneity and Structural Reforms

This paper addresses two main questions: (a) Has European integration hindered the implementation of labour, financial and product market structural reforms? (b) Do the effects of these reforms vary more across sectors than across countries? Using more granular reform measures, longer time windows and a larger sample of countries than previous studies, we confirm that the euro triggered product but neither labour nor financial market reforms. Differently from previous studies, we find that: (a) the Single Market has similar effects to the euro, and (b) sectoral heterogeneity appears less important in explaining the economic impacts of reforms than country heterogeneity.

Egyptian Macroeconomic Status with Reference to the Shadow Economy during the Period 1991-2018

The Egyptian economy is one of the most diversified economies in the MENA region. During the past decades, various consecutive phases have been adopted targeting a comprehensive structural economic reform which resulted in a market-oriented economy, a liberalized stock market and a strong private sector. The shadow economy has a distorting effect on the accuracy of the country’s official records and statistics and affects the state’s fiscal and monetary policies. In this concern, the government should gain from the positive side of the shadow economy by merging it with the official one. Accordingly, this guarantees best results for all concerned parties.

SOCIAL SECURITY OF UKRAINE AND THE EU: ASPECTS OF CONVERGENCE AND IMPROVEMENT OF MIGRATION POLICY

Unresolved problems of social and economic development of Ukraine, exacerbated by critical negative consequences of military aggression and political instability, are accompanied by deep socio-economic contradictions and aggravation of large-scale social problems. At the same time, the qualitative system of social security, characteristic of the EU, is not formed. As a result, negative phenomena and trends are accumulated in social sphere there that manifest themselves in the critical deformations of social development, with the formation of threats of degradation and depopulation, the increase of environmental problems, deterioration of social structure, weakening of social guarantees of human rights that are evidenced and confirmed by mass and active labour migration of the Ukrainians abroad. Ensuring Ukraine’s social security objectively requires an in-depth study based on a systematic approach, applying EU principles, provisions, practices, and standards. The purpose is to substantiate approaches and means of convergence of social security of Ukraine and the EU and develop recommendations for the improvement of migration policy. Methodology. As the methodological basis of the study, theories of socio-economic growth, modern concepts of institutional and structural economic reforms have been worked out, methods of statistical, structural-functional, and system analysis, grouping have been applied. Results. The imbalances of social security of Ukraine and the EU have been determined according to the following components: labour market and employment of population; reproduction of population and labour potential of the state; migration and food security. Areas of accelerated asymmetry increase in the social development of Ukraine and the EU, which serve as a key factor in “pushing out” the population and high rates of labour migration from Ukraine to the EU Member States, have been identified. Strategic approaches and means of equalizing critical deformations and convergence of the system of social security of Ukraine in the process of integration into the EU have been determined; tools for improving the state migration policy have been developed, which implementation would result in improvement of the systemic and structural characteristics of labour potential migration. Conclusion. The study results obtained represent the existence of significant disparities in key indicators and components of the social security system of Ukraine and the EU. Low level of living standards and social protection of population serves as a factor in increasing the scope of external labour migration and, correspondingly, a critical weakening of human and labour potential of the state. Tools and means of the state policy of convergence of the social security system of Ukraine and the EU should focus on achieving the goal of systemic development of human capital and be implemented in the following directions: ensuring demographic security, upgrading health care system, renovating the quality of education, preserving cultural values, establishing a competitive labour market, improving housing affordability, social infrastructure development, systemic social insurance of population.

Korumasız Faiz Parite Kuramı ve 2005-2014 Dönemi Portföy Yatırımlarını Türkiye’ye Çeken Finansal Faktörlerin Tespiti

Following the financial crisis of 2001, Turkey started to implement floating exchange rate regime and attracted significant amount of portfolio flows until the end of 2014 due to the structural economic reforms. In 2005-2014 period, external factors affecting the portfolio flows were relatively insignificant compared to the domestic factors and this paper aims to investigate the dominant economic variable of local economy on portfolio flows. According to the VAR analysis, the dominant economic variables on domestic economy are country risk premium-CDS and USD/TRY exchange rate respectively. The reasons behind the fact that exchange rate is more dominant than interest rate as an economic variable, can be listed as increasing current account deficits and decreasing saving ratios which stresses the importance of value-added production for Turkey.

Macroeconomic problems of the oil-exporting countries in the conditions of instability on the world market

Macroeconomic problems of the oil-exporting countries, determined by the instability on the world oil market are still a significant factor affecting the development and socio-economic situation in this group of states and their economic policies. This is especially pronounced in the context of falling world oil prices, when for oil-exporting countries the question of restructuring the economic structure dependent on the oil factor arises with particular urgency. However, the global system of international division of labor imposes serious structural constraints on opportunities and rates of structural economic reforms. At the same time, despite the peculiarities and diversity of the manifestations of macroeconomic problems in various oil exporting countries under the fluctuations in the oil market conditions, similar difficulties in the field of financial, economic, structural and foreign economic policies are manifested.

Motivating Factors of Investors to Involve in Supply Chain Management Practices: A Study on Ready Made Garment Industry in Bangladesh

The export-oriented clothing industry in Bangladesh, commonly known as ready made garment (RMG) occupies an inimitable position in the economy of Bangladesh. The aim of this study is to examine the intent of investors/manufacturers of Bangladeshi RMG to engage in supply chain management practices. Bangladeshi garment industry is the leading export earner as well as main sources of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) for Bangladesh over the decade. Development of the garment industry in Bangladesh was driven by the structural economic reforms of the 1980s, which opened the Bangladeshi economy towards foreign investment, deregulation of markets and privatization. Nowadays Bangladesh is well known across the globe for its vigorous success in the arena of readymade garment industry. On time deliverance, short lead time and desired quality product determines the criteria to gain the orders from international buyers. Thus, involve in supply chain management practices (SCMP) treated as compulsory requirement for these industries. To discover the absolute motive of RMG Investors/Manufacturers, the descriptive study was associated on 10 companies that are presently practiced SCM activities in Bangladesh. Standard questionnaires were utilized to accumulate the data. Research result showed 14 variables of Investor/Manufacturer motives are comprised in SCMP. Each variable was interconnected in nature. Four fundamental motivational factors stand as operational, economical, environmental & ethical, and social & behavioral. Shield motives of Investors/ Manufacturers can easily have recognized by these factors. This will assist the respective authority to control the RMG companies and acknowledged the forthcoming action steps to advance the supply chain management (SCM)system of this industry at Bangladesh. Rank order data interpretation represented that environmental motive and ethical motive are strong portent of Investor/Manufacturer motives to incorporate in Supply Chain Management practices.

The Golden Age of Tax Expenditures: Fiscal Welfare and Inequality in Portugal (1989–2011)

ABSTRACTThis paper studies social tax expenditures as an instrument of social policy, considering its broader social and political ramifications, particularly regressive distributive impacts, the targeting of social protection and making markets for non-state providers. Using OECD data and government budgets, we look at ‘tax breaks for social purposes’ in Portugal since the 1980s, with a focus on healthcare, educational and mortgage loan expenses. Portugal presents a comparatively high level of TBSP before the Great Recession. Why? Using Portugal as a theory-developing case, the paper argues that in the critical juncture following the late, double transition to democracy and structural economic reform, tax and welfare state developments combined to create social tax expenditures as a modality of targeted social expenditure favouring middle and higher strata. Once in place, a combination of powerful vested interests, obscure policy-making, regressive income distribution and high take-up rate across taxpaying groups obtained a path-dependent outcome, keeping inegalitarian and costly fiscal welfare growing during adverse fiscal conditions. Such a resilient outcome was curbed only in 2011 by the harsh conditionality of the economic and financial adjustment programme of the Portuguese bailout, an instance of how deep crises provide opportunities for path-shifting reconfigurations of social policy.

Global Markets and the Role of Geographical Proximity in Mexico's Employment Growth

AbstractIn the context of greater economic integration with global markets and structural economic reforms, this paper analyses regional and sectoral employment growth dynamics in Mexican states between 2004 and 2014. The methodology is based on spatial shift‐share analysis that explicitly considers interregional interactions in employment while assessing potential spillover effects arising from spatial interactions among states and industrial sectors. The results suggest a competitive effect from some industries—such as those related to science and specialized suppliers, intensive scale industries and dominated providers—which led to the formation of industrial corridors of neighboring states that connect the central region with the northeast region of the country. It was also found that proximity to states such as Nuevo Leon, Queretaro, Guanajuato, San Luis Potosi, and Puebla has positively influenced neighboring states in terms of employment growth rates. The results also support the argument of some sort of de‐concentration of economic activity in the capital, Mexico City, toward neighboring states.

The impacts of economic structure on China’s carbon dioxide emissions: an analysis with reference to other East Asian economies

ABSTRACTA change in economic structure influences the total energy consumption as well as CO2 emissions of a country, given the inherent difference in levels of energy intensity and energy fuel mix of different economic sectors. Its significance has been recognized in recent literature on China’s emission mitigation which could arguably raise China’s mitigation potential and thus the possibility of keeping the 2-degree trajectory on track. This article utilizes the past trend of economic structural change of five East Asian developed economies to project the energy consumption and CO2 emissions of China in the coming decades. A special delineation of the economic sector is made, putting private consumption together with the three typical economic production sectors, to resolve the mismatch between the statistical data of energy consumption and economic production, in that residential energy consumption is typically merged into the tertiary sector, although it does not directly correspond to gross domestic product (GDP) output. Results suggest that the level of CO2 emissions would be lower if China followed a development pathway emphasizing the development of the tertiary sector and continuously shrinking her secondary sector, making it possible for China to contribute more to global carbon mitigation. The impact from the rise of private consumption would be relatively insignificant compared to deindustrialization. In addition to continuous improvement in technology, economic structural change, which reduces carbon emission intensity, would be essential for China to be able to achieve the carbon emission level pledged in the Paris Agreement.Key policy insightsFor China, significant economic structural reform, particularly deindustrialization, is necessary to achieve the goal of ‘peak emission by 2030’.Any additional contribution from China to the global effort to maintain a 2-degree trajectory would be limited – from a ‘fair-contribution’ perspective based on share of population or GDP – because the implied mitigation targets would be almost impossible to achieve.If developing countries follow the pathway of developed economies, particularly in developing energy-intensive industries, energy consumption and CO2 emissions would significantly increase, reducing the possibility of keeping global temperature rise within the 2-degree Celsius benchmark.

Analysis of Pay Inequality and its Impacts on Growth and Performance in the Korean Manufacturing Industry Post Asian Financial Crisis

This paper examines the relationship between pay inequality, economic growth, and performance in Korea. Pay inequality is estimated by using Theil’s index to identify the factors determining the level of pay inequality, and establish its relationship with economic growth and performance. For the empirical results we use panel data on the Korean manufacturing sector for the period 1993 to 2003. It appears that a large portion of rising pay inequality can be attributed to rising relative pay among the small-sized firms, outside the capital city area and in the ICT sectors which were affected by the economic structural reform since 1997. The findings support the hypothesis of an “augmented” Kuznets Curve, according to which certain developed countries are found on an upward-sloping addendum to the original formulation of Kuznets.

Gerhard Colm and the Americanization of Weimar Economic Thought

Gerhard Colm and the Americanization of Weimar Economic Thought William Milberg (bio) Hitler succeeded in destroying the culture of Weimar in Germany and in ensuring that Berlin and Vienna would cease to be centres of cosmopolitan intellect. What he did not intend, but could not prevent, was the dispersion of this genius throughout the world. (Pulzer 1998, 336) INTRODUCTION Gerhard Colm's "genius" was in the driest of subfields—public finance—of the most dismal of the social sciences—economics. And yet his approach to the topic put public finance at the center of a rigorous treatment of the relation between capitalism and democracy. Public finance is "political economics," Colm argued, since public and private realms in capitalism are inextricably linked, and the achievement of social goals must be connected to society's willingness to pay for their attainment. Colm's writings and government work—which spanned from his time as a doctoral student in Freiburg to Germany's prestigious Kiel Institute of World Economics in the 1920s and 1930s, where he served as research director; to Roosevelt's New Deal Department of Commerce; to Truman's Council of Economic [End Page 989] Advisers in the 1940s and 1950s—consistently showed that a capitalist economy could be best understood, and managed for the public good, through careful attention to public finance. This paper traces how the theory of public finance and economic planning developed in Colm's Weimar years was quickly embraced at the highest levels of New Deal thinking in the Roosevelt administration. Many refugee scholars made the rapid and successful transition into new academic settings.1 But to move, within six years of arriving in the United States from the very country with which your new government is about to go to war, into a high-level career as a policy analyst is a rare feat, and a phenomenon much less studied. I attribute Colm's meteoric rise in Washington to the fact that his Weimar-era approach to structural economic reform dovetailed surprisingly well with New Deal thinking at the time. His rationales for government regulation of large corporations and for provision of fiscal stimulus and job creation, and even his case for economic planning were fundamentally compatible with the left-institutionalist thinking of Roosevelt and his brain trust. Adolph Berle and Rexford Tugwell's New Deal proposals were premised on the idea that the role of government in a capitalist economy should extend well beyond the provision of countercyclical fiscal policy to deal with long-run structural weaknesses of a market system. Colm not only supported such planning, but also argued that it was key to the democratic attainment of the "public interest." Colm's political economy of public finance had particular resonance in Washington at a time when capitalism was revealing its deep structural flaws and the federal bureaucracy was more open to innovation than perhaps at any time in US history. Particularly after the austerity-driven recession of 1937, President Roosevelt showed a keen interest in finding new ways for the capitalist state to more actively govern the economy. Colm was integral to the formulation of one of the final legislative accomplishments of the New Deal, and one of the major pieces of economic legislation in US history—the Employment Act of 1946. [End Page 990] Colm's powerful intellectual project has enormous relevance in the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2008, and in particular in this moment when the tax policy discussion has come largely unhinged from discussion of the public interest. These issues are discussed in the conclusion of this essay, which looks at how two key Colmian insights have been ignored since the 1980s. The first is Colm's enduring case for anticyclical fiscal policy and in particular for job creation rather than financial bailout or simple government spending. The second is the need to connect tax rates to spending plans, where the latter are the result of a democratic deliberation of the public interest. REIMAGINING PUBLIC FINANCE AMIDST THE TURMOIL OF WEIMAR Gerhard Colm was born in Hanover in 1897 and received a degree in 1921 from the University of Freiburg. After postgraduate work at the Universities of Munich...

Why the eurozone needs a minister of finance and economic reform

The Economic and Monetary Union remains incomplete and vulnerable. The current economic and political climate offers a window of opportunity to further deepen this Union in 2018. Completing the banking union and creating a roadmap for a capital markets union are both essential. One of the missing building blocks is a minister of finance and economic reform for the eurozone. This minister should have the powers and democratic legitimacy to better enforce the rules on budgetary and macroeconomic discipline. He or she should also be responsible for managing a budget line for the eurozone that can act as a countercyclical buffer when monetary policy and national fiscal policy are insufficient. This budget line, together with the European Structural Investment Funds, should also act as an instrument for enforcing and supporting structural economic reforms aimed at making the national economies more resilient to external shocks.

Assessing Administrative Reform in India

This paper outlines trends in efforts at administrative reform in India. It spans the shift of ideological paradigm of the Indian political economy. While the pre-1991 period was marked by a waning Statism, structural economic reforms marked a shift towards neo-liberal public management in the post 1991 period. This shift made the role of markets more salient as a framework for public services, in contrast to traditional perspectives of public administration. In the last two decades, even though some concern regarding administrative reform was expressed, substantive change took place outside the realm of the state machinery while blurring the borders between private and public institutions in delivering public services. The current political regime has added emphasis in the direction of using the bureaucracy to promote marketization and privatization in the allocation of public resources.

Urban demographic decline in the traditional industrial regions of the Urals (1959–2010)

This article considers the demographic disaster that occurred in traditional industrial Ural cities between the 1960s and the 2000s and demonstrates its scale. A ‘depressed city’ is a term denoting a stage in a city’s development: it is characterised by a decline in production, the emergence of unemployment, and a decrease in investment and migration, all of which is followed by a fall in population. This research is based on calculations and comparisons of the demographic dynamics found in the All-Soviet Union and All-Russian censuses of 1959, 1970, 1979, 1980, 2002, and 2010 from the perspective of a number of individual Ural towns. The Urals have faced the same problems as American cities of the Appalachian region, German cities of the Ruhr district, and British coalmining and metallurgical regions in the 20th century. The author proposes a method for revealing depressed settlements. It uses two demographic criteria: first, a decrease of population exceeding five percent per decade and, second, the stability of a negative demographic balance across several decades. In accordance with this method, it is established that during the late Soviet period (1959–89) 18 Ural towns could be characterised as depressed. Between the 1960s and 1980s, such tendencies had a local nature in the Urals, mainly affecting mining areas and some metallurgical centres. However, between the 1990s and 2000s structural economic reforms and a shift to market forms of economic management caused a dramatic decline in production, mass unemployment, and a drop in living standards: 56 Ural cities thus became depressed. Only the cities of Bashkortostan, where petrochemical production has a significant presence, showed population growth, while other regions witnessed a significant loss of population. Once a local problem, depression became a sub-regional phenomenon striking entire agglomerations and territorial production complexes. Major Ural cities were unable to absorb all of the migration from settlements and towns of the region, which caused an outflow of population from the Urals. The two post-Soviet decades can be characterised by large-scale urban decline in the Urals: there was, on average, a 6.4 per cent population decrease in all the cities of the Ural macro-region.

The Drivers of China’s Agricultural Production Efficiency over 40 Years

This paper systematically examines the main drivers’ of agricultural production later fuelled China’s economy over 40 years back since the period of the reform year 1978. China’s current boom development founded from radical structural economic reform of the country from 1978 to 1991. Though there was a less inflated deviation in production during the period from 1978 to 2017, yet for the sake of evaluation we preferred to focus on the available literature. Empirical evidence undoubtedly concurred that structural reform had a great impact on overall the country’s economy; especially agricultural sector later served as a bridge for the industrial developmental transition. Agriculture had registered less production inefficiency at the time of reform; this is because of the presence of rural land reform, price adjustment, market-oriented production, and perfectly functioning of institutions. The dozens of papers indulged that the contemporary great China shaped through the mercy of reform cumulative effects, particularly in agriculture, which took an elephant-share for current holistic development. To keep sustaining this sector production efficiency, the Chinese government should pay more attention on the a good stories of biotechnology and genetically modified organism (GMO).

Austerity and the household: The politics of economic storytelling

Austerity is a key organising concept governing the British political economy since the 2008 financial crisis, it is our present with a future that is still unfolding. As such the outcomes of Austerity are not yet fully known. As such, this paper argues that Austerity is an experiment in economic storytelling that seeks to cope with the post-crash British economy by trying to revive and consolidate the Anglo-American financialised growth model, and, by doing so, actively prevents the necessary structural economic reforms needed to achieve the desired revitalising of the economy. The first section brings into dialogue the structural accounts that explain why Austerity is the outcome of the 2008 financial crisis with the everyday understandings of how Austerity is made through processes by forging common-sense narratives of economic crisis. These accounts are refracted through a feminist political economy lens that is attuned to the dynamics of power – or who must pay the costs of Austerity. The second section details ‘the debt story’ in terms of what is told, but also untold, about the UK’s alleged debt crisis. The next section focuses on the household to make visible how Austerity crafts political states of intervention and exception that directly inhibit economic change or reform of financialisation. Finally, the paper concludes by considering what feminist-inspired analysis of household can reveal about the fundamental flaws of financialisation under the auspices of Austerity – that debts are both public and private at the same time, transforming the household sector into the ultimate guarantor of continued financialised expansion.

The Regulatory Challenges of Uberizationn in China: Classifying Ride-hailing Drivers

Like many other countries, the digitalisation of the Chinese economy arising from swift advances in information and communication technology has attracted substantial policy attention. China’s own ‘Industry 4.0’ is taking place against the backdrop of deep structural economic reforms that involve a fundamental shift from an export-led, manufacturing growth strategy to a domestic consumption-driven and service economy. The government has strongly encouraged the generation of new jobs through ‘mass entrepreneurship and innovation’ and the emergence of ‘new market entities’. New business models, production processes, and work organisation arising from the digitalisation push in China have posed challenges for a labour regulatory framework that has already experienced dramatic transformations in recent decades. An emergent group of workers in the growing ‘gig economy’ or ‘sharing economy’ are those carrying out various types of services through online platforms, such as ‘crowdwork’ and ‘work-on-demand’ via mobile applications such as Uber, Lyft, Task Rabbit, Upwork, and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. As observed in other jurisdictions, a contentious issue is the legal classification of workers’ statuses: are they deemed as ‘employees’ or self-employed contractors? Although this is not a new question from the perspective of labour law, the novel aspect of regulating digital work is arguably the role and function of online digital platforms in the employment relationship or other forms of contractual relationships, and accordingly, the material conditions and rights that these workers are entitled to.This paper aims to understand how Chinese courts have so far addressed the legal classification of drivers working in platform-based ride-hailing services, in the context of unclear legislative and policy guidance. This sector has experienced dramatic expansion in China, with the meteoric rise of local market leaders such as Didi and the entry of international competitors such as Uber. The nature of these drivers’ relationship with the companies that own the platforms has found its way into a growing number of court cases in recent years. In this paper, I analyse a cross-section of 20 cases from 2013 to 2016 brought before the local people’s courts in several large Chinese cities. These cases raise multifaceted issues concerning the existence of an employment relationship, liability over traffic accidents, insurance claims for repairs, and the inclusion of drivers’ income in divorce settlements. Analysing the different types of disputes can help shed light on the type and extent of legal obligations of platform-based companies and the rights of drivers. Despite the presence of some basic criteria in Chinese labour law for determining an employment relationship, there is considerable uncertainty and inconsistency in the application of such criteria in practice, especially across the variety of claims involving these drivers. This inconsistency may ultimately be resolved by a new opinion issued by the Ministry of Transport and other departments in July 2016, which will allow these companies to legally operate through a licensing system and abide by certain rules that include the conclusion of labour contracts with its drivers. Nevertheless, this continues to be a highly contentious and hotly debated issue at the time of writing.

Another ‘Lost Decade’? Crisis and Structural Adjustment in Europe and Latin America

With the recent economic crisis, conditional lending and mandatory structural reforms arrived in the European Union. Greece and a number of other crisis countries were subjected to a rigorous process of economic adjustment in exchange for emergency credits from the troika (European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund). Conditionality and structural adjustment were first tested in Latin America. This article compares the European adjustment programmes with the structural reforms introduced in Latin American countries several decades earlier. By doing so, the article reveals strong parallels in spite of the fact that the initial adjustment programmes are rarely considered a success story and that the neoliberal ideology which inspired the related reforms is widely made responsible for the recent crisis. The fact that there are differences in the adjustment programmes is not the result of a re-think of the neoliberal agenda, but of the specific dynamics of European integration and of pragmatic responses to financial threats. However, the article also shows parallels in the outcome of structural adjustment. Some European crisis countries face a ‘lost decade’ quite similar to the one experienced in Latin America in the 1980s.