World Bank: Transition Economies (Topic)最新文献

{"title":"Preferential Trading in South Asia","authors":"Tercan Baysan, A. Panagariya, N. Pitigala","doi":"10.1596/1813-9450-3813","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-3813","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines the economic case for the South Asia Free Trade Area (SAFTA) Agreement signed on January 6 th, 2004 by India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives. It starts with a detailed analysis of the preferential trading arrangements in South Asia to look at the region's experience to date and to draw lessons. Specifically, the study examines the most effective free trade area in existence, i.e., the India-Sri Lanka Free Trade Area, and evaluates the developments under the South Asian Preferential Trade Area (SAPTA). The paper concludes that, considered in isolation, the economic case for SAFTA is quite weak. When compared with the rest of the world, the region is tiny both in terms of economic size as measured by GDP (and per capita incomes) and the share in the world trade. It is argued that prima facie, these facts make it likely that trade diversion would be dominant as a result of SAFTA. This point is reinforced by the presence of high levels of protection in the region and the tendency of the member countries to establish highly restrictive 'sectoral exceptions/sensitive lists' and stringent 'rules of origin'. We argue that SAFTA makes sense only in the context of a much broader strategy of creating a larger preferential trade area in the region that specifically would encompass China and the member nations of the Association of South East Asian Nations. In turn, the case for the latter is strategic: the pursuit of regionalism in the Americas and Europe has created increasing discrimination against Asian exports to those regions, which must inevitably impact the region's terms of trade adversely. An Asian bloc could be a potential instrument of changing incentives for the trade blocs in the Americas and Europe and forcing multilateral freeing of trade. Assuming that the SAFTA Agreement is here to stay, the paper also suggests steps to ensure that the Agreement can be made more effective in promoting intra-regional trade, while minimizing the likely trade-diversion costs and maximizing the potential benefits.","PeriodicalId":280355,"journal":{"name":"World Bank: Transition Economies (Topic)","volume":"58 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134079089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Business Environment and Firm Entry: Evidence from International Data","authors":"","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.557830","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.557830","url":null,"abstract":"Using a comprehensive database of firms in Western and Eastern Europe, we study how the business environment in a country drives the creation of new firms. Our focus is on regulations governing entry. We find entry regulations hamper entry, especially in industries that naturally should have high entry. Also, value added per employee in naturally \"high entry\" industries grows more slowly in countries with onerous regulations on entry. Interestingly, regulatory entry barriers have no adverse effect on entry in corrupt countries, only in less corrupt ones. Taken together, the evidence suggests bureaucratic entry regulations are neither benign nor welfare improving. However, not all regulations inhibit entry. In particular, regulations that enhance the enforcement of intellectual property rights or those that lead to a better developed financial sector do lead to greater entry in industries that do more R&D or industries that need more external finance.","PeriodicalId":280355,"journal":{"name":"World Bank: Transition Economies (Topic)","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2004-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133573889","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Vicious Circles of Control: Regional Governments and Insiders in Privatized Russian Enterprises","authors":"Raj M. Desai, Itzhak Goldberg","doi":"10.1596/1813-9450-2287","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-2287","url":null,"abstract":"How can one account for the puzzling behavior of insider-managers who, in stripping assets from the veryfirms they own, appear to be stealing from one pocket to fill the other? The authors suggest that such asset-stripping and failure to restructure are the consequences of interactions between insiders (manager-owners) and regional governments in a particular property rights regime. In this regime, the ability to realize value is limited by uncertainty and illiquidity, so managers have little incentive to increase value. As the central institutions that rule Russia have ceded their powers to the regions, regional governments have imposed various distortions on enterprises to protect local employment. Prospective outsider-investors doubt they can acquire the control rights they need for restructuring firms and doubt they can avoid the distortions regional governments impose on the firms in which they might invest. The result: little restructuring and little new investment. And regional governments, knowing the firms'taxable cash flows will have been reduced through cash flow diversion, have responded by collecting revenues in kind. To disentangle these vicious circles of control, the authors propose a pilot for transforming ownership in insider-dominated firms through a system of simultaneous tax-debt-for-equity conversion and resale through competitive auctions. The objective: to show regional governments, for example, that a more sustainable way to protect employment is to give managers incentives to increase enterprises'value by transferring effective control to investors. The proposed mechanism would provide cash benefits to insiders who agree to sell control to outside investors. The increased cash revenue (rather than in-kind or money surrogates) would enable regional governments to finance safety nets for the unemployed and to promote other regional initiatives.","PeriodicalId":280355,"journal":{"name":"World Bank: Transition Economies (Topic)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128815092","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Subjective Economic Welfare","authors":"M. Ravallion, Michael Lokshin","doi":"10.1596/1813-9450-2106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-2106","url":null,"abstract":"Paradoxically, when economists analyze a policy's impact on welfare they typically assume that people are the best judges of their own welfare, yet resist directly asking them if they are better off. Early ideas of\"utility\"were explicitly subjective, but modern economists generally ignore people's expressed views about their own welfare. Even using a broad set of conventional socioeconomic data may not reflect well people's subjective perceptions of their poverty. The authors examine the determinants of subjective economic welfare in Russia, including its relationship to conventional objective indicators. For data on subjective perceptions, they use survey responses in which respondents rate their level of welfare from\"poor\"to\"rich\"on a nine-point ladder. As an objective indicator of economic welfare, they use the most common poverty indicator in Russia today, in which household incomes are deflated by household-specific poverty lines. Paradoxically, when economists analyze a policy's impact on welfare they typically assume that people are the best judges of their own welfare, yet resist directly asking them if they are better off. Early ideas of\"utility\"were explicitly subjective, but modern economists generally ignore people's expressed views about their own welfare. Even using a broad set of conventional socioeconomic data may not reflect well people's subjective perceptions of their poverty. The authors examine the determinants of subjective economic welfare in Russia, including its relationship to conventional objective indicators. For data on subjective perceptions, they use survey responses in which respondents rate their level of welfare from\"poor\"to\"rich\"on a nine-point ladder. As an objective indicator of economic welfare, they use the most common poverty indicator in Russia today, in which household incomes are deflated by household-specific poverty lines.","PeriodicalId":280355,"journal":{"name":"World Bank: Transition Economies (Topic)","volume":"449 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1999-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133737444","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Private Ownership and Corporate Performance: Some Lessons from Transition Economies","authors":"R. Frydman, Cheryl W. Gray, Marek Hessel, Andrzej Rapaczyński","doi":"10.1596/1813-9450-1830","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-1830","url":null,"abstract":"Using a large sample of data on mid-sized firms in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, the authors compare the performance of privatized and state firms in the environment of the postcommunist transition. They find strong evidence that private ownership--except for worker ownership-- dramatically improves corporate performance. They find no evidence of the\"privatization shock\"that was supposed to afflict the behavior of firms undergoing rapid changes in ownership. Instead, they observe a severe shock from marketization, affecting both state and privatized firms--but a shock for which private ownership provides a powerful antidote. Among their other findings are : a) Private ownership is most effective in improving a firm's ability to generate revenues, an area in which entrepreneurship seems to be required. Ownership also affects a firm's ability to remove the rather obvious cost inefficiencies inherited from the past, but this effect is less pronounced, as both state and privatized firms engage in significant cost restructuring. b) Privatized firms generate significantly more employment gains than state firms. It is their superior ability to generate revenues, rather than competence at cost-cutting, that allows them to sustain or expand employment. This is why privatization is the dominant strategy for expanding employment in transition. c) Outsider-owned firms perform better than insider-owned firms on most performance measures, but there is enough difference between employee- and manager-owned firms to suggest that putting all insiders under a common umbrella is unjustified. Although the effects of managerial ownership are ambiguous, putting employees in control appears to offer no advantages over state ownership on any measure and creates a distinct disadvantage in terms of employment performance. d) Among outsider owners, privatization funds seem to do as well at revitalizing the privatized companies as do other outsider owners; in particular, the authors find no evidence that funds are less effective than'strategic'investors. And foreign investors provide perhaps less of an edge than might have been expected; their impact appears no stronger than that of major domestic outsiders.","PeriodicalId":280355,"journal":{"name":"World Bank: Transition Economies (Topic)","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1997-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122095881","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Why is Unemployment Low in the Former Soviet Union? Enterprise Restructuring and the Structure of Compensation","authors":"S. Commander, A. Tolstopiatenko","doi":"10.1596/1813-9450-1617","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-1617","url":null,"abstract":"The authors explain why in the Former Soviet Union (FSU) - especially Russia - unemployment has remained low and employment in state and privatized firms has remained high, while at the same time the informal or unofficial economy has grown swiftly. They trace this development to a combination of factors, including the control regime of state and privatized firms, the nature of worker compensation, and privatized firms, and the nature of subsidies or financial supports that firms continue to receive. Firms have remained the primary site for social protection. Subsidies for social benefits have effectively been a subsidy to employment and have promoted the workers' continuing attachment to these firms. Partly because the subsidies still flow and partly because of the firms' internal control structure, firms have held back on shedding labor. Firms typically work at low capacity. Instead of laying workers off, they significantly cut hours and wages, sometimes through wage arrears. The share of worker compensation that is nonmonetary had grown during the transition, and is significant. So workers search for additional sources of income, either moonlight or get involved in the informal economy. Why has this happened? Privatization has so far failed to keep firms from behaving as if they have important social responsibilities. Managers may have more discretion in decisionmaking, but seem to be reluctant to fire workers. This reluctance reflects various pressures, including insider coalitions and pressure from local and federal governments to limit the flow to unemployment. One factor may be the need to keep workers cooperative and possibly repel outsider interest. And in the FSU, many firms continue to operate under soft budget constraints, so they are under less pressure to reduce employment levels than firms in Eastern and Central Europe. The authors show that under certain conditions if the subsidy to insider-dominated firms disappears, those firms will scale down employment and the provision of benefits. In a firm with two divisions - one that produces and one that provides benefits - the dominant (producing ) division will tend to close down the benefits-providing division if the firm assumes a simple majority decision rule.","PeriodicalId":280355,"journal":{"name":"World Bank: Transition Economies (Topic)","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1996-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121419478","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Efficiency in Bulgaria's Schools: A Nonparametric Study","authors":"Z. Bogetic, S. Chattopadhyay","doi":"10.1596/1813-9450-1422","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-1422","url":null,"abstract":"In Eastern European countries in large social sectors such as education, inefficiency and technical deficiencies are the legacy of the old command economy. The authors examine the technical efficiency of classroom use (defined as the number of classes per classroom in one transitional economy -- Bulgaria. They examine the concept of efficiency in 199 urban and rural municipalities, using data envelopment analysis to generate efficiency scores. Those scores -- discussed in terms of frequency and regional distribution -- are then regressed on several socioeconomic variables. The researchers find significant relationships between the efficiency scores, on the one hand, and, on the other, the proportion of students in the population under age 20 (demand indicator), the number of teachers (variable input), the percentage of the municipal budget spent on education, and the degree of urbanization. Efficiency in the use of classrooms (in terms of classes) varies considerably among municipalities, and the efficiency is highest in the capital city of Sofia. To the extent that some variation in efficiency reflects demand or demographic factos, there is little that policy can do to change the pattern. But some changes in municipal policy could increase the efficiency of classroom use without jeopardizing the fundamental learning objective. In some rural areas, for example, where there are few students and classroom utilization is low, it may be possible to consolidate several grades into multigrade classes and reduce the size of the teaching (and nonteaching) staff, while maintaining the quality of learning and maximizing the use of such fixed inputs as classrooms. To the extent that it is possible to use such classrooms more efficiently, savings could be generated in the municipalities that need them most: in demographically sparse, poor municipalities with a weak economic base. Those savings could then be reallocated to other educational essentials, such as equipment and materials.","PeriodicalId":280355,"journal":{"name":"World Bank: Transition Economies (Topic)","volume":"53 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1995-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132453206","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}