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Living Standards in Central Asia

MOCT-MOST: Economic Policy in Transitional Economies -     

Have Asian trade agreements reduced trade costs?

Regionalization of trade in East Asia increased in the 1990s, and has been accompanied by a growing number of trade agreements. The wave of trade agreements is in part a response to the need to facilitate trade in order to make regional value chains more profitable. This paper draws on a rich Australian database for the period 1990–2007, which allows us to control for distance and commodity characteristics and to identify cross-country variation in trade costs. The results, indicating the extent to which East Asian countries’ trade costs have fallen over the regionalization period relative to changes in other regions’ trade costs, provide evidence of the existence of effective policy steps to facilitate trade and also that these steps have multilateral as well as bilateral or regional benefits.     

What Can Countries in Other Regions Learn from Social Security Reform in Latin America?

About a dozen countries in Latin America have enacted reformsthat include elements being contemplated elsewhere, includingthe partial privatization of social security. It is not easyto draw universal lessons for social security reform from theexperience of countries such as Argentina, Chile, and Mexico,however, where sizeable public pension systems went bankruptbefore the populations aged, mainly because of mismanagement.Most developing economies have much smaller social securitysystems. Relatively well-managed systems in industrial countriesface problems that are long term in nature and have been broughtabout by an aging population. The experiences of Latin Americanevertheless offer some general lessons for countries in otherparts of the world. These lessons relate to changes in labormarket incentives accompanying reforms and how workers reactto them, government actions that have met with success in managingthe transition to funded pensions, and the expectations of individualsfrom social security systems. Latin America's reforms suggestthat the most effective approach is to keep payroll taxes low,governments solvent, and social security systems focused onproviding reasonable insurance against poverty in old age. JEL codes: G23, H31, H53, H55, J26     

Challenges Facing Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in the Kyrgyz Republic, 1996-7

Based on high quality household survey data from 1996 and 1997, this paper analyzes the challenges facing non-farm household businesses in the Kyrgyz Republic. The non-farm businesses are small, concentrated in service activities, and rely on family labour. They are new enterprises established after the transition from central planning began, rather than state enterprises formed during the planning era and subsequently privatized. High taxes, low product demand, and high input prices are the three most cited challenges, while the problems facing small businesses do not include credit availability, capacity concerns, input availability, or labour costs. Frequent mention of licence difficulties and extortion, in addition to high taxes, indicates that the grabbing hand of the government is a major obstacle to private businesses. The government is also failing to maintain law and order; in 1996 a quarter of the businesses report violence among their three main challenges.     

European integration and unemployment

Symes, V. 1995: UNEMPLOYMENT IN EUROPE - PROBLEMS AND POLICIES. London and New York: Routledge, £40.00 cased, £12.99 paper.

Alogoskoufis et al 1995: UNEMPLOYMENT: CHOICES FOR EUROPE. Monitoring European Integration 5, London: Centre for Economic Policy Research, £10.00, paper.

Blanchard et al 1995: SPANISH UNEMPLOYMENT — IS THERE A SOLUTION? London: Centre for Economic Policy Research, £14.95, paper.

Coates, K. and Holland, S. 1995: FULL EMPLOYMENT FOR EUROPE — THE COMMISSION, THE COUNCIL AND THE DEBATE ON EMPLOYMENT IN THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT 1994-95. Nottingham: Spokesman for European Labour Forum, £9.99, paper.

Local Economy Policy Unit: CAN UNEMPLOYMENT BE CUT BY HALF BY 2000? A DISCUSSION STATEMENT PRESENTED BY THE BERLIN SENATE'S ADVISORY COUNCIL FOR LABOUR MARKET POLICY. London: Local Economic Policy Unit, £12.00, paper.