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Improving Fiscal Transparency to Raise Government Efficiency and Reduce Corruption Vulnerabilities in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe
This departmental paper investigates how countries in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe (CESEE) can improve fiscal transparency, thereby raising government efficiency and reducing corruption vulnerabilities.
The Russian State’s Size and its Footprint: Have They Increased?
The short answer: The size of the Russian State has not increased much in the last few years, but its economic footprint remains significant. Concretely, the state's size increased from about 32 percent of GDP in 2012 to 33 percent in 2016, not far from the EBRD's estimate of 35 percent for 2005-10. This is different from the mainstream narrative, which contends that the state's size doubled in the last decade. However, a deep state footprint is reflected in a relatively high state share in formal sector activity (close to 40 percent) and formal sector employment (about 50 percent). The deep footprint is also reflected in market competition and efficiency. Although sectors in which the state is present are more concentrated, concentration is large even in sectors where the state's share is low. This suggests the need to protect and promote competition, in particular in state procurement. Finally, state-owned enterprises' performance appears weaker than that of privately-owned firms, which may be subtracting from growth.
The Mystery of Missing Real Spillovers in Southern Africa
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the economies of South Africa and its neighbors (Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe) are tightly integrated with each other. There are important institutional linkages. Across the region there are also large flows of goods and capital, significant financial sector interconnections, as well as sizeable labor movements and associated remittance flows. These interconnections suggest that South Africa’s GDP growth rate should affect positively its neighbors’, a point we illustrate formally with the help of numerical simulations of the IMF’s GIMF model. However, our review and update of the available econometric evidence suggest ...
Exchange Rate Regimes in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe
There are 13 countries in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (CESEE) with floating exchange rate regimes, de jure. This paper uses the framework pioneered by Frankel and Wei (1994) and extended in Frankel and Wei (2008) to show that most of them have been tracking either the euro or the US dollar in recent years. Eight countries, all of them current or aspiring EU members, track the euro. Of the five countries keying on the US dollar in various degrees, all but one belong to the Commonwealth of Independent States. The paper shows that the extent to which each country’s currency tracks the euro (or the dollar) is correlated with the structure of its external trade and finance. However, some countries appear to track the EUR or USD to an extent which appears inconsistent with inflation targeting, trade or financial integration, or the extent of business cycle synchronization. The phenomenon is particularly pronounced among the countries in the CESEE euro bloc, which may be deliberately gravitating around the euro in anticipation of eventually joining the Euro Area.
Regional Disparities and Fiscal Federalism in Russia
This paper examines how regional disparities have evolved in Russia and how Russia’s system of intergovernmental fiscal relations is managing these disparities. Regional disparities have fallen over the past two decades but remain relatively high. Socioeconomic outcomes remain worse in lagging regions despite faster growth and convergence in income levels. The twin shocks of COVID-19 and lower oil prices appear to have impacted richer regions disproportionately. Compared to other large countries with federal systems of government, Russia stands out with its high reliance on direct taxes as a revenue source for its regions. Transfers from the federal budget to the regions provide some redistribution by reducing the dispersion in real per capita fiscal spending, but also tend to be associated with lower growth. The Russian fiscal system offers degrees of redistribution and risk sharing of around 26 and 18 percent, respectively—with in-kind social transfers contributing the most. Finally, federal transfers in the aggregate tend to be procyclical and are also fairly unresponsive to shocks to regions’ own revenues.
Eight Very Bad Nights: A Collection of Hanukkah Noir
The perfect holiday gift for the crime fiction lover in your life! Curated by New York Times bestselling author Tod Goldberg, this collection of eleven delightful and twisted Hanukkah capers will entertain you through all eight nights of the Festival of Lights. In Stefanie Leder’s “Not a Dinner Party Person,” an unstable pharmaceutical rep tries not to kill anyone at her family dinner on the last night of Hanukkah; in Ivy Pochoda’s “Johnny Christmas,” a taciturn Gulf War vet commissions a tattoo from a man he knew from his prison days, a man not named Christmas but Goldfarb; in David L. Ulin’s “Shamash,” it’s the last night of Hanukkah, and a live-at-home adult son consid...
The East African Community
The East African Community (EAC) has been among the fastest growing regions in sub-Saharan Africa in the past decade or so. Nonetheless, the recent growth path will not be enough to achieve middle-income status and substantial poverty reduction by the end of the decade—the ambition of most countries in the region. This paper builds on methodologies established in the growth literature to identify a group of countries that achieved growth accelerations and sustained growth to use as benchmarks to evaluate the prospects, and potential constraints, for EAC countries to translate their recent growth upturn into sustained high growth. We find that EAC countries compare favorably to the group of...
Exchange Rate Regimes in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe
There are 13 countries in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (CESEE) with floating exchange rate regimes, de jure. This paper uses the framework pioneered by Frankel and Wei (1994) and extended in Frankel and Wei (2008) to show that most of them have been tracking either the euro or the US dollar in recent years. Eight countries, all of them current or aspiring EU members, track the euro. Of the five countries keying on the US dollar in various degrees, all but one belong to the Commonwealth of Independent States. The paper shows that the extent to which each country’s currency tracks the euro (or the dollar) is correlated with the structure of its external trade and finance. However, some countries appear to track the EUR or USD to an extent which appears inconsistent with inflation targeting, trade or financial integration, or the extent of business cycle synchronization. The phenomenon is particularly pronounced among the countries in the CESEE euro bloc, which may be deliberately gravitating around the euro in anticipation of eventually joining the Euro Area.
