Twin crises deepen Gulf states’ policy competition and independence

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 481-487
Author(s):  
Karen E. Young
Keyword(s):  
Labor Markets ◽  
Job Creation ◽  
Domestic Demand ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Gulf States ◽  
Policy Shift ◽  
Twin Crises ◽  
Competing Priorities ◽  
Domestic Economies

A crisis often presents an opportunity for policy shift and a time to get ahead of the competition. But for the Gulf Arab states, the twin crises of the Covid-19 pandemic and the collapse of oil prices in 2020 have accelerated trends already underway to differentiate their economic policies and force more aggressive responses to demands for job creation and market liberalization. The Covid-19 pandemic has called upon states to intervene and support domestic economies, making the competing priorities of shrinking public sector payrolls and stimulating domestic demand all the more difficult. What emerges are trade-offs that reveal leadership priorities, targeted support, and important distinctions within the ever-weakening body of the GCC on a range of policies from immigration, labor markets, fiscal programs and taxes, to monetary policy.

scholarly journals Risk, Recessions and Resilience: Towards Sustainable Local Labor Markets through Employment Portfolio Analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 7926
Author(s):  
Bharman Gulati ◽  
Stephan Weiler
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Labor Markets ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
The United States ◽  
Local Economy ◽  
Local Labor Markets ◽  
Local Labor Market ◽  
Business Survival ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
New Business

This paper explores the role of local labor market dynamics on the survival of new businesses. The characteristics of the local labor market are likely to influence the survival of new businesses, the level of entrepreneurship, and the resilience of the regional economy. We apply portfolio theory to evaluate employment-based and income-based measures of risk-and-return trade-offs in local labor markets on new business survival in the United States. Our results show that volatility in local labor markets has a positive impact on new business survival, especially in Metropolitan Statistical Areas. The results are robust across different timeframes, including during economic downturns, thus highlighting the contribution of new businesses in developing the resilience of the local economy, and further promoting sustainable regional economic development.

scholarly journals Advancing Relevance, Credibility, Legitimacy, and Effectiveness as a Heuristic for Local-Parallel Scenarios

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas A. Cradock-Henry ◽  
Bob Frame
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
Scenario Development ◽  
Personal Time ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Economic Trends ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Competing Priorities

The parallel scenario process provides a framework for developing plausible scenarios of future conditions. Combining greenhouse gas emissions, social and economic trends, and policy responses, it enables researchers and policy makers to consider global-scale interactions, impacts and implications of climate change. Increasingly, researchers are developing extended scenarios, based on this framework, and incorporating them into adaptation planning and decision-making processes at the local level. To enable the identification of possible impacts and assess vulnerability, these local-parallel scenarios must successfully accommodate diverse knowledge systems, multiple values, and competing priorities including both “top down” modeling and “bottom-up” participatory processes. They must link across scales, to account for the ways in which global changes affect and influence decision-making in local places. Due to the growing use of scenarios, there is value in assessing these developments using criteria or, more specifically, heuristics that may be implicitly acknowledged rather than formally monitored and evaluated. In this Perspective, we reflect on various contributions regarding the value of heuristics and propose the adoption of current definitions for Relevance, Credibility, and Legitimacy for guiding local scenario development as the most useful as well as using Effectiveness for evaluation purposes. We summarize the internal trade-offs (personal time, clarity-complexity, speed-quality, push-pull) and the external stressors (equity and the role of science in society) that influence the extent to which heuristics are used as “rules of thumb,” rather than formal assessment. These heuristics may help refine the process of extending the parallel scenario framework to the local and enable cross-case comparisons.

scholarly journals Stimulating Domestic Demand as a Key Factor of Economic Growth

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-129
Author(s):  
Mikhail V. Ershov ◽  
Anna S. Tanasova ◽  
Elena Yu. Sokolova
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Interest Rates ◽  
Federal District ◽  
Domestic Demand ◽  
Social Aspect ◽  
Investment Efficiency ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Russian Economy ◽  
Regional Product ◽  
The Right

World economy shows a high level of uncertainty. There are considerable risks of economic slowdown and stock market collapse. For many years, the Russian economy has been dependent on external factors. Recently, when anti-Russian sanctions are imposed, it is particularly important to find internal sources of growth, including domestic demand as the most significant factor. However, environment for the development of the Russian economy remains unfavourable due to high interest rates, volatile exchange rate, increasing tax rates, and ambiguous economic policy. Based on the analysis of regional statistics (including some regions of the Central Federal District), we confirmed the weak relationship between investments and gross regional product (GRP) revealed by other scientists. This may be the result of poor investment efficiency and its low multiplier effect. In this situation, the right choice of sectors with high multipliers and investment efficiency creates the potential for increasing domestic demand. Simultaneously, mechanisms for the expansion of resources ensuring regional economic growth play an important role. In this regard, we developed approaches aimed at the creation of conditions for the expansion of regional financial resources to support economic activity, domestic demand and economy in general, considering a social aspect of these processes. Some of the proposed mechanisms stimulate the participation of banks in financing economic processes, federal or regional bond issuance (the Bank of Russia would be the main buyer), etc. These proposals consider the experience of other countries in stimulating economic growth, including at the regional level. Financial regulators and relevant regional agencies can use the research results for developing economic policies.

Background and Context

2020 ◽  
pp. 17-42
Author(s):  
Kristian Coates Ulrichsen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Arabian Peninsula ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Abu Dhabi ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Gulf States ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Coup Attempt

This chapter provides historical context to the tensions between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Abu Dhabi from the mid-nineteenth century up until 2011. The chapter covers the emergence of Qatar and the disruptive impact on all the smaller Gulf States, including the UAE, of Saudi expansionary designs on the Arabian Peninsula. Beginning in the 1990s, a new generation of Qatari leaders began to develop political and economic policies that carved a more autonomous role for Qatar in regional affairs. In February 1996, the same four states that would blockade Qatar in 2017 were linked to an abortive coup attempt against the Emir of Qatar, and the chapter ends by examining the aftermath of the coup attempt and the trajectory of Saudi pressure on Qatar in the 2000s.

scholarly journals Addressing Challenges of Urban Water Management in Chinese Sponge Cities via Nature-Based Solutions

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 2788
Author(s):  
Yunfei Qi ◽  
Faith Ka Shun Chan ◽  
Colin Thorne ◽  
Emily O’Donnell ◽  
Carlotta Quagliolo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Flood Risk ◽  
Urban Water ◽  
Operating Life ◽  
Rapid Urbanization ◽  
Urban Flood ◽  
Natural Processes ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Fit For Purpose ◽  
Competing Priorities

Urban flooding has become a serious issue in most Chinese cities due to rapid urbanization and extreme weather, as evidenced by severe events in Beijing (2012), Ningbo (2013), Guangzhou (2015), Wuhan (2016), Shenzhen (2019), and Chongqing (2020). The Chinese “Sponge City Program” (SCP), initiated in 2013 and adopted by 30 pilot cities, is developing solutions to manage urban flood risk, purify stormwater, and provide water storage opportunities for future usage. Emerging challenges to the continued implementation of Sponge Cities include (1) uncertainty regarding future hydrological conditions related to climate change projections, which complicates urban planning and designing infrastructure that will be fit for purpose over its intended operating life, and (2) the competing priorities of stakeholders and their reluctance to make trade-offs, which obstruct future investment in the SCP. Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) is an umbrella concept that emerged from Europe, which encourages the holistic idea of considering wider options that combine “Blue–Green” practices with traditional engineering to deliver “integrated systems of Blue–Green–Grey infrastructure”. NBS includes interventions making use of natural processes and ecosystem services for functional purposes, and this could help to improve current pilot SCP practices. This manuscript reviews the development of the SCP, focusing on its construction and design aspects, and discusses how approaches using NBS could be included in the SCP to tackle not only urban water challenges but also a wide range of social and environmental challenges, including human health, pollution (via nutrients, metals, sediments, plastics, etc.), flood risk, and biodiversity.

Economic reform will falter with new Turkish cabinet

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Monetary Policy ◽  
Economic Reform ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Job Creation ◽  
Domestic Demand ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Political Risks ◽  
Financial Difficulties

Significance Presenting his government's programme on November 25, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu promised to keep his election campaign pledges, complete major infrastructure projects, maintain fiscal stability and implement structural change. Impacts Domestic demand will strengthen in the short term. However, firms in labour intensive sectors may face financial difficulties, and new job creation may be slow. Currency and capital markets are likely to remain volatile and overreact to trends in monetary policy and the current account. Opportunities exist for those investors able to tap into the government's priorities and avoid political risks.

Place-based economic policies see political resistance

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Community Colleges ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
Job Creation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Supply Side ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
Demand Side ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Local Nature

Subject Place-based policies. Significance Economic inequalities within countries are rising worldwide; the consequences are increasingly apparent in productivity, health and other indicators. Calls for place-based policymaking to tackle such inequalities are growing in the United States and elsewhere. Research into the effectiveness of such policies is limited, discouraged by their fragmented and local nature. However, what research there is shows scant evidence of net job creation or poverty reduction. Impacts Supply-side policies such as retraining and fostering entrepreneurship may more successfully attract firms than demand-side incentives. The local nature of place-based policies will require more investment in community colleges and location-specific retraining of workers. The share of US workers employed in farming is falling steadily; 'rural small-town America' may disappear even with place-based policies. The poorest groups of society are vulnerable to COVID-19; it is likely to raise inequality and make place-based policymaking more necessary.

scholarly journals Black Work, Green Money: Remittances, Ritual, and Domestic Economies in Southern Kyrgyzstan

Slavic Review ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madeleine Reeves
Keyword(s):  
Labor Markets ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Labor Migration ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Migrant Families ◽  
Migrant Work ◽  
Seasonal Labor ◽  
Domestic Economies

Drawing on ethnographic and survey data, Madeleine Reeves explores the meanings and impact of large-scale seasonal labor migration to Russia on a group of four kin-related villages in southern Kyrgyzstan. Although remittances have come to figure centrally in domestic budgets of migrant families, it is to questions of political economy that we must turn to understand the shift away from small-scale farming toward migrant work. Reeves examines a range of factors mediating decisions to migrate, including the role of social networks and sibling hierarchies; the emergence of growing economic differentials between migrant and nonmigrant households, and the growing importance for young men of a period of work “in town” (shaarda) in proving their eligibility for marriage. Although patterns of economic activity in southern Kyrgyzstan have changed dramatically in recent years, Reeves argues that new forms of engagement in distant labor markets are also being used to sustain patterns of ritual gifting and expressions of ethnic and religious identity that are imagined and articulated precisely as expressions of social continuity.

scholarly journals Place Based Policies with Unemployment

2013 ◽  
Vol 103 (3) ◽  
pp. 238-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Kline ◽  
Enrico Moretti
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Labor Markets ◽  
Housing Market ◽  
Job Creation ◽  
Local Labor Markets ◽  
Local Labor Market ◽  
Simple Search

We develop a stylized model of frictional local labor markets with the goal of studying the efficiency of unemployment differences across areas. The model adapts the widely used Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides framework to a local labor market setting with a competitive housing market. The result is a simple search analogue of the classic Roback model that provides a tractable environment for studying the effects of local job creation efforts.

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