The impact of digitalization on the economic convergence of the Russian insurance market

The most important trends in the modern economy are convergence – the process of convergence of activities of various economic entities and digitalization. Their interaction creates new opportunities for increasing the competitiveness and efficiency of insurance companies. The purpose of the paper is to identify economic convergence processes taking place on the Russian insurance market, which, when using different digitalization products, lead to new business models of partnership. The results of the conducted empirical analysis confirm the existence of economic convergence processes at all levels (intra-segment, intersegment and inter-sectoral) on the Russian insurance market. The proof of this is the significant reduction in the number of insurers in 2021 to 158, compared to 600 insurers in 2011. Over the past three years, the share of sales of insurance products with the participation of banks acting as intermediaries in the sales of insurance services has increased by 1.5 times. Also, along with insurance companies, health care companies have increasingly become involved in such operations. Digitalization products (information technologies (IT); IT and IT platforms; IT, IT platforms and networks) have a huge impact on the forms of organizing joint business with the participation of insurance companies. Some insurance companies do not provide opportunities to issue an insurance policy online or pay an insurance premium, i.e. they use sites for only minor customer interactions. Most often, Russian insurance companies use mobile applications. The impact of various digitalization products at different levels of economic convergence of insurers initiates multivariate business models of joint business.

Analysis of currency integration indicators in the Eurasian Economic Union

For the world economy, the integration process is one of the most widespread and global. The Eurasian Economic Union is a typical example of bringing countries together to achieve shared goals and to face diverse challenges successfully by implementing coordinated policies and harmonizing the regulatory framework. The formation of a monetary union will be the next stage of integration. The EAEU member States need to achieve a certain level of economic convergence for that purpose. Thus, the main aim of this research article is to analyze some of the economic indicators of the EAEU in order to identify common problems, the solution of which will be necessary for the successful formation and functioning of the monetary union. The authors have studied such indicators as GDP volumes and inflation levels, as well as the dynamics of changes in exchange rates and the level of mutual direct investment in terms of sigma convergence. The authors have also used methods of graphical representation of the scientific results. The reports of the Eurasian Economic Commission and the Central Banks of the EAEU Member States were used as the main sources of statistical data.

Reassessing Ireland’s economic development through the lens of sustainable development

After a century of Irish independence, this study constructs long run Genuine Savings estimates, a leading economic indicator of sustainable development, to reassess Irish economic history from the vantage of sustainable development. The main difference uncovered surrounds the post-1950 period where Ireland failed to achieve economic convergence and was considered an economic failure in growth terms. From a sustainability perspective, Ireland may have been an overachiever during a “great transition” of sustainable development driven by improved institutions and policies. The findings show the value of the sustainable development perspective in shedding new light on a country’s development experience.

THE INTERNET AS A DETERMINING FACTOR IN ECONOMIC CONVERGENCE ACROSS COUNTRIES

This paper examines whether the Internet is a determining factor in explaining economic growth and convergence across countries when it acts as a channel of information and knowledge diffusion. Literature has identified around 140 possible growth factors, therefore given the contradictory results obtained from previous empirical studies it is crucial we understand the actual role of the Internet. Using the conditional convergence theory and a Bayesian panel data model averaging method from a sample of 100 countries between 1994 and 2017, our results demonstrate that an increase in access to the Internet is a non-determinant factor in economic convergence, being its probability of inclusion in the true growth model conditioned by the regressors included in the estimates and the time span analysed.

Core–Periphery Relations and European Integration

Core–periphery relations have always played an important role within nation-states, across regions and at the global level. Given the significance of core–periphery dynamics to state building, we would expect patterns of economic convergence and divergence to matter in the process of European integration. This chapter traces how the EU addressed its treaty commitment to ‘harmonious development’ as it deepened and widened following the original aim of the Treaty of Rome. We identify a series of significant phases in the EU’s response to core–periphery relations. A key argument is that every major development in the EU, with the exception of the euro, was accompanied by policy provisions designed to alleviate divergence.

Re-Emerging Inequality: Narrow Economic Gaps between Immigrant and Non-Immigrant Offspring Widen Over the Life Course

Scholarship investigating economic disparities between immigrants and non- immigrants posits that immigrants’ income disadvantages decline over time and across generations, but life course approaches contend that inequalities between groups widen as individuals age. Using data from the NLSY 1997, I show that the relative economic positions of children of Latino immigrants shift over the life course when compared to children of White and Black non-immigrants. Average family income among children of Latino immigrants resembles that of the children of White non-immigrants at age 25. But children of White non-immigrants experience faster income growth as they age, tending to outrank the children of Latino immigrants by the early thirties. Accounting for intergenerational legacies of disadvantage shows that children of Latino immigrants initially outrank the children of White non-immigrants from similar economic backgrounds – an “intergenerational premium” – but this intergenerational premium erodes with age. Contra the segmented assimilation hypothesis, children of Latino immigrants maintain favorable positions relative to children of Black non-immigrants regardless of parental income. These findings suggest that the temporal patterns of economic convergence between immigrants and non-immigrants are not linear. Though intergenerational progress is substantial, the life course is a critical period through which inequalities can be made anew.

A comparison between VAR processes jointly modeling GDP and Unemployment rate in France and Germany

Investigating the relationship between Gross Domestic Product and unemployment is one of the most important challenges in macroeconomics. In this paper, we compare French and German economies in terms of the dynamic linkage between these variables. In particular, we use an empirical methodology to investigate how much the relationship between Gross Domestic Product and unemployment growth rates are dynamically different in the two major European economies over the period 2003–2019. To this aim, a Vector Autoregressive model is specified for each country to jointly model the growth rate of the two variables. Then a new statistical test is proposed to assess the distance between the two estimated models. Results indicate that the dynamic linkage between Gross Domestic Product and unemployment is very similar in the two countries. This empirical evidence does not imply identical product and labor markets in France and Germany, but it ensures that in these markets there are common dynamics. This could favor the process of economic convergence between the two countries.