THE TOURISM-LED GROWTH HYPOTHESIS IN TRANSITION ECONOMIES? EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM A PANEL DATA ANALYSIS

Tourism has been considered as a potential factor in development strategy in many developed and developing countries worldwide. Besides, tourism is really a key economic sector in some countries. This study aims to examine the tourism-led growth hypothesis for some transition countries, which includes seven high growth economies Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia, Ukraine and Vietnam. The research database is collected by an annual form in the period of 1995-2019. These economies are considered successful transitional cases in the global economy, however, the tourism-led growth hypothesis in these countries has been received only a little evidence from academics in recent years. The Johansen-Fisher test and the OLS estimation are applied in the quantitative process. There are some new findings from the empirical results. First, the Johansen-Fisher test confirms the existence of long-run cointegration relationships between tourism (denoted by the tourism revenue and the tourism arrivals) and economic growth in the panel data sample of countries. Second, the long-run coefficients of the tourism variables are positive and significant that concludes the tourism-led growth hypothesis in these transition countries. The contribution of the study is not only to fill the empirical research gap by the estimated results from a group of transition economies but also to confirms the tourism-led growth platform as an efficient development strategy for other developing countries. Furthermore, our study suggests some policy implications for policymakers to use tourism as a key development sector in these countries in the future.

Fiscal Policy, Institutional Quality, and Public Debt: Evidence from Transition Countries

This research makes a significant contribution to the literature on the economic implications of fiscal policy and institutional quality by modeling empirically the impact of these factors on public debt in 27 transition countries over the period 2000–2018. Applying Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), Random effects, and two-step GMM methods, the research gives evidence to confirm the background theory that deducing public expenditure and improving government revenue could push government debt lower. The main findings especially demonstrate that institutional quality contributes to making an impact on public debt. Particularly, weak governance in controlling corruption leads to higher accumulation of public debt while financing to improve the institutional quality in relation to government effectiveness, regulatory quality, and rule of law after changes in the regime in those countries increases the size of public debt. The results of this paper convince policymakers of crucial implications of both fiscal policy and institutional quality in managing public debt.

Why Africans tolerate income inequality

African attitudes to income inequality have hardly been studied. As a result, we may have been missing a crucial part of the answer to the question why Africa is so unequal. This paper presents evidence that, across all self-identified class categories, African respondents in 16 African states, representative of all the regions of the continent, are on average considerably more tolerant of inequality than respondents from 43 comparable developing and transition countries. The aim of the paper is to try and explain these differences. It concludes that (a) a modified version of Albert Hirschman's notion of the ‘tunnel effect’ and (b) religious devotedness in the African context provide explanations for the observed variation between African respondents and their counterparts elsewhere. Experienced inequality, in contrast to overall income distribution, influences the tunnel effect more widely than economic growth. Religious belief shapes inequality tolerance in Africa more than the observance of religious practices.

Diia. Digital state’ and E-Government Practices as Anti-Corruption Tools in Ukraine

The research is topical due to complex structure and multifactority of corruption in transition countries, its overcoming and prevention. The study is aimed to identify opportunities and assess the political experience of anti-corruption practices in transition countries, based on analysis of anti-corruption policy, in part e-government. Case study methods, systemic analysis of modernization processes in the political systems of transition countries, structural and functional analysis of anti-corruption policy, methods for predicting the success of transit processes in countries, modeling plausible scenarios of these processes were applied. Transitional systems are highly corrupt. There is institutional corruption in transition countries, i.e. corruption that has become a special institution regarding traumatic social transformation. The reason for institutionalization of corruption is weakness of transitional states, which has not yet become democratic. The use of information technology in political management becomes one of the leading criteria for democratization of political institutions, openness of political systems. Optimization of anti-corruption practices involves in part introduction of e-government. The consideration of e-government is methodologically comprehensive. The consequences of corruption relate to the redistribution of budget funds, various economic benefits, which are not always good for citizens. Economic growth is slowing down, the priorities of socio-economic development are distorted, the labor and entrepreneurial motivation of economic agents, is distorted. The experience of modernization of transformations and political reforms in different regions shows that one of the main factors determining specifics of political process is effectiveness of national models of anti-corruption practices in interests of citizens

The innovation gender gap in transition countries

This paper investigates the sources of the possible gender ownership gap in innovativeness in a set of Transition economies by means of firm-level data coming from the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS V) conducted in 2012–2014. Through the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition we highlight the factors explaining the differences in the propensity to innovate between female-owned and male-owned firms. We find that the innovation disparity between firms with females among their owners and those having only male owners is mainly due to the differences in endowment effects. Tangible and intangible assets affect the innovation gap between the two groups of firms.

EXTERNAL ADJUSTMENT AND FLEXIBILITY OF THE EXCHANGE RATE REGIME: THE CASE OF TRANSITION COUNTRIES

Milton Friedman’s traditional claim is that flexible exchange rates facilitate external adjustment by means of their cor- rective movements before the balance of payments crisis occurs. In order to test this hypothesis, we employ the first order autoregression based on the panel data on exchange rate regime and external balance expressed as the share of balance of goods and services in GDP. The sample covers 16 Central and Eastern European (CEE) and 12 Common- wealth of Independent States (CIS) transition countries over the period 2000-2019. The results, which are based on the sample of all transition countries, failed to prove that more flexible exchange rate regimes facilitate external adjust- ment. When the analysis was performed on two groups of countries separately, the results showed that the deficit of balance of goods and services in CIS countries has a higher persistence compared to CEE countries. However, a more flexible exchange rate regime does not facilitate external ad- justment. On the other hand, in CEE countries, the relation- ship between exchange rate regime flexibility and the rate of balance of goods and services reversion exists, proving that Friedman’s hypothesis does hold.

Governance and civil and political rights as FDI determinants in transition countries

This paper aimed to investigate the FDI determinants in 27 transition countries within the 2002 – 2018 period by employing system GMM analysis. One of the results of our research is that an uncertain political situation and civil liberties violations have a significant negative impact on foreign investors’ confidence. Generally, the erosion of democratic institutions acts as a deterrent to FDI inflows. Transition countries which experienced prolonged periods of central planning also recorded lower levels of FDI inflows. The results show that creating conditions for stimulating foreign investors through the improvement of institutional quality embodied in the control of corruption and voice and accountability impacted positively on FDI inflows. The interplays between overall institutional quality, voice and accountability, regulatory quality, government effectiveness and GDP growth are positive and significant. Hence, macroeconomic development has an important impact on the marginal effect of institutional quality. Therefore, we concluded that the influence of governance on FDI inflows is conditional on the transition countries’ macroeconomic performance. Our findings also reveal that of the governance dimensions, control of corruption and voice and accountability have a significant influence on the decision of multinationals to undertake investment.

Conceptualising Post-Transition Disappearances

This chapter establishes a holistic approach to understanding disappearances in post-transition countries. It considers the historical repertoires of disappearance that emerge during periods of authoritarian rule and armed conflict. It further argues that four logics behind disappearances in those situations continue into the post-transition. These include the clandestine logic, or hiding crimes against humanity from domestic and international scrutiny. Those disappearances also tend to involve marginalised populations; a ‘disposable people’ logic creates framing devices that transform citizens into those without rights or visibility. A political-economy logic emerges with cheap and exploitable workers, who are disappeared when their labour utility is exhausted; those with economic and political power commit these atrocities with impunity. The logic of ambiguous loss becomes a form of social control. Grieving processes are blocked when relatives lack certainty that the person is gone. They further lack the necessary evidence of death and wrongdoing to pursue redress. These four logics together, the project contends, explain why disappearances previously studied only in authoritarian or armed conflict contexts prevail also in the post-transition.