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Social Distancing and Ethnic Diversity

Posted on December 14, 2021 | Policy Brief

20211214 Social Distancing and Ethnic Diversity Image 01

Voluntary social distancing plays a vital role in containing the spread of the disease during a pandemic. As a public good, it should be more commonplace in more homogeneous and altruistic societies. For healthy people, social distancing offers private benefits, too. If sick people are more likely to stay home, healthy ones have fewer incentives to do so, especially if asymptomatic transmission is perceived to be unlikely. This interplay may lead to a stricter observance of social distancing guidelines in more diverse, less altruistic societies. Consistent with this prediction, we find that mobility reduction following the first local case of COVID-19 was stronger in Russian cities with higher ethnic fractionalization and cities with higher levels of xenophobia and we confirm that mobility reduction in the United States was also higher in counties with higher ethnic fractionalization. Our findings highlight the importance of creating strategic incentives for different population groups in crafting effective public policy.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments in almost all affected countries have imposed restrictions aimed at promoting social distancing. However, enforcing these restrictions is logistically and politically costly. The effectiveness of these measures depends heavily on people voluntarily observing social distancing guidelines. The conventional wisdom is that informal social norms are more difficult to sustain in ethnically diverse societies (Alesina and La Ferrara, 2000; Algan et al., 2016). In Egorov et al. (2021), we challenge this notion by showing that during the COVID-19 pandemic ethnic diversity has increased prosocial behavior in Russia and the United States.

At least at the beginning of the pandemic, most people considered themselves healthy. For them, the decision to stay home has been driven more by the fear of getting infected than by the desire to avoid infecting others. The likelihood of getting infected is higher if sick people cannot be expected to self-isolate, which, in turn, depends on their prosocial considerations. If people are subject to out-group biases and care less about people from other groups, then the sick are less likely to engage in social distancing in more diverse places. This makes people who consider themselves healthy more likely to self-isolate. Since healthy people constitute a majority, at least in the early stages of a pandemic, we expect to see more social distancing in more diverse societies. Generally, in these circumstances, the private benefits of those who consider themselves healthy align with social objectives.

In Egorov et al. (2021) we formalize this argument and provide causal evidence of the differential decline in social distancing based on ethnic diversity in Russia and the United States.

Method

Our theory predicts that people engage in social distancing more in places with higher ethnic fractionalization when the probability of getting infected becomes nontrivial. To test this prediction empirically, we use two approaches. First, we report difference-in-differences estimates, where we compare cities with higher and lower levels of ethnic fractionalization before and after the first reported case of COVID-19 infection in their region. Second, we combine the difference-in-differences approach with a two-stage least-squares approach, in which the timing of the first reported case is instrumented using measures of preexisting migration.

One potential concern with the first approach is that the timing of the first case is not fully random. For example, regions could report late COVID-19 cases because their medical capacity precluded them from correctly identifying the virus in time, or because their testing policies could be ineffective, or because their administration was prone to conceal the first cases for a longer time. To deal with these potential confounds in the first approach we use predicted timing of the first case. Specifically, we use the fact that travel connections between various cities and Moscow (where the first major outbreak occurred) could affect the timing of the first case in those cities’ respective regions. We rely on internal migration as a proxy for these types of connections (Mikhailova and Valsecchi, 2020; Valsecchi and Durante, forthcoming) and use a shift-share instrument for internal cross-regional migration to deal with the endogeneity of migration.

Data and Results

To measure social distancing, we use data on people’s movements provided by Russia’s largest technology company, Yandex, which tracks individuals’ cell phones with its mobile apps. In particular, we use daily averages of the Yandex Isolation Index, which aggregates data on people’s movements at the city level and is analogous to the Google Mobility Index. The index is calibrated for each city to be 0 for the busiest hour of the working day, and 5 for the quietest hour of the night before the coronavirus outbreak. We use daily data for 302 cities with a population over 50,000 from February 23, 2020, through April 21, 2020.

Information on the first reported case of COVID-19 in each region is taken from the government-agency website that contains official information about the pandemic. Data on ethnic fractionalization is based on the 2010 Census. Information on interregional migration and control variables comes from the Russian Federal State Statistics Service.

Figure 1. Isolation Over Time for Places with High and Low Ethnic Fractionalization

Source: Egorov et al. (2021)

Figure 1 shows no visible difference in the behavior of people in cities with low and high levels of ethnic fractionalization before the first coronavirus case. In both groups of cities, people have engaged in more social distancing since the discovery of the first case. However, after one week, people in more fractionalized cities have been more likely to stay home than people in less fractionalized cities. The effect does not manifest itself immediately after the discovery of the first case, which likely reflects the fact that a certain time is needed to disseminate information about the discovery of the coronavirus in the region. Moreover, the growth in self-isolation in more fractionalized cities is somewhat lower in the first days after the discovery of the first case, which may be driven by people catching up on unfinished tasks that require mobility, such as last-minute purchases, in anticipation of more stringent self-isolation in the future.

The results of the difference-in-differences and IV estimation confirm the results of the visual analysis. The magnitudes of the IV estimation imply that a one-standard-deviation increase in ethnic fractionalization leads to 3.7% higher social distancing following the report of the first local COVID-19 case. In other words, a one-standard-deviation increase in ethnic fractionalization can explain 5.7% of the average mobility reduction after the report of the first case or, alternatively, 4.7% of the weekday-weekend gap for an average locality.

To make sure that the results are not Russia- specific, we also show that ethnic fractionalization led to a bigger reduction in mobility following the first local COVID-19 case using the United States county-level data.

Conclusion

Overall, the results in Egorov et al. (2021) highlight the role of ethnic diversity in voluntary adherence to socially beneficial norms, such as self-isolation and social distancing during a pandemic. We show that people in more diverse places were more likely to restrict their mobility following the reports of the first local COVID-19 cases.

Our study has important implications for government policy. It highlights not only that the propensity of different groups of people to engage in prosocial behavior may differ but also that there may be important strategic effects. In the context of the pandemic, decisions by healthy and sick individuals to self-isolate are strategic substitutes. This means, for example, that in a homogeneous society with high levels of tolerance, extensive testing would allow people to learn that they are sick and self-isolate, enabling the rest to go out with little fear. In a heterogeneous society with low levels of tolerance, the same policy may spur people who learn that they are contagious to go out more because they have little to lose, with the exact opposite implications for the healthy population.

References

  • Alesina, A., La Ferrara, E., 2000. Participation in heterogeneous communities. Quarterly Journal of Economics. 115, 847–904.
  • Algan, Y., Hémet, C., Laitin, D.D., 2016. The social effects of ethnic diversity at the local level: a natural experiment with exogenous residential allocation. Journal of Political Economics. 124, 696–733.
  • Egorov, G., Enikolopov, R., A., Makarin, and M. Petrova. 2021. Divided We Stay Home: Social Distancing and Ethnic Diversity” Journal of Public Economics. 194: 104328.
  • Mikhailova, T., Valsecchi, M., 2020. Internal migration and Covid-19 (in Russian). In: Economic Policy in Times of Covid-19, New Economic School, pp. 26–33.
  • Valsecchi, M., Durante, R., forthcoming. Internal Migration Networks And Mortality In Home Communities: Evidence From Italy During The Covid-19 Pandemic. European Economic Review.

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.

Female Entrepreneurs in Transition: Social Norms, Double Burden and the Next Generation

Posted on December 6, 2021 | Policy Brief

Photo Of People Doing Handshakes representing Belarusian higher education

Nowadays, it is evident that equal participation of both men and women in entrepreneurial activity can boost the world economy, create more diverse teams, and decrease social inequality. While the subject of women-led enterprises is widely discussed and explored, the portraits of women who stand behind these companies are still not complete. This brief focuses on the social aspects a businesswoman faces in a transition economy such as Belarus: Who is she? What are her social roles? And how do entrepreneurial families differ from average families in Belarus?

Introduction

Female entrepreneurship is widely discussed as one of the potential engines of sustainable economic growth (World Bank, 2018; IFC, 2017). This brief utilizes a recent wave of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor survey to shed light on the key aspects of female entrepreneurship in Belarus – a transition economy with a relatively short history of private entrepreneurship. It looks at the social status and social norms surrounding female businesses to better understand the current situation and future trends in this part of Belarusian society.

The data for the analysis is provided by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) surveys conducted in the summer of 2019:

  • Survey of the adult population of Belarus (GEM APS): 2002 respondents aged 18 to 64.
  • Survey of entrepreneurs based on GEM APS: 208 business owners (107 men and 101 women).

Women Are More Willing to Study Hard

Following a long-standing tradition, women in Belarus are likely to obtain higher education. Based on the GEM surveys of the adult population, 35% of respondents have completed a bachelor’s degree (42% of women versus 27% of men) and 1.5% have completed a master’s degree. Among entrepreneurs, 60% of respondents have the first stage of higher education and 15% have the second stage. While most of the interviewed entrepreneurs have higher education (bachelor’s degree), women are more inclined to continue their studies: 19% of female and 11% of male entrepreneurs choose to enroll in master’s programs.

Access to business education is not a problem in Belarus: almost half of the respondents claim that their education is related to the business they run. A similar fraction also report participating in business training programs (with no significant gender differences). A third of respondents report having had a mentor who helped them start a business (42% and 58% of men and women, respectively). Entrepreneurs in Belarus are not inclined to be members of business associations or (in)formal self-support groups for entrepreneurs.

Are Female Entrepreneur Families More Equal?

Most often, an entrepreneur is married and has 1-2 children under 18 years old (this pattern being the same across genders). The majority of Belarusian families are of the so-called “Soviet” type, in which the most important woman’s role is to be a mother and “keep home”. At the same time, it is perfectly normal for women to have a paid job. In the case of preparing food, cleaning the house, and washing clothes, a comparable share of male entrepreneurs and men in the general population answer that most of these responsibilities are usually carried by women (65-68%). In contrast, half of the female entrepreneurs report having an equal distribution of these household duties [Figure 1]. We observe similar patterns in the caretaking of children: 68% of women entrepreneurs claim to have an equal distribution versus 44% of non-business women. This greater intra-family equality of women-entrepreneurs can be partially explained by the fact that businesswomen earn more than Belarusian women do on average.

Figure 1. How do you and your spouse/partner divide the task of cleaning the house and washing clothes?

Source: based on GEM APS 2019

According to data on the daily time use of the population collected by the National Statistics Committee for 2014-2015, women spend twice as much time as men on housekeeping and childcare. But, surprisingly, only 40-45% of women note that the traditional distribution of social roles in the family imposes an unfair constraint on women’s work and career possibilities. Therefore, we document a trend towards equal relations between spouses in households where the wife is an entrepreneur. At the same time, even a typical businesswoman bears a large burden of unpaid work.

A Successful Woman is a Happy Mother and a Wife

The respondents were asked a rather controversial question of what defines a “successful woman” [Figure 2]. Both entrepreneurs and the general population of Belarus were in solidarity in understanding a successful woman primarily as a happy wife and mother (75% of respondents). In second place, in terms of importance, respondents answered that a woman should be an educated and highly qualified professional (about 50% men and 60% women). Only 23% of male and 42% of female entrepreneurs agreed with the statement that a successful woman is, first of all, a successful entrepreneur. Remarkably, 46% of men in the general population survey completely or to a greater extent disagree with this statement, at the same time,  67% of those with children would like their daughter to run a business.

Figure 2. A successful woman is first of all a/an..

Source: Author’s calculations based on GEM APS 2019

Parental Entrepreneurship or Are There Any Predispositions to Become an Entrepreneur?

According to the research on parental entrepreneurship, the probability that children in entrepreneurial families will also have a career in business is 30-200% above that of children from non-entrepreneurial families (Lindquist et al., 2015).  In the case of Belarus, half of the surveyed entrepreneurs indicated that their fathers were employees, while 5-10% and 17-25% reported having fathers in business and leadership positions. By comparison, out of the 2000 respondents in the general population survey, 4-8% and 14-15% reported having fathers in business and leadership positions, respectively. As the difference is not very significant, parental entrepreneurship cannot play a decisive role in becoming an entrepreneur. This fact can be explained by the relative juvenility of Belarussian businesses, the absence of entrepreneurship in the USSR, and the attitude of society towards entrepreneurship in the 90s.

Nevertheless, the Belarusian business environment is changing as well as the social attitude. Among the 2000 respondents in the general population survey, about 68% would like their daughter to own a business, and 82% want such a future for their son. Among entrepreneurs, aspirations about their children’s future are rather predictable: a third of respondents do not make plans for their children and the majority of the remaining want their children to run their own business. Moreover, among those having preferences for their children’s future, both male and female entrepreneurs reached almost 100% consensus regarding their sons. When it comes to their daughters, 95% of women and 80% of men prefer a future in business while 15% of men would like to see their daughter become a homemaker.

Conclusion

Several key findings can be noted when comparing women entrepreneurs in Belarus with those who are not in business. Entrepreneurs are more likely to obtain higher education, both first and second stage; household chores more equally shared in families with women entrepreneurs. Female entrepreneurs more often want a future in business for their children, especially their daughters. Based on the above, it can be expected that a greater involvement of women in business can positively affect the state of gender equality in Belarus and the quality of human capital.

Nowadays, the promotion of entrepreneurship (let alone female entrepreneurship) is not a priority of the current Belarusian government, and independent development actors, who used to support it in the past, are out of the country. For the future, however, I will outline some general recommendations for developing female entrepreneurship (based on Akulava et al., 2020). With regard to education, the popularization of STEM programs among women can positively affect female involvement in entrepreneurial activity. Additionally, promoting examples of successful women-led enterprises will help combat stereotypes and inspire women to venture into entrepreneurship. Last but not least, an equal division of domestic responsibilities will allow women to spend more time on their careers.

References

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.

Foreign-Owned Firms and Labor Tax Evasion in Latvia

Posted on November 29, 2021 | Policy Brief

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It is well-documented that foreign-owned firms often pay higher wages than domestic firms. This phenomenon is usually explained by foreign firms being more productive. In this brief, we discuss another mechanism that drives the wage premium for employees of foreign-owned firms. By comparing income and expenditures of households led by employees of foreign-owned firms, domestic firms and public enterprises in Latvia, we show that employees of foreign-owned firms receive less undeclared cash payments than employees of domestic firms.

Introduction

A vast economic literature documents a wage premium for employees of foreign-owned firms (e.g., Heyman et al., 2007; Hijzen et al., 2013). This can result from self-selection of foreign firms in highly productive sectors (Guadalupe et al., 2012) or from a productivity increase (Harding and Javorcik, 2012). In a recent paper (Gavoille and Zasova, 2021), we provide evidence of a third driver: foreign-owned firms are more (labor) tax compliant than domestic firms.

Envelope wage, i.e., an unreported cash-in-hand complement to the official wage, is a widespread phenomenon in transition and post-transition countries (e.g., Gorodnichenko et al., 2009 in Russia, Putninš and Sauka, 2015 in the Baltic States, Tonin, 2011 in Hungary). Employees are officially registered, but the income reported to tax authorities is only a fraction of the true income, the difference being paid in cash. If domestic firms are more likely to underreport wages than foreign-owned ones, the documented wage premium for employees of foreign-owned firms is overestimated.

Methodology and data

To compare the prevalence of income underreporting in foreign and domestic firms, we use an approach similar to Pissarides and Weber (1989). This approach is based on two main assumptions. First, even though households participating in an expenditure survey can have incentives to misreport their expenditures, they accurately report their expenditure on food.

The second assumption is that if all households would fully report their income, similar households would report a similar share of spending on food. If, however, a group of households is likely to underreport income, their fraction of income spent on food will systematically be higher than that of tax-compliant households. Using the propensity to food consumption of a group of households that cannot evade payroll tax as a benchmark, we can identify groups of tax-evading households by comparing their food consumption with the reference group.

In this brief, we mainly focus on three household groups: households where the head is an (1) employee of a foreign-owned firm (reference group), (2) employee of a public sector enterprise, and (3) employee of a domestic firm. We introduce public sector employees as an additional comparison group, since they cannot collude with employers to underreport wages. Hence, our approach allows us to test whether households in the third group are more likely to receive undeclared payment than households in the first group, and additionally test if our reference group is systematically different from public sector employees.

We estimate Engel curve-type relationships for food consumption for different types of households, i.e., we estimate how households’ food consumption varies with income depending on employment of the main breadwinner (employed in a foreign-owned firm, public sector enterprise, domestic firm or self-employed), controlling for various household characteristics (number of adults, size of household, place of residence, level of education of the main breadwinner, and other).

Our data comes from three sources. First, we use the 2020 round of the Latvian Household Budget Survey (HBS), which provides information on household consumption, income and characteristics in 2019. Second, we use an administrative matched employer-employee dataset providing information on reported wages for the whole population of employees in Latvia. We match the second database with HBS using (anonymized) individual IDs contained in both datasets. Finally, we use (anonymized) firm IDs contained in the second database to merge it with a third data source, which provides detailed information on firms’ foreign-ownership status.

Results

For simplicity, in the rest of the brief we denote “household where the head is an employee of a foreign-owned firm” as simply “foreign-owned households”. A similar simplification applies to other household groups.

Comparing domestic and foreign-owned households, domestic households spend a higher share of their income on food. Figure 1 plots a non-parametric Engel curve for the two groups. The two curves exhibit fairly similar behavior, but the Engel curve for domestic households always lies above the one for foreign-owned households: for a given income, domestic households always spend a larger fraction on food than foreign-owned ones.

Our model estimations provide two main results. First, we find that the net wage premium for employees of foreign firms is 13-35%, depending on the sample and the source of data on income. Second, we show that domestic households are more likely to underreport income than foreign-owned households. On average, domestic firm households are estimated to conceal 26% more income than foreign-owned ones. At the same time, public sector households do not exhibit a significantly different food consumption pattern than foreign-owned firm households. Assuming that public sector households cannot evade, foreign-owned firm households hence do not underreport. The estimated share of concealed income is even larger (about 40%) if we restrict our sample to households where the head is aged below 50 years and is full-time employed.

Figure 1. Engel curve

Source: authors’ calculations. Note: We follow Hurst et al. (2014). We regress (administrative) wage and food consumption separately on demographic controls to condition out these factors. We recenter the residuals at the unconditional averages for each group and use these residuals to estimate the Engel curve with a cubic spline.

Conclusions

In a context of widespread labor tax evasion, the observed wage premium for employees of foreign-owned firms can be driven by payroll tax compliance. How much of the wage premium can underreporting explain? Our results for Latvia suggest a net wage premium of 13% to 35% for the group of foreign-owned households. This roughly corresponds to the magnitude of the underreporting factor, indicating that nearly all of the wage premium can be explained by labor tax evasion. Even though the precise underreporting point estimates should be cautiously interpreted, and this 1-to-1 relation is anecdotal, this nevertheless highlights the potential importance of envelope wages in explaining the wage premium of employees of foreign-owned firms when labor tax evasion is prevalent.

Acknowledgement: This brief is based on a recent article published in Economics Letters (Gavoille and Zasova, 2021). The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from LZP FLPP research grant No.LZP-2018/2-0067 InTEL (Institutions and Tax Enforcement in Latvia).

References

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.

New Insights Concerning the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Posted on November 15, 2021 | Policy Brief

Image with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn representing his work and Nobel Prize

The recently declassified proceedings of the Swedish Academy shed new light on why it awarded Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn the literature prize in 1970. His novels reflected unique experiences of many prisoners. The Academy characterized his work as a renewal of the great Russian literary tradition. On the other hand, Soviet authorities prohibited publication of his novels, however, they were widely circulated underground or published abroad. We now know that his novel In the First Circle as it was published in 1968 was only a shortened version that Solzhenitsyn had hoped would pass the censorship. The complete version, published recently in many languages, gives an even better inside picture of the Soviet state, its leaders and ordinary citizens, and thus strengthen the Academy’s motivations for the award.

The decisions by the Nobel prize committees are declassified after fifty years. Therefore, we recently got a better insight on the motivations by the Academy for giving the 1970 prize in literature to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The proceedings of the Academy add to what was known at the time, from leakages to the press and rumours by initiated persons. Remarkable Western journalists and scholars could describe the main events in the Soviet cultural life surrounding Solzhenitsyn and the Nobel prize. (Saraskina 2008; Scammell 1984). What has now been revealed from the Academy archives are the opinions of the Academy members and in particular the motivations in the propositions submitted in 1969–70 from entitled personalities.

The decision to award Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn the 1970 Nobel Prize in literature was preceded by his own struggle in the USSR to make his novels available to a wider public. In the last year of the Second World War, he was sentenced for allegedly subversive correspondence with another officer in the Red Army. Solzhenitsyn was sentenced to a long term in the camps. However, much of this time he spent in a special design bureau operated by MGB, the secret services’ so-called “sharashki”. After his release, Solzhenitsyn worked as teacher in a distant province. Here, he managed to write novels and short stories, based on what he had himself experienced or heard from other prisoners. He must, of course, keep his writings secret.

With the “thaw” under Nikita Khrushchev in the early 1960s, an opening was found for Solzhenitsyn to get his short story “A Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich” published in the renowned journal Novyi Mir. It seemed that he would then get his novels published; a contract was given for the novel The Cancer Ward (Rakovyi korpus). However, the literature climate changed as Khrushchev was ousted in 1964. The authorities stopped all plans to publish Solzhenitsyn’s works. In those days, there circulated many transcripts of unpublished works, in the so-called samizdat. It is even today an open question, for researchers, just how many hundreds or even thousands of readers throughout the Soviet Union were in those days familiar with literature that the censorship authorities would not allow to be printed.

These hardened attitudes of the Communist authorities only spurred Solzhenitsyn to have his works published abroad. He managed to organize a solid network for smuggling his manuscripts abroad, and to have responsible publishers contracted. In the late 1960s, The Cancer Ward – based on his observations during treatment in a Soviet hospital – and In the First Circle (V kruge pervom) – describing a design bureau where sentenced scientists were to develop high-technological equipment – were published in the USA and many countries in Europe.

His books were not only best-sellers, but highly esteemed by literary critics. Already in 1969, the Swedish Academy received applications from their authorized contributors, that the Nobel prize in literature be awarded to Solzhenitsyn. The Academy member and author Lars Gyllensten formulated a detailed analysis of Solzhenitsyn’s books. He emphasized Solzhenitsyn’s talent for psychologically pertinent portraits of a plethora of individuals in the most extreme conditions. However, in 1969, the Swedish Academy decided to award its literature prize to Samuel Beckett, as a dramatist with a much longer career. The next year, Francois Mauriac (Nobel laureate in 1952) jointly with a group of influential French authors formulated a proposition concerning Solzhenitsyn to the Academy. It had also received an anonymous Prize proposition written by a dozen members of the Soviet Union of Authors who emphasized the pathbreaking character of Solzhenitsyn’s novels. After deliberations within the Swedish academy, with only one dissenting member, it was announced that the 1970 prize in literature was awarded to Solzhenitsyn.

The Soviet authorities had a dilemma. In 1965, the appraised Soviet novelist Mikhail Sholokhov had received the prize in Stockholm and lectured here on his renowned novel And Quiet flows the Don (Tikhii Don). On the other hand, in 1958, the equally famous Boris Pasternak was nominated for his novel Doctor Zhivago. However, Pasternak was forced, under humiliating circumstances, to renounce the prize. The situation in 1970 for Solzhenitsyn thus presented several dilemmas. He rightly feared, as the nowadays available documents also confirm, that if he would go to the Nobel prize ceremony in Sweden, the Communist party leaders would most probably withdraw his citizenship and thus force him into exile. Consequently, he informed the Academy that he was honored and would accept the prize, but that he was not prepared to travel to Stockholm. Discussions with Swedish diplomats in Moscow concerned the alternative to arrange a ceremony at our embassy. Finally, this option was cancelled in 1971 when the chairman of the Swedish academy Karl Ragnar Gierow was denied a visa to the USSR.

Solzhenitsyn’s Later Path-breaking Contributions

In the meantime, Solzhenitsyn would continue his writing of the multi-volume historical novel The Red Wheel (Krasnoe Koleso) on the last period of Imperial Russia and his interpretation of the 1917 February revolution. He was also more engaged than before in publishing manifestoes and letters to the authorities, in a struggle against the oppressive regime. Much changed as more dissident voices in the Soviet Union manifested themselves in the early 1970s. A new landmark in Soviet literature would come in early 1974, with the publication of the first parts of The GULAG Archipelago. Although concerned Western readers had a vague notion of the Soviet camp system, Solzhenitsyn had managed to assemble hundreds of eye-witness stories from former prisoners that really shocked the public. In France and several other countries, the intellectual climate changed dramatically as The GULAG Archipelago made its imprint. In the 1980s, it was not yet possible to undertake serious historical research on the Soviet penitential, prison and camp system. Only with glasnost and Gorbachev’s perestroika was the seal on the secret archives opened and many of Solzhenitsyn’s originally earth-shaking revelations could be put into a solid factual framework. We now know who the more than two hundred personalities were who had sent Solzhenitsyn their stories in the early 1960s, as they had read his “Ivan Denisovich” short story. Solzhenitsyn’s guesswork, in the absence of statistics, concerning the economic significance of the GULAG camp system can instead be analyzed by the solid documentary collections from the archives (Jesipov 2018). A major contribution was made by the French historian Nicolas Werth and his colleagues, who jointly with archivists in Russia, assembled and wrote commentaries to the exhaustive, seven volumes Istoriia stalinskogo GULAGa. Solzhenitsyn’s original work undertaken under the direst possible circumstances stand out as pioneering. He could not even dream of having his manuscript fact-checked by experts, let alone read in wider circles. It deserves emphasis therefore that President Putin took the initiative to have an abridged version of The GULAG Archipelago edited for the Russian school. Solzhenitsyn’s widow, Natalia Dmitrovna accomplished this careful selection and added commentaries as necessary for young readers.

The 1970 Nobel Literature Prize Reconsidered in Hindsight

Finally, a reflection on how Swedish opinions on Solzhenitsyn has changed over time – from the enthusiastic reception in the 1960s of his novels to the skeptical attitude in the 1990s and early 2000s to Solzhenitsyn’s allegedly nationalistic worldview. It cannot enough be emphasized under how horrible circumstances he wrote classical contributions to world literature. To take only one example. If the Swedish Academy – hypothetically – had known the original version of The First Circle, and not only the abridged version published in the late 1960s, with its far less political implications, they could with even greater emphasis have nominated him for the Literature Prize. It demands a lot from contemporary readers to imagine how one man like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who even in his early age in the late 1930s dreamt of writing novels on the Russian revolution, after much suffering in the camps managed to vividly describe, in the novels here presented, the many-faceted Soviet system from inside its prisons, camps and deportation cities.

References

  • Carlisle, Olga, Solzhenitsyn and the Secret Circle, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1978.
  • Jesipov, Valerii, Kniga, obmanuvshaya mir: Ob “Arkhipelage GULAG” A. Solzhenitsyna nachistotu, Moscow: Letnii Sad, 2018; Swedish abbridged translation Boken som lurade världen: Om Aleksandr Solzjenitsyns GULAG-arkipelagen, Stockholm 2020.
  • Ostrovskii, Aleksandr, Solzhenitsyn – Proshchanie s mifom, (Farewell to the Myth) Moscow: Jauza 2004.
  • Samuelson, Lennart, ”Nya ingångar i Solzjenitsyns Nobelpris när sekretessen hävs”, Respons, 3/2021, http://tidskriftenrespons.se/artikel/nya-ingangar-i-solzjenitsyns-nobelpris-nar-sekretessen-havs/.
  • Saraskina,:Liudmila, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Moscow: Molodaya Gvardija 2008;
  • Saraskina, Liudmila (ed.), Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Vzgliad iz XXI veka: materialy Mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, posviashchennoi 100-letiiu so dnia rochdeniia, Moscow, Russkii Put, 2019.

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.

Russian Exporters in the Face of the COVID-19 Pandemic Crisis

Posted on November 8, 2021 | Policy Brief

20211108 Russian Exporters in the Face of the COVID-19 Image 01

This brief summarizes the results of recent work on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Russian exporting companies (Volchkova, 2021).  We use data from the CEFIR NES survey of exporters conducted in 2020. 72% of respondents reported that they were affected by the crisis. We scrutinize this impact. Contrary to popular wisdom, we observe little difference in delays of inputs by domestic and foreign suppliers. On the other hand, exporters experienced more disruptions in their sales in foreign destinations than in the domestic market. Possible reasons for this may be due to restrictions on international travel.

Introduction

According to experts at the Gaidar Institute (Knobel, Firanchuk, 2021), in 2020, Russia’s non-resource non-energy exports, decreased by 4.3%, while export prices fell by 4.1 % on average. The export of high-tech goods decreased by 14% due to a reduction in the physical volume of export. These changes in export intensity are mainly associated with the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. But are exporting firms more affected by the crisis than firms only active in the domestic market? What are the main channels through which the crisis influenced exporters?  And how do exporters adjust to the COVID-19 related shocks?

The analysis in this brief is based on forthcoming publication in the Journal of New Economic Association (Volchkova, 2021). We use data from a survey of Russian non-resource exporters conducted in 2020. We show that involvement in international trade did not affect the company’s vulnerability to the crisis on the production side: supply delays were equally likely to occur from domestic and foreign suppliers. These findings are consistent with Bonadio et al. (2021) who consider a numerical multi-sectoral model for 64 countries around the world linked by supply chains. They show that, in the face of the employment shocks associated with quarantine measures and switching to a remote work format, the contribution of global chains to the decline of real GDP is about one quarter. Importantly, the authors show that the “re-nationalization” of supply chains does not make countries more resilient to shocks associated with quarantine measures on the labor market because these shocks are also bad for domestic industries.

At the same time, our results indicate that exporting companies are exposed to additional risks associated with the need to adjust to shocks in the sales markets. According to the data, exporters find it more difficult to adjust their sales in foreign markets than in the domestic one. This is consistent with the fact that, during the pandemic, all countries introduced a strict ban on international travel, reducing the possibility of establishing new business ties through personal contacts. Similarly, Benzi et al. (2020) show a significant negative effect of international travel restrictions on the export of services.

Survey of Non-resource Exporters

The survey of exporters was carried out in June – November 2020 by CEFIR NES. The primary purpose of the survey was to identify and estimate barriers to the export of non-primary non-energy products. In the context of the developing economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, we have added several questions to identify how the crisis influenced companies’ operations and how the respondent firms adjusted to the new conditions.

The survey was conducted using a representative sample of Russian exporting firms. As a control group, we interviewed non-exporting firms with (observable) characteristics (region, industry, labor productivity) similar to those of the surveyed exporters. Altogether, 928 exporting companies and 344 non-exporting companies were interviewed during the field stage of the study.

Most exporting companies that took part in the survey produce food products, chemicals, machinery and equipment, electrical equipment, metal products, and timber. On average, a surveyed exporter had 827 full-time employees; 25% of the firms had fewer than 26 employees. More than half of the surveyed exporting firms (53%) are also importers: 81% import raw materials and other inputs, 66% import equipment, and 22% import technology. Most interviewed exporters sell their products both abroad and on the domestic market. On average, an enterprise supplies 67% of its output to the domestic market and 32% abroad.

Impact of the COVID-19 Crisis on Firms’ Performance

Among exporters that participated in the survey, 25% reported that their business was not affected by the COVID-19 crisis, while 72% of respondents stated that the crisis did have an impact. Like any crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic created problems for some enterprises and provided new beneficial opportunities for others. According to the data, exporting businesses were significantly more likely to be negatively affected by the crisis than their non-exporting counterparts, and the impact of the crisis was not correlated with the size of the enterprise. Figure 1 presents the exporters’ answers to the question of how their sales in the domestic and foreign markets have changed with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The distribution of changes in sales volume in domestic and foreign markets significantly differ from each other. Estimates of the mean values of changes in sales volumes also differ significantly: the average drop in sales in the domestic market was 5%, while for the external market, it reached 17%. Hence, in times of the COVID-19 crisis, opportunities for growth were less prominent in foreign markets than in the domestic one, while significant market losses were more frequent.

Figure 1. Change in sales of export companies associated with the COVID-19 pandemic

Source: Survey of non-resource exporters, CEFIR NES, 2020.

Adjustment to the Crisis

The most frequently used crisis adjustment measure was employees transition to remote work – it was reported by 70% of the surveyed companies. 25% of exporters were forced to suspend their work during the crisis, while 72% were not. 14% of respondents stated they had to cut their payroll expenditures and other non-monetary benefits for employees (food, insurance, etc.), 12% of companies sent workers on unpaid leave. Only 6.5% of export firms had to lay off workers, while 91% handled the crisis without layoffs.

Comparing exporters’ answers with those of non-exporters while controlling for enterprise size, we conclude that exporting firms were more rigid in their adjustment  to the crisis. They were significantly more likely to suspend enterprise activities, dismiss of employees, send workers on unpaid leave, and reduce of wages. Also, these events were more likely to occur for smaller companies than for larger ones.

At the same time, flexible adjustment measures such as remote work were equally likely to be used by exporters and non-exporters, as well as by firms of different sizes. In general, Russian exporters of non-primary goods maintained their efficiency mainly by adjusting the labor relations to the new epidemiological conditions rather than by reducing employee-related expenses.

Dealing with Counterparties

Delays in the supply of components and raw materials were reported by 36% of the surveyed companies, and such delays were equally likely for shipments from abroad and domestic shipments. There is a perception that international supply chains in the context of the pandemic crisis are an additional risk factor. Our results indicate that domestic and international supply chains were equally challenged in 2020. Nevertheless, non-exporting companies faced the problem of delayed deliveries significantly less often than exporters did, and about 60% of companies experienced no problems at all on the input supply side.

27% of surveyed exporters stated that they delayed payments to counterparties. Non-exporting companies reported these reactions much less frequently regardless of firm size.

On the sales side, half of the surveyed exporters experienced delays in payments from their customers during the pandemic crisis. Non-exporting enterprises encountered the problems with the same frequency, and companies of all sizes were affected by this obstacle equally.

The cases of planned purchases cancellation on behalf of buyers were reported by 34% of exporting companies. Exporters experienced these problems significantly more often than non-exporters, and smaller companies experienced them much more often than larger ones.

Crossing international borders presented a certain problem for Russian exporters when it concerns product delivery. Just over half of the respondents indicated that they had to delay deliveries due to difficulties with border crossing. However, about the same share of companies (48%) reported that they delayed products delivery due to the introduction of lockdowns. Thus, during the COVID-19 pandemic, exporters’ operations were complicated to the same extent by problems related to border crossings as by those associated with lockdown regimes.

Conclusion

It is widely believed that international exposure of companies in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis creates additional risks. Our study shows that, regarding existing inputs supply, international relations pose problems for Russian companies just as often as relations with domestic partners. As far as sales are concerned, adjustment to the crisis was better on the domestic market than on foreign markets. A possible explanation of this phenomenon is that, in addition to the shocks associated with quarantine measures in the labor market, access to foreign markets was hampered by restrictions on international travel, which is essential for readjusting contractual relations to explore new opportunities brought by crises (Cristea, 2011). Without personal interaction, new contracts were more difficult to launch. Thus firms’ opportunities to adjust foreign sales were more restricted than the ones in the domestic market.

References

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.

Media mentions: Key takeaways from this policy brief have been published by one of the most influential media outlets in Russia Kommersant – Коммерсант: «Ковид сильнее ударил по экспортерам». Исследование ЦЭФИР РЭШ. 

Assessing a Model for the Implementation of an Equal Pay Review and Reporting (EPRR) Methodology in Georgia

Posted on November 3, 2021 | Policy Brief

20211102 Assessing a Model of Equal Pay

Georgia’s gender pay gap has started to attract the attention of the population and policymakers alike. The gap persists despite working women generally reporting better labor-market skills and personal characteristics. It has been argued that this could be the result of systematic gender-based workplace wage discrimination, resulting in unequal pay for equal work. The discussion that ensued highlights how the fight to guarantee equal pay for equal work could benefit from establishing an Equal Pay Review and Reporting Mechanism. In response, the ISET-PI team – after reviewing the best international practices – devised and tested an excel based tool that could help companies and governmental agencies identify, monitor, and fight gender discrimination in Georgia. The main quantitative result of the exercise identified that, should reporting be made mandatory, extending the obligation to companies that employ up to 50 people would make the administrative costs for companies and public administration up to twenty times higher; thus, the usefulness of the tool was found to be substantially limited when applied to smaller companies. Finally, the exercise emphasized the reluctance of companies to provide the data required, leading to the conclusion that the successful implementation of such an initiative would require the enforcing agency to have the legal authority to sanction failures to provide the necessary data.

Introduction

One of the key gender inequality indicators is the gender pay gap – or gender wage gap – calculated as the average difference between the remuneration for men and women in the labor market. Its evolution is monitored worldwide, and closing this gap is considered a key step towards more inclusive and prosperous economies and societies. According to the World Economic Forum, as of 2020, no country (including the top-ranked ones) had yet achieved gender parity in wages.

In Georgia, the unadjusted hourly gender pay gap amounts to 17.7 percent of the average male hourly wage (UN Women, 2020). Moreover, when controlling for personal characteristics of men and women, the adjusted hourly gender pay gap in Georgia is estimated to be 24.8 percent (UN Women, 2020). This implies that women, on average, have better observable labor-market characteristics but are still paid less than men.

These findings prompted a core discussion within the Georgian society on the presence of unequal pay for equal work in Georgia as one of the possible reasons for the gap and how to tackle the problem. The idea of equal pay for equal work entails that individuals in the same workplace are given equal pay if they perform the same type of work. Consequently, this potential source of the pay gap can only be verified at the individual employer level. This is accomplished by calculating the unexplained gender pay gap at the organizational/employer level and validating whether, and why, these differences exist.

Given the attention the topic holds in the national discourse, ISET Policy Institute created and tested an excel tool, built in line with the international best practices and adapted to the Georgian context, to help employers and government offices identify and measure the differences in wages between men and women performing equal work. During this process, the team learned several noteworthy lessons, as summarized in this policy brief.

International Experience

There is growing consensus that transparency is critical when dealing with pay inequality and, therefore, gender pay reporting should become the norm. Since 2010, several (mostly developed) countries have introduced reporting schemes to monitor gender pay gaps, promote awareness about gender equality issues throughout society (particularly among employees), and increase organizations’ accountability to address gender inequalities (Equileap, 2021).

However, the gender pay gap is a key issue for which the disclosure of information remains particularly low. Equileap’s 2021 report revealed that 85 percent of organizations worldwide did not publish information on remuneration differences between female and male workers in 2020.

Three countries, according to Equileap, lead the way in gender pay gap reporting: Spain, the UK, and Italy (Figure 1). In each of these top three countries, reporting is mandatory.

Figure 1. Percentage of organizations publishing gender pay information, per country

Source: Equileap, 2021. The figure only includes countries for which more than 49 surveyed organizations were included in the Equileap dataset.

However, even in these countries, and, more generally, in all countries scrutinized by Equileap but Iceland, firms with 50 or fewer employees are not required to report on gender pay gaps.

The Case of Georgia

Georgian legislation clearly establishes the principle of equal pay for equal work for all employees. The requirement applies to both public and private organizations. Nevertheless, enforcement of the law remains a significant challenge.

At present, Georgia has no reporting requirements regarding employee salaries for private organizations. It has not yet designed a reporting scheme for equal pay for equal work, nor has it assigned the task of collecting this information to any governmental body.

Moreover, Labour Inspectorate representatives state that few wage discrimination cases are currently being filed in the country. The main reason behind this is that norms regarding equal pay for equal work have never been properly specified. In addition, there are no explicit criteria defining the concept of ‘equal work’. Thus, employers and employees alike do not seem to fully understand the phrase – equal pay for equal work.

The Excel Tool

After a careful review of the three tools presently utilized to calculate gender pay inequality (the Swiss Logib, the German Logib-D, and the Diagnosis of Equal Remuneration (DER) tool developed by UN Women), ISET-PI built a Georgian model as a modified version of the DER tool that is adapted to the Georgian context and includes some variables from the Swiss tool.

The tool itself is an excel file with several worksheets. The two main facets are the inputted data sheet and the results sheet. Companies may input information on their employees in the data sheet, and the findings will then be demonstrated in the results sheet. The tool first identifies people performing the same work, and classifies jobs based on their official titles, alongside managerial responsibilities and skill requirements. After individuals are grouped by job, the tool calculates the average salary within each group separately for men and women. Thereafter, the pay gap is calculated based on the average salary for the two gender groups.

With the support of the Employers’ Association, several companies of all sizes were approached to test the tool. Unfortunately, only a few agreed to participate, and just two completed the trial: one small-sized enterprise (with 50 or fewer employees) and a large-sized enterprise (with 250 or more employees).

While low participation rates have significantly limited our analysis, we still obtained several important insights which are discussed in the next subsection.

Findings

Firstly, it is important to note that companies’ willingness to share anonymized salary data was very low, even among the companies that completed the test.

Secondly, the usefulness of the tool for obtaining a comprehensive view of equal pay for equal work in small companies (with 50 or fewer employees) appeared fairly limited as few people within the same firm perform the same job.

Thirdly, we performed a simple cost assessment exercise to evaluate the compliance costs – to both companies and the government – of collecting and reporting the gender pay gap. We found that extending the data collection requirement to small companies would increase the compliance costs by up to 20 times (high-cost scenario) compared to an example where small companies are exempt. This is because there are many more small companies in Georgia (146,802), than those classified as medium or large ones (2,752 and 609, respectively).

In addition, during the implementation of the exercise, we became aware of the following:

  • Under the existing legal provisions, it would be extremely difficult to introduce the EPRR in a mandatory format – no governmental agency could sanction companies for failing to comply.
  • Opting for the mandatory option and sanctioning the emergence of unequal pay in certain job categories could incentivize companies to manipulate the data input. In this case, therefore, it would be ill-advised to provide the full tool to companies, as they could more easily adjust data inputting to obtain more favorable indicators through successive iterations.

Conclusion

Setting up an EPRR system is one way to contribute to the implementation of the equal pay for equal work principle.

Designing the Georgian Model for the Implementation of an Equal Pay Review and Reporting Methodology generated several useful insights that might prove valuable for policymakers in Georgia and other developing countries:

1) The EPRR instrument can be utilized for the analysis of gender pay gaps within companies with more than 50 employees. Within smaller companies, evaluating the gender pay gap significantly increases the costs to society, while providing rather limited additional information.

2) The decisions about whether to provide the analytical part of the tool to companies, and whether reporting should be voluntary or mandatory should be taken jointly. If the goal is to provide an instrument to the agency enforcing the equal pay for equal work principle and to facilitate appeals from workers, the tool should be made mandatory. However, in this case, companies should only provide the input data, without having access to the part of the tool that assesses pay gaps at the job level. On the other hand, if the goal of the reform is to support willing companies in their efforts to eliminate unequal pay for equal work conditions, a non-mandatory form may be preferable. In this instance, companies should have access to the full version of the tool. This would allow them to better understand the dynamics that lead to unequal pay and thus put in place internal remedial actions.

3) If the goal is to provide a tool to the agency enforcing the equal pay for equal work principle, it is crucial that any gaps in the associated legislation are closed. As such, the enforcing agency should be capable of sanctioning failures to provide the required data, and prosecuting violations of the equal pay for equal work principle.

Finally, it is important to note that testing the application of the equal pay for equal work principle at the company level through an EPRR system, while useful for identifying potential causes of the gender pay gap and the existence of gender disparities within companies, is just a first step in a longer and more complex process. Once disparities are identified, both companies and enforcing agencies should follow up with additional research and analysis to determine whether these disparities are linked to discriminatory practices, and what type of remedial options could be adopted.

References

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.

Land Market and a Pre-emptive Right in Farmland Sales

Posted on October 25, 2021 | Policy Brief

20211025 Land Market Image 01

After more than 20 years of a land sales ban, Ukraine finally opened its farmland market on July 1st, 2021. A design of the land market contains a pre-emptive right to buy the land for the farmland tenants. In this study, we model the effect of this pre-emptive right. Following the approach of Walker (1999), we use a theoretical model with three players – landowner, potential buyer, and the tenant – to model outcomes of the land transactions with and without the pre-emptive right. To empirically estimate the effect of the pre-emptive right, we use farm-level data to derive farmers’ maximum willingness to pay and the minimum price that landowners are willing to accept. The introduction of the pre-emptive right decreases the land price and increases the tenant’s chances of winning as well as his surplus, at the cost of a potential buyer and the landowner. The introduction of the pre-emptive right also leads to inefficient distribution and deadweight losses to the economy.

Introduction

After more than 20 years of a land sales ban, Ukraine finally opened its farmland market on July 1st, 2021. The moratorium on the sales of agricultural land in Ukraine covered of 96% of the country’s farmland market (or 66% of its entire territory).

The critical element of the newly opened Ukrainian farmland market design is the pre-emption right (right of the first refusal, RoFR) that is granted to the current tenant of land plots. By applying their pre-emptive right, tenants can purchase the land at the highest price the landowner could get on the market. On top of that, this right is transferable, meaning that the tenant could sell the right to the interested party. In this brief, we model the consequences of the pre-emptive right introduction in Ukraine.

Farmland Market in Ukraine

The moratorium on farmland sales that was in place for the last 20 years created a substantial distortion on the farmland market. It led to the situation where large companies predominantly cultivate the rented land, with the average share of leased land in the land bank for corporate farms in Ukraine approaching 99% (Graubner et al., 2021). Another noticeable trait of the farmland market in Ukraine is significant inequality in Ukrainian farms’ land banks. Based on the statistical forms 50AG, 29AG, and 2farm, our calculations show that the GINI index for the allocation of cultivated land across farms in Ukraine is 86%, indicating an extreme degree of inequality. As we can see from Table 1 – the top 10% of farms operate on 75% of all cultivated farmland in Ukraine.  On the other side of the spectrum, 49% of the smallest farms in Ukraine operate on only 2% of the cultivated farmland and rent only 0,3% of all rented farmland.

Table 1. Ukrainian farmland market structure 

Source – own calculations based on the statistical forms 50AG, 29AG, 2farm for the year 2016.

Therefore, in our analysis, we break a sample of Ukrainian farms into five categories with respect to their size.

Framework

To model the effect of the pre-emptive right, we will use the approach proposed by Walker (1999) using farm-level data. Thus, this study compares two scenarios – with the pre-emptive right (right of the first refusal, RoFR) and without the pre-emptive right in place. We assume that there are only three sides to each transaction – the seller (landowner), the prospective buyer, and the tenant, to whom the pre-emptive right is granted. Throughout this brief, we assume that there are no transaction costs involved.

Scenario 1. No Pre-emptive Right

In the no-RoFR scenario, the prospective buyer offers the landowner a price that the seller is willing to accept. The seller now has two options: either accept and get the offered price or reach the tenant and propose to outbid this offer. The option of reaching a tenant is more attractive since, in a worst-case scenario, if the tenant’s valuation – i.e., the maximum price the tenant is willing to pay for the land plot – is lower than the offered price, the tenant would simply not respond to this offer, and the landlord still gets the offered price.

On the other hand, if the tenant’s valuation is higher than the offered price, he has a strong incentive to make the counteroffer and start a bidding process. Both the tenant and the prospective buyer are incentivized to make a counteroffer up until the point where the offer’s value reaches their respective valuation. Thus, the smallest valuation between those of the tenant and prospective buyer would be the final transaction price.

Scenario 2. A Tenant Has the Pre-emptive Right

In this scenario, the tenant does not need to increase the price in his counteroffer if the third-party buyer’s offer is lower than the tenant’s valuation. The tenant could execute his pre-emptive right and buy the plot at the third-party buyer’s proposed price. Therefore, the outside buyer will change his approach to the initial offer. If the offer he makes is “too low”, he loses the chance of buying this plot since the tenant would exercise his pre-emptive right. If the offer is “too high,” he misses the profit he would make by making a lower offer.

In such circumstances, the transaction price will be given by the third-party buyer’s offer that maximizes his expected profit. The latter, in turn, depends on the probability of the tenant exercising his preemptive right, the third-party buyer’s own valuation, and the price he offers to the landlord. The probability of the tenant exercising the offer is the probability that the tenant’s valuation exceeds the offered price. It depends on the tenant’s farm size category and on the offer itself and can be calculated based on the distribution of valuations.

Empirical Approach

Our empirical analysis considers a (hypothetical) situation of a third-party buyer coming to the landowner, whose land is rented to another farmer, with the offer to buy a one-hectare plot. We assume that the offer exceeds the landowner’s minimum price that a landowner is willing to accept (WTA). The landowner’s WTA is proxied by the current rental price the landlord gets multiplied by the capitalization rate, set to 20 for all three sides of the transaction. The farmers’ valuations are estimated based on their net profit per hectare. We use the farm-level data to compute the average net profit per hectare needed for valuations estimation and the average rental price per hectare for the WTA estimation. This data was collected by the State Statistics Service of Ukraine through statistical questionnaires called 50AG, 29AG, and 2farm for the year 2016 and covers 39,297 farms. The descriptive statistics of the data are presented in table 2.

Table 2. Descriptive statistics

Source: own calculations based on the statistical forms 50AG, 29AG, 2farm for the year 2016.

We construct a set of potential buyers for each farm that operates on rented land based on the 10-km threshold distance between the tenant and third-party buyer. We end up with a sample of 764760 pairs of tenants and potential third-party buyers. We drop all pairs where third-party buyers cannot make an offer landlord is willing to accept. Therefore, only a sample of 291506 observations of tenant – prospective buyer pairs is used for the analysis. Importantly, for large and ultra-large farms, the share of observations that would attempt a transaction is 70% and 69% correspondingly. On the lower side of the size spectrum, this share is noticeably lower. For the group of small third-party buyers, the buyer would attempt the transaction only in 42% of cases. The most excluded from the farmland sales market category are ultra-small farms as they would only attempt the transaction in 25% of all cases.

Results

Our findings suggest that the effect of the pre-emptive right on the land price is twofold. On the one hand, in 55% of cases – the RoFR price is higher than the (modelled auction) price in the absence of a preemptive right. However, the median price differences in these cases are just 0,7% of the auction price. At the same time, for the cases where the auction price is higher than the price with the RoFR, it exceeds the RoFR price, on average, by 83%, with a median value of 66%. As a result, if we compare the expected prices, the expected prices under the RoFR are significantly lower than the auction prices. There are also differences between different farm size categories of the third-party buyer – the larger the buyer is, the higher the transaction price would be regardless of the RoFR. In the scenario without the RoFR, the average transaction price for ultra-small farms would be $1259 per hectare. While for the ultra-large farm as the third-party buyer, the transaction price would be $1647. With the pre-emptive right granted to the tenant, the transaction prices would be $977 and $1313 correspondingly.

The pre-emptive right also increases the probability of the tenant acquiring the land. The most noticeable effect is for ultra-small and small farms – if an outside buyer attempts the transaction, their chances of purchasing the land increase from 12% to 28% and from 23% to 45%, respectively. The probability increase for the larger tenants persists, but percentage-wise it is smaller – their probability of purchasing the land due to the granted pre-emptive right increases from 42-45% to 65-66%.

The pre-emptive right also redistributes the surplus from the transaction. Measuring the surplus as the difference between the valuation and the buyer’s actual purchase price, we can conclude that the third party’s surplus decreased due to the RoFR introduction. The tenant’s surplus, on the other hand, increases. In the case of RoFR introduction, the percentage increase in the tenant’s surplus is larger for the ultra-small and small farmers, from 5% to 13% and from 10% to 23% of the tenant’s valuation, respectively. For larger farms, albeit the surplus’ increase is larger in absolute terms, percentage-wise, it is smaller than for their smaller counterparts. Their average surplus increased from 18-20% to 37-38% of the tenant’s valuation. For the third-party buyers, the percentage-wise decrease is more or less the same, regardless of their farm size. Their surpluses, on average, shrink by 23-27% depending on the size of the farm.

We also estimated the effect of the pre-emptive right on the joint surplus of the landlord and the tenant. The effect of the pre-emptive right on their joint surplus is positive regardless of the size category of the tenant. The largest increase of the joint surplus, percentage-wise, is observed for the small-sized farms as a tenant. In this case, the average joint surplus increased by 5%, translating into an $87 increase in the joint surplus. In absolute terms, the highest increase is for medium-sized farms as a tenant – $108 increase in the surplus or 4.5% of their original joint surplus.

The pre-emptive right also leads to inefficient allocations when the land is acquired by a lower valuation party, resulting in deadweight losses. Inefficient allocation is observed in 19% of all observations. The deadweight losses generated by the introduction of the ROFR are statistically significant (with the t-value equal to 195) and average 233 USD per hectare.

Conclusions

In this brief, we suggest a theoretical and analytical approach to calculate the impact of the pre-emptive right in farmland sales. Our analysis offers a range of important findings. First, small and medium-sized farms are almost entirely excluded from the farmland market. While more than two-thirds of the medium, large or ultra-large farms can afford to buy a nearby parcel, based on their profitability – for ultra-small farms, which have a land bank of under 50 hectares – this share is equal to just 25%. The introduction of the pre-emptive right granted to the current tenant may exaggerate this problem. The reason is that most of the rented land is already controlled by large and ultra-large companies. At the same time, the pre-emptive right increases the tenant’s probability of winning and its surplus at the expense of the landowner and outside buyer.

On the other hand, the pre-emptive right increases the joint surplus of the tenant and the landowner. Therefore, if the pre-emptive right would be a voluntaristic clause in the contract, rather than a right granted to all tenants by the government, it creates an incentive to include the pre-emptive right in the rental agreement with the price of this right negotiated between the landlord and the tenant.

Summing up, the pre-emptive right, as a policy instrument, has its costs. It leads to inefficient distribution and deadweight losses. In view of this, as much as the recent farm market reform in Ukraine is a clear step towards a market economy, the design of the land market should be taken with a grain of salt.

References

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.

In Memoriam János Kornai: a leading economist of post-socialist transition in the twentieth century has passed away at age 94

Posted on October 22, 2021 | News

János Kornai

October 2021 has brought sad news to everyone interested in the transition region and the economics profession more generally. János Kornai, one of the best known Eastern-European economists and one of the founders of transition economics, has passed away at the age of 94.

János Kornai (1928 – 2021) was famous for his work on, and critique of, the socialist economic system, post-socialist transition, and comparative economics. His ideas, originating from his analysis of the shortcomings of a planned and socialist economy – such as “economics of shortage” and “soft budget constraint” – have influenced not only transition economics but also many other economic fields. The magnitude of his contribution and the extent of his influence on economic thought are well illustrated in Public Choice 2021’ special issue in honor of Janos Kornai.

SITE and its academic partners in the FREE Network(LINK) keep contributing to Kornai’s ideas on economic transition and growth. Many of the FREE Network conferences and FREE Policy briefs provide important insights on how the region and the field have developed since. In particular, they stress that the transition has neither been smooth nor complete, and that Kornai’s intellectual legacy continues to be an important component of the analysis of the region.

For those interested in economic transition, development, emerging markets, as well as economics in general, on a weekly basis, the FREE Network publishes FREE Policy Brief Series – short and informative analyses on current economic policy challenges in Eastern Europe and emerging markets. The writings are based on academic research papers or policy work.

Green Banking and Its Development in Belarus

Posted on October 12, 2021 | Policy Brief

20211012 Green Banking and Its Development in Belarus Image 01

Climate change and environmental protection are challenging both policymakers and society. People are getting increasingly concerned about the careful consumption of water and energy, use of biodegradable products, and biodiversity. In these conditions, more and more companies and industries adopt “green” and “sustainable” standards in their work. The financial sector is also involved in this process. For banks and other financial institutions, green activities require adopting new approaches, strategies, and instruments. This brief discusses green banking with a special focus on the development and challenges of this industry in Belarus. It concludes by providing policy recommendations for green banking development in the country.

Introduction

Sustainable development is one of the main global challenges, and an important role in facilitating and funding it belongs to green financing. The UN Environment Program defines green financing as “to increase the level of financial flows (from banking, micro-credit, insurance, and investment) from the public, private and non-profit sectors to sustainable development priorities”. Such financing can be provided by banks, financial institutions, nonfinancial private companies, governments, and individuals. The instruments of green financing range from climate, blue, and sustainability bonds to green credits and mortgages. One of the leading roles in the field is played by banks, which will be the focus of the current brief. This brief first offers a general overview of green banking. Then it and a discusses the existing green banking practices and challenges in Belarus. It concludes by providing policy recommendations for the development of the Belarussian green banking sector.

Green Banking: An Overview

The Indian Bank’s Association defines a green bank as “a normal bank which considers all the social and environmental/ecological factors, with an aim to protect the environment and conserve natural resources”. Moreover, the Finance Initiative of the UN Environment Program states that all green banks’ operations and activities should be consistent with sustainable development goals (Tara, K., Singh S., Kumar, R., 2015).

Considering the importance of green and sustainable development, it is natural to expect increasingly more financial companies and banks to implement eco-friendly instruments and policies. However, there is still much work to be done to ensure that market players consider green aspects in their deals. For example, while the European “green” financial market is growing rapidly, the Green Assets Ratio (GAR, the share of green loans, bonds to total bank’s assets) was only at 7,9% for the EU banking sector in March 2021 (Huw Jones, May 21, 2021).

A necessary component to speed up banks’ uptake of green practices is an appropriate regulatory and supervisory framework. Indeed, as green aspects become part of the traditional banking activities – e.g., international financing, work in foreign markets, participation in financial programs and projects -, there  is a need to develop common rules of work, principles, and standards in the green financing sphere. Today, several international initiatives and platforms provide such rules. For example, the Energy efficient Mortgages Initiative supports green mortgage development in Europe (Energy Efficient Mortgages Initiative, n.d.). The International Capital Markets Association acts as a (self-) regulatory organization that forms, implements, and manages principles and standards of green social, or sustainable bonds. One of the famous standards in green finance is the Equator Principles, a set of guidelines for project financing evaluation that incorporates social and environmental risks management (Equator Principles, n.d.). The Climate Bonds Initiative supports the mobilization of the bond market to meet the challenges of climate change (Climate Bonds Initiative, n.d.).

At the same time, most national monetary regulators work on legislation and rules of green banking development. The financial sector in general and the banking sector in particular are highly regulated. Financial institutions distribute owned and borrowed funds by providing short- and long-term credits and investing in numerous financial instruments with different levels of risk in national and foreign currencies. Monetary regulators need to control the their activity in order to minimize banks’ risks (credit, liquidity, and currency risk, etc.). For this reason, it is essential to have clear guidelines for dealing with new instruments (climate, social, blue, sustainability bonds, green mortgages, etc.), as their characteristics are likely to differ from the traditional ones. For instance, green bonds may have distinct characteristics of issuing and circulation. Green mortgages can be considered less risky than traditional credits due to more liquid collateral (energy-efficient buildings). There are specific measures that could make green instruments more attractive for banks, for instance by introducing green capital requirements or regulation against greenwashing.

Apart from guidelines, recommendations, and rules, central banks can create additional incentives for developing the green financial market. For example, the Bank of Bangladesh established a preferential lending Fund for projects in spheres such as renewable energy, energy efficiency, alternative energy, and green industry (Ulrich Volz, March 2018). Also, the Central Bank of Hungary introduced preferential capital requirements for energy-efficient housing loans (Liam Jones July 13, 2021).

Another important aspect of regulation and incentives created by monetary regulators is environmental and climate change risks management. Climate change and the green transition increase the environment-associated financial risks for banks. Banks’ financial losses can result from not only storms floods, tsunamis, and temperature increases, but also financial problems of borrowers due to stricter environmental legislation and changes in social and environmental norms and standards.  According to the ECB survey, many banks develop sustainable development strategies, but very few include environment-associated financial risks in their risk management. Therefore, the ECB works on creating incentives and regulations for banks in green risks-management. It is expected that bank stress-testing will start in 2022 (Harrison C., Muething L., 2021). At the same time, the Bank of Bangladesh, with IFC support, has developed guidelines on social and environmental risk management for the banking sector (Ulrich Volz, 2018).

Based on the above mentioned, there is still much to be done to ensure that market players consider green aspects in their deals. Green banking is still a new thing, but its implementation takes place in many countries, and green finance is an essential element of sustainable economic development.

Green Banking in Belarus

In this section, we overview the current state and perspectives of green banking development in Belarus. The country takes its first steps in green finance market development. Socio-economic development program of the Republic of Belarus for 2016-2020 has incorporated green projects in spheres such as transport and agriculture, recycling, eco-labelling and eco-certification development, as well as a study of the implementation of green bonds and green investment bank creation (Ukaz № 466, December 15 2016). In 2016, the National Plan of Activities on Green Economy Development in the Republic of Belarus till 2020 was adopted. The plan included the development of areas such as organic agriculture, eco-tourism, energy-efficient construction, and smart cities (CMRB Decree, № 1061, December 21, 2016). However, none of these projects were introduced with links to green financing and green banking. The National Plan of the Activities of Green Economy Development in the Republic of Belarus till 2025 pays more attention to green finance. In this plan, there is a description of implemented projects in recent years and a list of instruments (green bonds, credits, insurance products), tools (indexes, ratings, databases, etc.), entities and elements of the green finance ecosystem (MNREPRB, 2021). Still, there is no plan or detailed strategy of special regulation, rules, or framework of green banking development.

In the absence of precise plans from the government, green banking in Belarus began to emerge at the micro-level. Banks started to provide green products for their clients, participate in sustainable initiatives, and implement green management in their work. One of the main incentives to transition towards more sustainable banking practices comes from the investors’ side. In the case of joint investment and lending programs implementation, many foreign partners require that the bank applies modern green standards.

Another incentive to this transition builds on reputational risks and competition. Today, there is a public demand for eco-products, energy-efficient construction, and environmental protection. Banks that consider these issues have a competitive advantage and gain a positive reputation among their clients. Moreover, some commercial banks with foreign capital have to introduce green standards and green management at the request of their parent companies.

A few green initiatives by Belarusian banks are worth mentioning here. The Belinvestbank can be distinguished as one of the brightest examples of green banking in Belarus. The financial institution started transforming into EcoBank – it began to hold green financing transactions in the framework of the Global Trade Financial program (a program by the International Finance Corporation), adopted a new ecological and social strategy, issued a charity-bonus payment card made from recycled plastic, and held activities in ecological spheres (Belinvestbank, 2020). The bank plans to issue green bonds, establish green projects accelerator, continue green financing, and build new communications approaches with its clients (Belinvestbank, 2019a). Green financing is one of the main lending spheres of the EBRD, which planned to purchase a share of Belinvestbank.

Priorbank is another case of a green banking initiative in Belarus. The bank presented a new type of lending that allows consumers to buy only energy-, water- and heat-efficient products (Priorbank, 2021).

The Development Bank of Belarus launched a program of ecological projects financing for small and medium businesses and individual entrepreneurs for preferential interest rates (DBRB, n.d.).

As part of the Belarus Sustainable Energy Finance Program (BelSEFF) framework, funding was provided by banks such as MTBank, BelVeb Bank, BPS-Sberbank, and Belgazprombank with EBRD support (Tarasevich. V., 2014). Agreement about energy-efficient projects financing between MTBank and Nordic Environment Finance Corporation can be highlighted as one more example of a green initiative (Aleinikov & Partners, n.d.). The last but not least example of green activities is the joint project of BNB-Bank and North Ecological Financial Corporation in which they offered loans to private individuals and legal entities for the purchase of hybrid and e-vehicles, as well as for building infrastructure for e-vehicles. (BNB-Bank, n.d.).

Some Belarusian banks implement standards of environmental management into practice. For example, the Sustainable Development Report of Raiffeisen Bank International mentions that the Raiffeisen Group plans by 2025 to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 35% (Raiffeisen Bank International, 2019). They also present plans on water savings, reduction of paper document flow and energy consumption. Priorbank is involved in this process as part of the Raiffeisen Group. Similar goals can be found in the Sustainable Development Report of Bank BelVeb. The environmental priories of the bank are to reduce pollution, restore biodiversity, and increase the efficiency of water,  energy, and other resources consumption (BelVeb, 2019). In the Social Report of Belarusbank it is mentioned that the bank tries to consider negative environmental effects and ecological factors in their lending-decisions (Belarusbank, 2020).

Based on the information above, the conclusion is that Belarusian financial institutions gradually introduce principles of green banking. Most green projects in Belarus are implemented with the support of international financial organizations, parent institutions, or by request from foreign bank partners. Today, Belarusian banks carry out two types of green banking activities. First, they incorporate an environmental perspective in their everyday activities, not directly related to green finance: for example, by reducing water and electricity consumption and waste, switching to electronic document management, providing green incentives to their employees, etc.. Second, banks integrate an environmental perspective into their financial activities using green instruments, for instance by providing loans to the population and corporate sector based on  sustainable finance principles.

At the same time, Belarusian banks do not work with climate-related and environmental risks management. This is not surprising, as, normally, regulators would initiate and incentivize this process, but in Belarus, neither the National Bank nor any other regulator deals with environmental risk management rules for banks. Another challenge is that Belarusian banks do not take part in international green financing initiatives, such as the Equator Principals or the Climate Bond Initiative. Finally, the narrowness of the Belarusian financial market and absence of clear rules and definitions restrict green bond markets and green mortgage development.

Recommendations

Investment in green projects imposes positive externalities on society that are not necessarily internalized by the market. As reflected in the international practices discussed earlier, support from the government and financial authorities might be necessary both in monetary and regulatory terms. Even if developing countries like Belarus may not have a green transformation on top of their agenda, they will soon be faced with the necessity to adapt to the European Green Deal, at least with respect to their trade with the EU. Hence, they will also need policies that promote and support green finance development.

Based on international experience and national issues of green banking, the following recommendations can be highlighted (Luzgina A., 2021):

  1. The adoption of supportive regulation/rules of work with green instruments, including green, sustainable and/or sustainability-linked bonds, green mortgages, and green project financing. This regulation can include criteria for identifying green projects and construction, principles of green projects evaluation, rules of green bonds issuing, tax benefits, and/or preferential credit eligibilities. The ResponsAbility Investments Survey confirms the necessity to implement special rules on green lending development in emerging economies. According to the survey, 40% of respondents believe that an affordable regulatory environment is a key element of green loan market development (ResponsAbility Investments AG, 2017).
  2. The implementation of economic and social incentives for green banking activity popularization. Such incentives can include lower interest rates on green loans, providing tax exemptions for companies and people involved in green projects realization, subsidizing the process of green bonds verification, and holding study activities on green economy and finance. According to ResponsAbility Investments Survey, 60% of respondents agree that special green credit lines of public financial institutions have played an important role in green finance development. At the same time, governments subsidize the process of bonds verification issued by SMEs in Russia (at the stage of adoption), Singapore, and Japan (Vinogradov E. April 2, 2020).
  3. The creation of an additional section in the Belarusian currency and stock exchange for green corporate and state bonds circulation. Green or sustainable bonds have special characteristics in terms of issuing purposes and listing features that require highlighting them in a separate section.
  4. Guiding the development of climate-related and environmental risks management as well as green management rules implementation for all banks. Based on the international experience, this area of green banking requires incentives from the Government and Central Bank, as it is poorly studied and associated with additional costs for banks. Financial institutions are not sufficiently motivated to implement green risks management principles on their own.
  5. Extending the international collaboration in the field of green finance. This activity may include participating in not only international programs on green financing or foreign investments attraction but also international initiatives such as Principles for Responsible Banking, Climate bonds Initiative, Equator Principles, etc..
  6. The development of a green banking methodology and (or) strategy/ concept by responsible bodies. The introduction of green banking requires the development of new approaches, definitions, and rules that are within the competence of not only the Central Bank but also the Ministry of Economy (in terms of SMEs support), Ministry of Finance (in terms of funding), Ministry of Agriculture (in terms of the development of bioproducts standards), Ministry of Architecture and Construction (in terms of energy-efficient building definition and indicators), Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection, etc. An institutional body could coordinate this work by developing a methodology of green banking in discussion with the National Bank, ministries, and other interested parties (NGOs, banks). The association of Belarusian Banks can perform this function as it knows the specifics of banking legislation, can identify the existing obstacles of green banking and other challenges in the field, and is interested in developing the Belarusian banking system in line with current trends.

Conclusion

Green finance as a whole and green banking in particular will continue to develop. Monetary regulators are working on green rules and risk management implementation for banks. Financial institutions from different countries are participating in international green initiatives and developing sustainable strategies.

Green banking development is an international process which Belarus cannot ignore. Today, the majority of green activities at the national level are based on the initiative of banks. Contracts with international financial institutions and requirements of parent companies and investors motivate Belarusian banks to implement green instruments and approaches. Traditionally, the banking system works under restricted and highly regulated conditions. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce clear rules of green banking by the government as well as to increase the attractiveness of green financing, including economic and social incentives development.

Otherwise, the existing policy gap in green banking will widen and the opportunities for collaboration between Belarusian banks and foreign financial institutions will diminish. Finally, the absence of green regulation will deteriorate the quality of risk management in the Belarusian banking system compared to the world level.

References

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.

Female Representativeness and Covid-19 Policy Responses: Political Representation and Social Representativeness

Posted on September 28, 2021 | Policy Papers

20210928 Female Representativeness and Covid-19 Policy Responses Image 01

There is anecdotal evidence that countries with female leadership in policymaking are more efficient in combating the Covid-19 pandemic. This paper studies whether countries with high female representativeness in political and social layers respond differently to the Covid-19 outbreak. We explore patterns at a cross-country level, which enables us to consider the variation of gender implicated institutions. Our findings indicate that it is women’s social representation, rather than female political leadership, that has the potential to capture cross-country variation in Covid-19 policy responses. Our study confirms that well-functioning and effective institutions are not established from the top-down but rather from the bottom-up.

Introduction

In light of the Covid-19 outbreak and the resulting actions developed and implemented by countries worldwide, questions have been raised about government policy responses and what can trigger them. The pandemic brought forward the need for measures that help mitigate the spread of the virus such as hand washing, reduced face touching, face mask policies, and physical distancing. In many countries, the implementation of lockdowns and social distancing measures had a large impact on employment, including reductions in working hours, furloughs, and work from home arrangements (Brodeur et al., 2020; Coibion et al., 2020; Gupta et al., 2020). There are notable concerns about the potential damage non-pharmaceutical interventions can inflict on economies and labor markets (Andersen et al., 2020; Kong and Prinz, 2020). Further, the implementation of these measures requires certain institutional and individual behavioral changes. While some countries were successful in developing and implementing policy responses that addressed the challenges of the pandemic, others have experienced considerable difficulties.

There is anecdotal evidence suggesting that countries with female leadership in governmental policies are more efficient in combating the Covid-19 pandemic. Several articles from prominent media outlets, such as CNN, The Conversation and Forbes, hypothesize that female leaders are systematically better at managing the pandemic and that this divergence can be attributed to gender differences in management style and risk-taking behavior.

This policy paper explores whether countries distinguished by higher female representation in government policies, both in development and implementation, responded differently to the Covid-19 outbreak, and if so, how the response differed from other countries. For this purpose, we identify two layers of female representation: political representation and social representativeness. The layer of political representation considers the role of women’s representation in public policy design and implementation at the top level of executive and legislative institutions. Social representativeness captures women’s representativeness in different layers of society and spheres of life. It reflects social norms, legal inequality between men and women in different spheres of private, economic, and business life, as well as realized gender inequality, e.g., in labor market participation, education, or local leadership.

With respect to political representation, we address the question of whether countries distinguished by a higher female representation at top executive and legislative levels differ in terms of policy responses to Covid-19. With respect to social representativeness, we aim to capture the variation in these responses that may originate from differences in the expected reaction of the public, which in turn is driven by women’s representativeness in different layers of society. We derive evidence-based conclusions capturing the role of female leadership at the country’s executive and legislative level, as well as the role of gender representativeness in other layers and institutions of society.

The motivation for this research stems from the extensive literature on differences in values and social attitudes between men and women. For example, women have been shown to be more trustworthy, public-spirited, and likely to exhibit ‘helping’ behavior (Eagly and Crowley, 1986), vote based on social issues (Goertzel, 1983), score better on ‘integrity tests’ (Ones and Viswesvaran, 1998), take stronger stances on ethical behavior (Glover et al., 1997; Reiss and Mitra, 1998) and behave more generously when faced with economic decisions (Eckel and Grossman, 1998). Thereby, one may ask to which extent these differences transmit to public policies in societies where women are better represented, either politically or socially. While our study primarily concerns Covid-19 policy responses, we discuss other related literature on the relationship between women’s representativeness and public policy in the next section.

Our analysis shows that it is the women’s social representativeness layer, which can explain government reactions to the Covid-19 pandemic. This goes in line with the institutionalist literature, suggesting that more a gender-balanced character of institutions translates into policy measures and related outcomes. With this finding, our study suggests further evidence on the central role of institutions. Consistent with the existing evidence, we claim that well-functioning and effective institutions are not established from the top-down, but rather from the bottom-up (Easterly, 2008; Dixit, 2011; Greif, 2006). In such institutions, women’s participation in labor markets, businesses, and other spheres is essential as these are factors that distinguish countries in their response to the pandemic. While the evidence provided is suggestive, it opens further avenues for studies to assess causal relationships.

Covid-19 Policy Measurements

To conduct our analysis, we collect data from a number of different sources. For data on the Covid-19 situation and government policy responses, we use the Our World in Data portal. This online platform compiles a number of data sources, most of them updated on a daily basis. Statistics on female participation and leadership is retrieved from the World Bank and UNDP. Summary statistics of the variables are reported in Table A1 of the Appendix.

The policy response variables are based on a number of different measures implemented by national governments. These are aggregated into three composite indices: Stringency, Containment & health, and Economic support. (The index methodology can be found here.) We present the components of the three indices in Table 1 and a detailed description of the policy measures and their scoring in Appendix C.

As seen in Table 1, the Stringency and Containment & health indices have some common dimensions; containment & closure policies (C1 – C8) and public information campaign (H1). Both are rescaled to a value from 0 to 100 (100 = strictest). The Economic support index records measures such as income support and debt/contract relief and does not share any common dimensions with the other two policy response indices. The scale of the index also ranges from 0 to 100 (100 = full support). The extent of heterogeneity in government policy responses across countries is illustrated in Figures 1 – 3. While containment and closure policies are stricter in many Asian and Latin American countries, economic support is more extensive in many European countries, Canada, New Zeeland, and few other countries.

 Table 1. The structure of the Covid-19 policy measurements.

Note: Categories and assigned values of policy measurements are in Appendix C.

Figure 1. Stringency Index

Note: A choropleth map shows countries/territories by their Stringency index score, based on data collected from the portal of https://ourworldindata.org/policy-responses-covid. Countries are grouped into five groups (quantiles), from the lowest to the highest values of the index.

Figure 2. Economic support index.

Note: A choropleth map shows countries/territories by their economic support index score, based on data collected from the portal of https://ourworldindata.org/policy-responses-covid. Countries are grouped into five groups (quantiles), from the lowest to the highest values of the index.

Figure 3. Containment & health index.

Note: A choropleth map shows countries/territories by their Containment and health index scores, based on data collected from the portal of https://ourworldindata.org/policy-responses-covid. Countries are grouped into five groups (quantiles), from the lowest to the highest values of the index.

Female Representativeness: Layers and Indicators

Multiple studies in economics and political science suggest that the gender of public officials shapes policy outcomes (Chattopadhyay and Duflo, 2004; Iyer et al., 2012; Svaleryd, 2009). Evidence suggests that increasing the number of women in higher ranks of public administration (legislative bodies and ministries) has a substantial impact on the political office and policymaking (Borrelli, 2002; Davis, 1997; Reynolds, 1999). On the other hand, a number of studies demonstrate that gender has no association with policy outcomes (Besley et al., 2007; Besley and Case, 2003; Bagues and Campa, 2021). The role of the institutional setting and environment can, thus, be decisive in this regard. Women are also found to be more concerned about social policy issues and prefer higher social spending than men (Lott and Kenny, 1999; Abrams and Settle, 1999; Aidt and Dallal, 2008). Further, women are more likely to use a collective or consensual approach to problem and conflict resolution rather than an approach founded on unilateral imposition (Rosenthal, 2000; Gidengil, 1995).

In our study, the political representation layer is measured as female leadership at a country’s executive level (representation in government cabinets) and participation at the legislative institution (parliament) level. To assess this, we consider the following indicators: 1) the presence of a female president or prime minister and proportion of women in ministerial positions, and 2) women’s representativeness in legislative bodies measured as the proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments. The variation of these indicators across countries is illustrated in Figures B4 – B6 in the Appendix.

Our approach to social representativeness is in line with social role theory. This framework provides a theoretical explanation of a structural approach to gender differences (Eagly, 1987; Eagly and Karau, 2002; Wood and Eagly, 2009). It claims that men and women behave according to stereotypes associated with the social roles they occupy, and these differences can, in turn, influence the role of women in local governance and leadership. In line with other research on gender, the social role theory proposes a rigorous framework for analyzing the gendered aspect of government organizations. For instance, evidence shows that women tend to be more collaborative and democratic, hence demonstrating a more caring and community-oriented behavior (Eagly and Johannesen-Schmidt, 2001).

The gender aspect of local governance indicates that the personal preferences and opinions of leaders predominate and shape policymaking (Besley and Coate, 1997). Female leaders (including municipality heads) are more inclined to favor the inclusion of citizens in the decision-making process (Fox and Schuhmann, 1999; Rodriguez-Garcia, 2015), implying that the society is a more informed and engaged stakeholder in the public policymaking (Ball, 2009).  Given that municipalities are taking on a greater and more interactive role in citizens’ well-being, they become a key channel in reinforcing trust in government. Furthermore, the literature finds an interrelationship between female voters and government outcomes, whereby women’s enfranchisement affects government size and spending (Lott and Kenny, 1999; Miller, 2008, Aidt and Dallal, 2008). As such, this can lead to improvements in government outcomes and policy effectiveness. The evidence from Bloomberg’s Covid-19 Resilience Ranking suggests that success in containing Covid-19 while minimizing disruption appears to rely more on governments fostering a high degree of trust and societal compliance.

Furthermore, the patterns of gender relations in societies reflect formal and informal institutional rules and policies. Gender equality enhances good governance and helps to further improve relationships between government and citizens (OECD 2014). Similarly, Elson (1999) argues that labor markets are structured by practices, norms, and networks that are “bearers of gender”. Societies with better legal frameworks for women have more balanced gender participation in labor markets, governance, and leadership, along with more equal gender roles and less gender-biased stereotypes. We anticipate that better representation of women in policymaking in such societies is also reflected in the choice and effectiveness of Covid-19 policy measures.

Building on the above theories explaining the relevance of women’s representativeness in diverse societal layers for policy development and implementation, we identify three indices that have the potential to capture the effect of social representativeness – Women, Business and the Law index (WBLI), Gender Development Index (GDI) and Gender Inequality Index (GII). The WBLI is composed of eight indicators, covering different areas of the law related to the decisions women make at various stages of their career and life. These indicators include mobility, workplace, salary, marriage, parenthood, entrepreneurship, assets, and pension. Hyland et al. (2020) show that, globally, the largest gender inequalities are observed in the areas of pay and parenthood. That is, women are most disadvantaged by the legal system when it comes to compensation and how they are treated once they have children. The index scales from 0 to 100 (100 = equal opportunities). The diagram in Figure 4 illustrates how the components of the WBLI index measure key activities of economic agents throughout their life.

Figure 4. The linkages of 8 indicators in Women, Business and the Law index (WBLI)

Source. Women, Business and Law, 2020. World Bank Group.

The second index, the GDI, measures gender inequality in the achievements in three basic dimensions of human development: Health, measured by life expectancy at birth; Education, measured by expected years of schooling for children and mean years of schooling for adults aged above 25; and Command over economic resources, measured by estimated earned income.  The same dimensions are included in the Human Development Index (HDI), and the GDI is defined as the female-to-male HDI ratio (i.e. perfect gender equality corresponds to a GDI equal to one).

Turning to the third index measuring social representativeness, the GII reflects gender-based disadvantages in the following dimensions—reproductive health, empowerment, and the labor market. The index measures the loss in potential human development due to gender inequality in achievements across these dimensions. It ranges from zero, where women and men fare equally, to one, where one gender fares as poorly as possible in all measured dimensions. One of the dimensions of the GII, women’s empowerment, has a sub-dimension – “Female and male shares of parliamentary seats”, one of our indicators measuring political representation. Generally, we do not consider the two layers being as mutually exclusive, but intersections are expected to be minimal.

Central to our study, the three indices capturing social representativeness in a country encompass the institutional quality of its society from a gender development perspective. The distribution of each index across countries is shown in Figures B1 – B3 (See Appendix B).

Women’s Representativeness and Covid-19 Policy Responses: Partial Correlation Analysis

In this section, we explore the relationship between Covid-19 policy responses and the measures of political representation and social representativeness. For this purpose, we explore (i) correlations between the indicators and indices of the political and social representation layers and (ii) partial correlations between these measures and policy response indices.

We start with a correlation analysis of the different indicators in the layers. It shows that the WBLI is in high correlation with other representativeness variables. This index captures the legal equality between women and men which has been shown to be “associated with a range of better outcomes for women, such as more entrepreneurship, better access to finance, more abundant female labor supply, and reductions in the gender wage gap”. (WB, 2021). One can think of the GDI and GII indices, as well as the political representativeness indicators, as reflections of a broad policy framework in diverse areas of social, business, and legal activities. A legal environment that promotes gender equality, even if not sufficient by itself, is likely to lead to progress in these areas. Indeed, Hyland et al. (2020) show that greater legal equality between men and women is associated with a lower gender gap in opportunities and outcomes, fewer female workers in vulnerable positions, and greater political representation of women. This way, the WBLI may capture key predispositions for women’s representativeness in society. Further, Hyland et al. (2021) show that the WBLI index is in high (partial) correlation with country GDP per capita, polity score, legal origin, religion and geographic characteristics. This evidence suggests that the WBLI may have the capacity to reflect important country characteristics which ultimately shape cross-country institutional variation.

Table 2. Scatterplot table for GDI, GII and Women, Business and the Law Index, Proportion of seats in parliament held by women and Proportion of ministerial seats held by women.

Note: Scatterplots are constructed for 149 countries. Fitted lines are based on a quadratic function, shaded areas indicate 95 percent confidence intervals and country population is used for weights applied for fitted lines and bubbles. For each scatterplot, correlation coefficients and their significance are reported. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1.

Next, we explore partial correlations of these indicators with Covid-19 policy responses (Table 3). In this analysis, we control for a number of factors that potentially confound the relationship between a particular policy response and representation layer. Specifically, we control for (i) the number of infected cases per million inhabitants, (ii) the number of deaths per million, (iii) GDP per capita, and (iv) life expectancy. The number of infected cases and deaths enter the model in order to control for country differences in the spread and consequences of the virus. GDP per capita captures the stage of country development, accounting for cross-country differences in resource capacities and constraints. Both of these control variables are claimed to have an important role in Covid-19 related research (Coscieme et al., 2020; Aldrich and Lotito, 2020; Elgar, Stefaniak and Wohl, 2020; Gibson, 2020; Conyon and Thomsen, 2020). Life expectancy is an important proxy for country inhabitants’ resilience against the virus, conditioned by health and health infrastructures.

Significant correlations are observed between the WBLI and the three policy response indices. The correlation between the WBLI and Stringency (and Containment & health) index is negative, implying that lighter restrictions have been imposed in countries with better business and legal conditions for women. A positive correlation is observed between the WBLI and the economic support index, suggesting that countries with better conditions for women in diverse business and societal areas have provided more extensive economic support in the pandemic. This finding is in line with existing evidence showing that women are more concerned about social policy issues and prefer higher social spending than men (Lott and Kenny, 1999; Abrams and Settle, 1999; Aidt and Dallal, 2008). Also, lighter restrictions and more generous economic support do not presume any trade-off in terms of the allocation of financial resources constrained by a state budget.

Interestingly, we do not observe significant correlations between policy responses and other indicators of women’s representativeness. The only exception is a correlation between GDI and the Containment & health index, which is significant at the 10% level and hinges heavily on two outliers (if we drop the two outliers, the P-value of the correlation increases from 0.0931 to 0.2735).

Table 3. Scatterplots of policy responses and social representativeness and political representation variables.

Note: Scatterplots are constructed for 133 countries. Fitted lines are based on a quadratic function, shaded areas indicate 95 percent confidence intervals and country population is used for weights applied for fitted lines and bubbles. Correlation coefficients are reported with significance levels: *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1.

In our partial correlation analysis, we do not control for the direct effects of the gender dimension of social norms and practices. Social norms, practices, as well as informal and formal rules can, however, explain a substantial part of the gender gap (Hawkesworth, 2003; Mackay, 2009; Franceschet, 2011; Elson, 1999; Froehlich et al., 2020) relevant for making decisions. Our measures of women’s political and social representativeness do not fully cover gender differences in norms and practices. As Hyland et al. (2020) point out, de-jure female empowerment does not necessarily translate into de-facto empowerment, especially in countries with social norms and informal rules that result in low representation of women in diverse societal spheres. The authors indicate that laws are actionable in a short period, while more time is needed to bring changes in social norms.  In our paper (Grigoryan and Khachatryan, 2021), we attempt to address this issue by incorporating the Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) into the model and evaluating the confounding effect on the covariates of the model. We show that the WBLI captures the effect of the gender gap owing to social norms and practices on Covid-19 policy responses as measured by SIGI. This result suggests that the endogeneity arising from the omission of a measure of such a gender gap is likely to be minimal.

Discussion and Conclusions

Our correlation analysis suggests that it is the layer of women’s social representativeness that can explain the policy reactions of governments in times of the Covid-19 pandemic. This result is in line with the institutionalist literature on gender inequality and social role theory, which suggests that a more gender-balanced character of institutions translates into policy measures and related outcomes. Among the three indices constituting the social representativeness layer, the WBLI is, by construction, more inclusive in terms of capturing women’s role in diversified societal areas. From Table 2, we observe that the WBLI is the only index that is in strong correlation with all other indicators. We also identify strong dominance of the WBLI in correlations with policy responses: it is the only indicator that is significantly correlated with all three policy response measurements (Table 3).

To conclude, our results establish an association between female social representativeness, as measured by the (legal) equality of opportunities between men and women, and Covid-19 related policies. One potential interpretation of these findings concerns the central role of the gender balance in different institutions and layers of society in understanding policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. While it was parliaments and governments that implemented policies, we find that the measures undertaken correlate more strongly with factors related to the social representativeness of women rather than those related to their political representation. This suggests a dominant role of gender-balanced institutions at the ‘grass root’ level in terms of the scale and scope of the crisis response. Naturally, these institutions may result (or be correlated) with more gender-balanced political representation, but the latter alone is not helpful in explaining the variation in the reaction to the pandemic.  These results underline the importance of balanced gender representation in the labor market, business, and other spheres of social life.  Further investment and development of ‘grass root’ institutions that improve women’s socioeconomic opportunities, could provide a fundamental foundation for policy development in a crisis situation.

There could also be alternative interpretations of our findings. There is rich evidence that the gender dimension is deeply implicated in institutions (Acker, 1992; Chappell and Waylen, 2013; Lovenduski, 2005). Gender norms and gender practices have been shown to have an influence on the operation and interaction between formal and informal institutions (see, for instance, Chappell, 2010; Krook and Mackay, 2011; Chappell and Waylen, 2013) and the gender dimension of political institutions is reflected in their practices and values, hence affecting their outcomes (such as laws and policies), formation, and implementation (for instance, Acker, 1992). In turn, governmental policies and rules shape societal norms and expectations. These considerations imply that our results could be driven by the overall values, culture, and institutions of respective societies. These factors would both result in a more gender-neutral legal environment and ‘grass-root’ institutions, and ultimately, distinguish countries in their response to the Covid-19 pandemic. In this way, our results open an avenue for future studies in this important domain to better understand the causality of observed relationships.

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(The Appendix can be found in the PDF version of the brief)

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