Location: Global
Insights and Research Shared at the 2023 FREE Network Retreat
The 2023 FREE Network Retreat, an annual face-to-face event for members of the FREE Network, gathered its representatives to share and exchange research ideas and to discuss its institutes’ respective work and joint efforts within the Network. An academic session highlighted multiple overarching areas of interest and opportunities for research collaboration and included a plenary session on topics ranging from theoretical underpinning of Vladimir Putin’s regime to climate change beliefs and to consumer behaviour in credit markets. A session addressing the respective institute’s work during the last year also demonstrated the importance and relevance of the FREE Network’s joint initiatives on gender, democracy and media, and climate change and environment: FROGEE, FROMDEE and FREECE. This brief gives a short outline of the plenary session and an overview of some further topics covered during the conference.
The Academic Day
The Academic Day consisted partly of a plenary session and partly of an academic session. The academic session was outlined to demonstrate the wide spectrum of research interests within the network and to promote and highlight the opportunities for research collaboration. Designed as a series of poster sessions, each organized around a common research theme, it allowed for an exchange of ideas between presenting researchers and the audience while displaying the overlap of the various research interests across the institutes. At the same time, the poster session combined the broad range of topics within 10 overarching subjects (trade, gender, migration and education, public economics, energy, labor, political economy and development, macro, conflict, and theory and auctions).
The plenary session further illustrated the wide variety of topics the FREE Network researchers’ work on. During the plenary session, three distinguished presentations were held, summarized in what follows.
“Why Did Putin Invade Ukraine? – A Theory of Degenerate Autocracy”
Firstly, Konstantin Sonin, Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, gave a presentation of his working paper (with Georgy Egorov, Northwestern University) in which the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine is explained through a theoretical framework on dictators’ decision-making in degenerate autocracies.
Sonin outlined how the beliefs about Ukraine in Kremlin, prior to the invasion, were factually wrong. For example, Kremlin believed that Ukraine, despite plenty of facts pointing in the opposite direction, lacked a stable government and had an incapable army. Further, it was believed that the US and Europe wouldn’t care about Ukraine and that Russian troops would be welcomed as liberators – the latter exemplified by the fact that Russia sent police and not the army during the first phase of the invasion. He also stressed that the decision to invade Ukraine is likely to have disastrous consequences for Vladimir Putin, his regime, and for Russia as a whole. This is, however, not the first example of a disastrous decision made by a leader of an autocratic regime, leading up to the question: What explains such choices that should not rationally have been made? And how can leaders make them in highly institutionalized environments where they are surrounded by councils and advisors who are supposed to possess the best expertise?
The model presented by Sonin assumes a leader in such highly institutionalized environment that wishes to stay in power and whose decisions are based on input from subordinates. The subordinates differ in level of their expertise and the leader thus chooses the quality of advice that he receives through his choice of subordinates. In turn, while giving advice to the leader, the subordinate considers two factors: the vulnerability of the leader and their own prospects should the leader fall. In equilibrium there is a tradeoff as competent subordinates are also less loyal (since a more competent person might know when to switch alliances and have better prospects if the regime changes).
The leader also has access to repression as an instrument. Repression decreases his changes to be overthrown but raises the stakes for a potential future power struggle, as a leader with a history of repression is more likely to be repressed by his successor.
This interaction creates a feedback loop. If a dictator chooses repression, he feels more endangered, and he then chooses a more loyal subordinate who is less likely to deceive him for personal gain under a potential new regime. However, this leads to the appointment of less competent subordinates whereafter the information that flows to the leader becomes less and less reliable – as illustrated by Kremlin’s beliefs about Ukraine prior to the war.
There are three types of paths in equilibrium, Sonin explained; 1. “stable autocracy”, with leaders altering in power and choosing peaceful paths without repressions 2. “degenerate autocracy” – where the incumbent and opponent first replace each other peacefully and then slide into the repression-based change of power (until one of them dies and the story repeats), and 3. “consecutive degenerate autocracy” – where each power struggle is followed by repression.
Concluding his presentation, Sonin highlighted that in a degenerate autocracy such as Russia, individual decisions by the leader are rarely crucial due to the high level of institutionalization. However, as shown by the model, the leader is inevitably faced with a situation where he is surrounded by incompetent loyalists feeding him bad intel and setting him up to make disastrous decisions – most recently displayed in Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.
“Facing the Hard Truth: Evidence from Climate Change Ignorance”
Pamela Campa, Associate Professor at Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics, gave the conference’s second presentation, which detailed her work (with Ferenc Szucz, Stockholm University) on climate change skepticism.
Campa opened her talk with the current paradox regarding climate change, where, in the scientific community there is a strong consensus about the existence of climate change, but in society at large, skepticism is largely prevalent. This can be exemplified by one quarter of the US population not believing in global warming in 2023, and Europeans not believing in the fact that humans are the main driver of climate change.
According to Campa, the key question to answer is therefore “Why does ignorance about climate change persist among the public – in spite of the overwhelming evidence?”. One possible explanation may be a deficit in comprehension; people simply don’t understand the complexity of climate change and thus follow biased media and/ or politicians more or less sponsored by lobbyists. However, research have shown scientifical literacy to be quite uncorrelated with climate change denial, contradicting the above explanation. The second hypothesis, and of focus in the study, instead revolve around the concept of information avoidance. To test the hypothesis that people actively avoid climate change information, the authors key in on coal mining communities in the US having been exposed to negative shocks in the form of layoffs. These communities are of interest given their strong sense of identity and the fact that they are directly affected by the green transition. Arguably, a layoff shock would negatively affect not only their economy, but also pose a threat to their perceived identity. Given the context, it can thus be assumed that these communities to a larger extent would avoid information on climate change and information post-shock to restore the threatened identity.
The authors consider US counties experiencing mass layoff (more than 30 percent of mining jobs lost between 2014 and 2017) as treated counties, finding that in these counties, learning about climate change is 30 to 40 percent lower than in counties having experienced no mass layoffs. To account for the fact that the layoff itself may cause changes in learning, the authors also consider an instrument variable analysis in which gas prices are exploited as instrument for the layoffs – once again displaying the fact that people in affected communities believe climate change to be caused by humans to a lesser extent, when compared to counties in which no mass layoffs had occurred.
Interestingly, when controlling with other industries with somewhat similar characteristics (such as metal mining), the drop in climate change learning disappears, feeding in the notion of “identity-based information avoidance”.
The lack of support for and consensus among the public of the ongoing climate change and its drivers might pose a threat for the green transition as well as reduce personal effort to reduce the carbon footprint, Campa concluded.
“Consumer Credit with Over-Optimistic Borrowers”
In the plenary session’s last presentation, Igor Livshits, Economic Advisor and Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, presented his working paper (with Florian Exler, University of Vienna, James MacGee, Bank of Canada and Michèle Tertilt, Mannheimer University) on consumer credit and borrower’s behaviour.
There has been much debate on whether and how to regulate consumer credit products to limit misuse of credit. In 2009/2010 several initiatives and regulations (such as the 2009 Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act) were introduced with the aim of protecting consumers and borrowers from arguments that sellers of credit products exploit lack of information and cognitive capacity of borrowers. There is however a lack of evaluation of such arguments and subsequent regulations, which Livshits explained to be the motivation behind the paper.
The paper differentiates between over-optimistic borrowers (behaviour borrowers) and rational borrowers (rationalists). While both types face the same risks, behaviour borrowers are more prone to shocks and are at the same time unaware of these worse risks (i.e., they believe they are rationalists). Focusing on these types of borrowers, the paper introduces a model in which the lenders endogenously price credit based on beliefs about the borrower type. Households decide whether to spend or save and if to file for bankruptcy in an environment in which they are faced with earning shocks and expense shocks.
In this structural model of unsecured lending and default, Livshits finds that behavioral borrowers’ “risky” behaviour negatively affects rationalists since both types are pooled together and, thus rationalists are overpaying to cover for the behaviour borrowers. A calibration of the model also suggests that behavioral borrowers borrow too much and file for bankruptcy too little and too late.
Livshits argued that the model does not provide evidence of the notion that borrowers need protection from lenders, but rather that borrowers need to be protected from themselves. In fact, had behaviour borrowers been made aware of the fact that they are overly optimistic about the actual state of their future incomes, they would borrow 15 percent less.
To address the increased risks behaviour borrowers take at the cost of rationalists, policies such as default made easier, taxation on borrowing, financial literacy efforts and score-dependent borrowing limits could all be considered. Such policies may lower debt and reduce bankruptcy filings but as they may also reduce welfare and exhibit scaling difficulties.
Updates from the Institutes
During the Retreat, the respective institutes shared the previous year’s work, and updates within the FREE Network’s three joint projects were also presented. These go under the acronyms of FROMDEE (Forum for Research on Media and Democracy in Eastern Europe), FREECE (Forum for Research on Eastern Europe; Climate and the Environment) and FROGEE (Forum for Research on Gender Economics in Eastern Europe), and address areas of great relevance in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. Researchers from all FREE Network institutes work on these topics, with the most recent policy paper written in coordination by SITE, KSE and CenEA (with expert Maja Bosnic, Niras International Consulting). The policy paper focuses on the gender dimension of the reconstruction of Ukraine – putting emphasis on the necessity of gender budgeting principles throughout the various parts of reconstruction. An upcoming joint research paper will consider the effects of gasoline price increase on household income across the Network’s countries, written under the FREECE umbrella.
The three themes of gender, media and democracy, and environment and climate are not only purely research topics within the institutes. They also reflect developments and challenges that the institutes to a various extent face in the respective contexts in which they operate. The work focusing on the reconstruction of Ukraine is an excellent example of an area that encompasses all three.
Another example of the relevance of the three themes features prominently in one of the institutes’ most tangible contribution to their respective societies: their education programs. Nataliia Shapoval, Vice President for Policy Research at Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), emphasized how KSE has – amid Russia’s war on Ukraine – managed to greatly expand. Over the past year, KSE has launched 8 new bachelor’s and master’s programs, some of which are directly targeted at ensuring postwar reconstruction competence. On a similar note, Lev Lvovskiy, Academic Director at the Belarusian Research and Outreach Center (BEROC) mentioned the likelihood of next year being able to offer students a bachelor’s program in economics and several business courses in Vilnius – BEROC’S new location. BEROC’s effort in providing quality education in economics to Belarus’ exile youth is considered a fundamental investment in the future of the country – providing a competent leading class capable of installing democracy and fair elections in Belarus once the current regime is gone. The emphasis on education was further highlighted by Salome Gelashvili, Practice Head, Agriculture & rural policy at the International School of Economics Policy Institute (ISET-PI) who not only mentioned the opening of a master’s program in Finance at ISET but also the fact that an increasing number of students who’ve recently graduated from PhD’s abroad are now returning to Georgia. Such investments into education are necessary to counter Russian propaganda in the region all three agreed, emphasizing the need to continually stem Russia’s negative influence in the region. This investment into education is also important to hinder countries from sliding away from democratic values – realized in Belarus and threatening in Georgia.
To further delve into the issues of democratic backsliding, a tendency that has been recently observed not only in the region but also more widely across the globe, FROMDEE will organize an academic conference in Stockholm on October 13th, 2023.
Concluding Remarks
The 2023 FREE Network Retreat provided a great opportunity for the Networks’ participants to jointly take part of new research and to share experiences, opportunities, and knowledge amongst each other. The Retreat also served as reminder of the importance of continuously supporting economic and democratic development, through research, policy work, and networking, in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus.
List of Presenters
- Konstantin Sonin, University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy
- Pamela Campa, Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics
- Igor Livshits, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
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.
Lessons From the FROGEE Conference “The Playing Field in Academia: Why Are Women Still Underrepresented?”
Despite an increase in women’s representation since the beginning of the 20th century, women remain underrepresented in academia and other high-skilled professions. Academia has been prone to gender disparities both within and across fields as well as across academic ranks. In an endeavour to examine and address the underrepresentation of women in the academic profession, the Centre of Economic Analysis (CenEA), together with the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) and other partners of the Forum for Research on Gender Economics (FROGEE) at the FREE Network, organized the two-day conference “The playing field in academia: Why are women still underrepresented?”, in Warsaw June 21-22, 2023. This brief offers insights from the presentations and panel discussions held at the conference.
To date, there are few, if any, high-skilled professions exhibiting gender balance, and academia is no exception. Consequently, this imbalance has been subject to increased multidisciplinary research attention, exploring its origins and potential remedies. However, attaining a comprehensive understanding of gender disparities remains a challenge. For instance, much remains to be learnt about their long-run dynamics, a subject addressed by Carlo Schwarz, in one of the conference’s keynote lectures.
A Century of Progress
Carlo Schwarz (in joint work with Alessandro Iaria and Fabian Waldinger, 2022) trace the evolution of gender gaps in academia across a variety of domains at the global level throughout the 20th Century. Facilitated by an unprecedentedly large database of nearly 500,000 academics, spanning 130 countries and supplemented by publication and citation data, the authors specifically examine gender imbalances in recruitment, publishing, citation patterns, and promotions.
They find that in 1900 women constituted roughly 1 percent of all hires in academia (226 women, with only 113 hired as full professors). By 1969 the share of female academics had risen to about 6.6 percent, and by the year 2000 it had grown to approximately 17 percent. These rates varied across disciplines, institutions, and countries. For instance, teaching-centric disciplines such as pedagogy and linguistics, exhibited higher representation relative to research-oriented ones.
The research subsequently reveals a hump-shaped evolution of the gender gap in academic output – starting small before peaking at 45 percentage points fewer publications by women in 1969, thereafter declining to 20 percentage points. These publication disparities were also found to share a U-shaped relationship with the share of women in academia, indicating the interconnectedness of gender gaps.
The authors also address gender gaps in citations, identified by the use of a novel machine learning approach, forecasting a paper’s citations had it been written by a man. The results indicate a progressive reduction in the citation gap during the 20th century, decreasing from 27 percentage points (pre-WW1) to 14 percentage points (interwar) and eventually to 8 percentage points (post-WW2) fewer citations of papers by female relative to male academics. These gender gaps in academic output reiterated current evidence from Mexico, presented at the conference by Diana Terrazas-Santamaria, showing that women are associated with lower citation rates. Terrazas-Santamaria attribute the low rates to gender differences in both the number of publications and duration of academic careers.
The work by Iaria, Schwarz and Waldinger (2022) further showcase the gender disparities in career advancement in academia, which similarly decreased over the years. At the point of the greatest gender disparity, women required an approximately 6 percentage points better publication record to have the same promotion probabilities as their male counterparts.
The Leaky, Dry Pipeline
In the conference’s second keynote, Sarah Smith highlighted how academia, much like other professional occupations, exhibits a leaky pipeline. This is a phenomenon characterized by a declining representation of women as they ascend through the academic hierarchy. When examining specific fields, Smith’s results indicate that the gender disparities in economics much more closely align with those observed in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) than other social science disciplines. Furthermore, the economics’ field illustrate a significant lack of diversity among its new entrants. This phenomenon, referred to as the dry pipeline, generates future cohort implications, as they result in less demographically representative cohorts from which future professors can be recruited (see Stewart et al., 2009).
The cross-disciplinary comparison of the dry pipeline addressed in the keynote, contest the mathematical rigor of economics as a barrier to entry, as mathematics itself demonstrated higher women representation at A-level and undergraduate levels. In a following discussion panel, which focused on ensuring a fair start in academia (comprised of Yaroslava Babych, Alessandra Casarico, Federica Braccioli and Marta Gmurek, and moderated by Maria Perrotta Berlin), the panellists acknowledged that deeply engrained social expectations, gender trained behaviours and a lack of awareness constitute some of the persistent hindrances to the (early) involvement of women in specific fields, and the academic profession in general.
Additional factors influencing the gender balance in recruitment and promotion are gendered references, and the presence or absence of shared research interests between candidates and recruitment panels. These themes were extensively investigated in the work presented by Alessandra Casarico on the conference’s opening day. Specifically, results from collaborative work with Audinga Baltrunaite and Lucia Rizzica, highlight that grindstone words (e.g., “determined”, “hardworking”, etc.) are frequently used in recommendation letters to describe female candidates, while standout words (e.g., “excellent”, “strongest” etc.) typify male candidates’ references. Compared to their male counterparts, women are also shown to be more inclined to accentuate personality traits when serving as referees. This added to a broader literature demonstrating that female candidates’ recommendation letters frequently exhibit brevity, raise doubts, carry a weak tone, and emphasize candidates’ interpersonal skills and personality traits rather than their ability. Moreover, separate results from Casarico’s work (with Piera Bello and Debora Nozza) illustrate that research similarity between the recruiting committee and the candidate predict the likelihood of recruitment. The authors argue that the relationship is indicative of a bias against women if – as shown by the authors – women are less likely to be the candidates with the highest similarity.
In her presentation, Anne Sophie Lassen offered a different factor that may contribute to the attrition in the pipeline: the influence of parenthood on academic careers. Results from her work (with Ria Ivandić) indicate that while parenthood does not significantly influence graduation rates, it extends doctoral studies by an average of 7 months for women. Moreover, Lassen highlighted a declining trend of remaining in academia after becoming a parent, particularly pronounced among women.
More Areas of Imbalance
The remaining conference presentations and panel discussions explored additional domains of gender imbalances within academia. Iga Magda showcased evidence from her joint work with Jacek Bieliński, Marzena Feldy and Anna Knapińska of gender differences in remuneration during the early stages of an academic career, substantiating a gap within a year of graduation. These disparities endure throughout respondents’ careers and are contingent on the field of study – largest among engineering and technology graduates and lowest among those from the humanities and arts fields. Furthermore, it was observed that productivity plays a negligible role in the identified pay gaps, as its impact is similar for both genders.
The panel composed of Eleni Chatzichritou, Marta Łazarowicz-Kowalik, Jesper Roine and Joanna Wolszczak-Derlacz, and moderated by Michał Myck, deliberated on exposed disparities in the application for, and the success rates in attaining research funding in Poland and Europe – as seen in the National Science Centre (NCN) and the European Research Council research grants, respectively. The discussion highlighted how quantitative measures used in the allocation of research funding are riddled with subjective criteria that often benefit male academics. They also recognized how quests to allocate funds to the most successful candidate inadvertently penalize women with career breaks.
Another panel including Lev Lvovskiy, Carlo Schwarz, Sarah Smith, Marieke Bos and Joanna Tyrowicz, and moderated by Pamela Campa, lauded the growing objective data shedding light on gender inequalities in academia. The panellists discussed current challenges in identifying and quantifying aspects of gender disparities. For instance, currently used proxies do not allow to capture more subtle disparities, like microaggressions faced by female academics from students – emphasizing the need for more individual level survey data.
The panels were further enriched by personal anecdotes and filled with retrospective advice shared by both early career and established academics. To contextualize the above, a few cases from the FREE Network countries follow.
Evidence From Within the FREE Network
Yaroslava Babych shared insights concerning women in higher education in Georgia and other countries of the South Caucasus. Preliminary findings of her study confirm the presence of gender inequality in academia, evident in disparities in access to higher education as well as gender segregation across both fields and countries. Notably, women comprise a majority of the graduates in bachelor’s and master’s of art programs, whereas higher research-level programs such as doctors of science, and top echelons of the academic hierarchy remain predominantly male. Moreover, female academic output is found to be lower than that of male counterparts.
Lev Lvovskiy discussed the case of Belarus, highlighting the influence of the Soviet legacy. A significant factor linked to this legacy is exploiting university enrolment to circumvent compulsory conscription of men, allowing male university admissions to serve a secondary purpose beyond acquiring knowledge. This increases the perceived opportunity cost of enrolling a woman. Lvovskiy further documented the academic trajectories of Belarusians, revealing a majority of women at college and doctoral levels, but being underrepresented among doctoral graduates. The results further indicate significant cross-disciplinary gender disparities, with humanities having close to 80 percent women representation and engineering and information and technology (IT) fields having less than 30 percent women representation.
Monika Oczkowska provided evidence of gender disparities in Poland. Findings from the country reveal an overrepresentation of women graduates from bachelor through doctoral levels, and relative parity at post-doctoral level, but lower proportions at habilitation, associate professor, and professor levels. These general results confirm the higher detail findings presented by Karolina Goraus-Tanska on the first day of the conference. Results from Goraus-Tanska’s work (with Jacek Lewkowicz and Krzysztof Szczygielski) suggest that the drop-off among female academics from habilitation levels is not attributed to higher output expectations for women, but rather stems from the impact of parenthood.
Oczkowska further demonstrated that female academics in Poland are characterized by fewer international collaborations and lower levels of international output. Polish female academics were also showcased to engage in more international mobility during their doctoral studies relative to men, with the converse holding true after obtaining a doctoral degree. A potential explanation for this mobility decline among female academics, could be the increased burden of familial responsibilities at the post-doctoral and higher levels. Moreover, fewer women were reported to have applied for NCN grants and were underrepresented among the beneficiaries of these calls. Lastly, female academics in Poland record significantly lower total project costs relative to their male counterparts.
‘Plugging’ the Leak
In light of the aforementioned, what measures can be taken to address the gender imbalances in academia? As summarized by Sarah Smith, early initiatives have involved tracking women representation (e.g., in admissions, progression, hiring, etc.) within departments and/or institutions to identify where in the pipeline their progress is impeded. Attempted initiatives include formulation of seminar guidelines to overcome unfair experiences, as well as using gender-blind recruiting and objective hiring criteria to equalize hiring opportunities. Some other efforts, such as diverse recruitment panels have been unsuccessfully adopted, as they seem to embolden hostile male recruiters and load female panellists with unrewarded administration tasks. Conversely, mentoring has helped women build networks, publish more, and advance professionally. Awareness raising campaigns have reduced disparities in teaching evaluations and remain vital in addressing the dry pipeline and both transparent workload allocation and rewarding of administrative tasks have been shown to reduce promotion gaps in academia. In addition to the above, initiatives such as fostering gender-neutral networking opportunities, collaborations and a more diverse faculty were also deliberated during the conference.
Concluding Remarks
The conference advanced dialogue on societal and structural constraints to gender equality in academia and provided a platform to exchange ideas on how the shared objective of a more inclusive and equitable academic environment can be achieved. While the challenges remain abundant, and the costs associated not always negligible, it remains crucial to assess achievements, such as those resulting from mentoring and awareness intervention initiatives and recognize that further opportunities to enhance equity within the profession exist.
Additional Material
Seminar Participants – short bios
Conference Programme 22.06.2023
Conference Participants – short bios
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.
Potential Climate Change Impacts on Women’s Vulnerability in Georgia
Climate change can increase the vulnerability of women to various risks, including natural disasters, food insecurity, water scarcity, and health problems. Women may also face unique challenges in accessing resources and services, which can limit their ability to adapt to a changing climate. Developing countries, with their more traditional gender roles, are even more likely to experience disproportionate impacts of climate change on women, and Georgia is no exception. Thus, the country needs to address this problem through a comprehensive approach which accounts for the social, economic, and environmental factors that contribute to gender inequality.
Introduction
According to Georgia’s fourth national communication report to the United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, the negative impacts of climate change on ecosystems and the economy can hinder Georgia’s path toward sustainable development. Therefore, a key focus for the country should be to develop climate-resilient practices and reduce the vulnerability of communities exposed to these impacts.
The climate scenarios in the communication report present a worrying picture of warming trends in the country, mainly due to increased temperatures in the last summer and autumn seasons, as depicted in Figure 1 (MEPA, 2021). Such alterations in weather patterns often lead to glacier retreat, water scarcity, coastal erosion, and biodiversity loss in different regions of Georgia (ibid).
Figure 1. Average summer and winter temperatures in Georgia, 1900-2021.
Source: Climate Change Knowledge Portal (World Bank, 2021).
An increasing body of international research has demonstrated that climate change can have adverse effects on agricultural production, food security, water management, and public health. Furthermore, research has revealed that these effects are not gender-neutral, with women and children being among the most affected groups (World Bank Group, 2021).
Climate Change Impacts on Women – A Georgian Perspective
Women in developing countries like Georgia experience various impacts of climate change, which affect them differently than men. The effects might vary according to region or community, but some common signs can be identified. The main channels through which women are disproportionally affected by climate change are discussed in the following sub-sections.
Health Impacts
Climate change has a significant effect on human health, with women being more vulnerable due to various cultural, social, and economic factors (Sbiroli et al., 2022). In particular, women appear to be more susceptible to infectious diseases and undernutrition, especially in middle and low-income countries (ibid).
Springmann et al. (2016) found that, by 2050, Georgia could experience about 32.36 climate-related deaths per million due to malnutrition caused by a lack of fruits and vegetables in people’s diets and due to increased health complications associated with undernutrition. In Georgia, malnutrition is a significant gender equality concern. According to the Global Nutrition Report, women in Georgia disproportionally experience exposure to undernutrition translated into underweight. Similarly, women represent the majority of Georgians with obesity (26.8 percent, compared to 22.2 percent among men). Both these issues may be further exacerbated by climate change in the future.
Furthermore, in Georgia, women are more likely to care for sick family members. According to Geostat, 31 percent of women who have sick or dependent family members are involved in providing them care, compared to only 15 percent of the men. This puts women at greater risk of exposure to climate change-induced infectious diseases, given that research has demonstrated an increased risk of such diseases worldwide, including in areas in Europe that have climate profiles similar to Georgia (Mora et al., 2022; Gray et al., 2009).
Figure 2. Prevalence of underweight among adults (>18) in Georgia, 2000-2016.
Source: Global Nutrition Report (2023).
Water and Food Scarcity
Climate change is also known to affect food and water supply through changes in agricultural conditions, droughts, and floods. In developing countries as women are often responsible for food and water supply, they are disproportionally affected by water shortages resulting from climate change (Figueiredo & Perkins, 2013). Women in poor rural households in Georgia are likely to face similar challenges.
Women in Georgia also play a crucial role in agriculture (according to Geostat, 47 percent of workers in agricultural holdings were women in 2021). Fluctuations in temperature and precipitation patterns can reduce crop yields, leading to lower income and food insecurity. This may disproportionately affect female farmers, as access to agricultural technologies, land ownership and lack of necessary knowledge and skills are some of the significant barriers for women involved in agriculture in Georgia (Gamisonia, 2015).
Economic Impacts and Access to Resources
One of the main reasons to why women are disproportionally affected by climate change is that their underlying economic conditions are less favourable than men’s (Yadav & Lal, 2018). In 2021, the majority of people outside the labor force were women (65 percent), while men constituted 35 percent (Geostat). It is important to mention that in the same year, only 33 percent of women were employed in Georgia, compared to 49 percent of men. Additionally, the average salary for women was 1056 GEL (813 GEL in the agricultural sector), while men earned an average of 1538 GEL (1006 GEL in the agricultural sector). Finally, although poverty rates among women in Georgia are slightly lower than among men, 17.1 vs. 17.9 percent respectively (absolute poverty rates in 2021), the poverty data does not account for the gender-biased distribution of household resources. Women face larger barriers in obtaining financial resources (collaterals, loans, etc.) than men because they own less property. For different types of property, only 44 percent are owned by at least one woman, according to the National Agency of Public Registry of Georgia. The corresponding number for men is 56 percent. Geostat data further indicates that households headed by men make up 63 percent of the total number of households, whereas households headed by women account for only 37 percent. These unfavorable conditions hinder women’s access to vital information and resources required for climate change adaptation and mitigation.
The discussed impacts may be especially prominent for women in poor rural households. Climate change-induced natural disasters are typically more detrimental for households dependent on agriculture (Dagdeviren et al., 2021), especially subsistence farmers and poor agricultural workers (in particular those without access to technology or resources). In Georgia, women are in majority in both these categories.
Natural Disasters and Displacement
Climate-driven disasters are over 14 times more likely to cause fatalities among women and children than men, according to UNHCR (2022). Additionally, women in agrarian societies impacted by climate change are less likely to use adaptive measures, putting them at higher risk of displacement (Palacios, Sexsmith, Matheu & Gonzalez, 2023). Such risks are also likely to pertain to the rural areas of Georgia.
Georgia’s International Obligations and Policies
In previous decades Georgia has made significant progress when it comes to incorporating gender equality and climate change into the policy agenda. In particular, Georgia follows numerous international legislative initiatives regarding sustainable development, gender equality, and climate change.
Georgia is a party to the Paris Agreement and the Beijing platform (a comprehensive roadmap for women’s rights and empowerment, which lists the problems associated with gender inequality and different strategies to overcome them, signed by Georgia in 1995). It is also a signatory of the Gender Action Plan (GAP), adopted a year after the Paris Agreement to integrate gender into targets and increase effectiveness, fairness, and sustainability.
The updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) of Georgia includes a dedicated section on gender and climate change. This section aims to promote gender mainstreaming, encourage equal participation, empower women, build capacity, and develop climate policies that are responsive to gender considerations. Furthermore, the Long-term Low-emission Development Strategies for Paris Agreement parties (including Georgia) has a communication and awareness-raising strategy that seeks to address gender, youth, and people with disabilities in its outreach efforts (United Nations, 2022).
Despite these commitments, Georgia is lagging when it comes to tackling the issues of climate change and gender in coordination. For example, even though Georgia has adopted a Gender Equality Law and Action Plan, it does not address climate change issues. Therefore, municipalities are not required to consider gender aspects of climate change impacts.
Identified Gaps and Policy Recommendations
Despite the number of policies and measures undertaken, unsolved problems hinder the country’s ambition to adhere to gender-mainstreamed climate change-addressed policymaking.
For example, there is a lack of gender-disaggregated data on the impacts of climate change in Georgia, which prevents policymakers from developing targeted strategies to address women’s needs. Therefore, collecting and analyzing disaggregated data with gender-specific impacts in mind is recommended. Additionally, involving women in decision-making and ensuring their participation in climate change efforts is crucial as their unique experiences and perspectives can inform more effective and equitable responses to climate change impacts.
As previously mentioned, climate change in Georgia is expected to exacerbate water and food scarcity, which can disproportionately affect women. Therefore, implementing climate-resilient water management strategies and increasing access to climate-resilient agricultural practices, such as crop diversification and improved irrigation systems, can help increase farm productivity and reduce the adverse impacts of climate change on women.
Furthermore, there is a need to provide women with access to financial resources and services and to address gender-based inequalities that may limit women’s ability to access information and resources necessary for climate change adaptation and mitigation.
Finally, addressing the impacts of climate change on women in Georgia will require a coordinated and sustained effort from a range of stakeholders, including governments, civil society organizations, and local communities, so that women are not left behind in the global effort to address the impacts of climate change.
Conclusion
To effectively address the impacts of climate change on women in Georgia, it is essential to recognize that various social, economic, and cultural factors shape women’s experiences. For example, women in rural areas may face different challenges than women in urban areas; women with few economic means may be disproportionately affected by climate change. Therefore, policies should not only integrate gender-mainstreaming, but also account for these heterogeneities, to ensure that different parties of the society are adequately addressed within the climate change policy agenda.
References
- Dagdeviren, H., Elangovan, A., & Parimalavalli, R. (2021). Climate change, monsoon failures and inequality of impacts in South India. Journal of Environmental Management.
- Figueiredo, P., & Perkins, P. E. (2013). Women and water management in times of climate change: participatory and inclusive processes. Journal of Cleaner Production, 188-194.
- Gamisonia, N. (2015). Climate Change and Women. Heinrich Böll Stiftung.
- Global Nutrition Report. (2023). Global Nutrition Report. https://globalnutritionreport.org/resources/nutrition-profiles/asia/western-asia/georgia/
- Geostat. https://www.geostat.ge/en
- Gray, J. S., Dautel, H., Estrada-Peña, A., Kahl, O., & Lindgren, E. (2009). Effects of Climate Change on Ticks and Tick-Borne Diseases in Europe. National Library of Medicine.
- MEPA. (2021). Fourth National Communication of Georgia to the UNFCCC. Tbilisi: UNDP.
- Mora, C., McKenzie, T., Gaw, I. M., Dean, J. M., Hammerstein, H. v., Knudson, T. A., Franklin, E. C. (2022). Over half of known human pathogenic diseases can be aggravated by climate change. Nature Climate Change.
- National Agency of Public Registry of Georgia. https://www.napr.gov.ge/
- Palacios, H. V., Sexsmith, K., Matheu, M., & Gonzalez, A. R. (2023). Gendered adaptations to climate change in the Honduran coffee sector. Women’s Studies International Forum.
- Sbiroli, E., Geynisman-Tan, J., Sood, N., Maines, B. A., Junn, J. H.-J., & Sorensen, C. (2022). Climate change and women’s health in the United States: Impacts and opportunities. The Journal of Climate Change and Health.
- Springmann, M., Mason-D’Croz, D., Robinson, S., Garnett, T., Godfray, H. C., Gollin, D., Scarborough, P. (2016). Global and regional health effects of future food production under climate change: a modelling study. National Library of Medicine.
- UNHCR. (2022). Gender, Displacement and Climate Change. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
- United Nations. (2022). Long-term Low-emission Development Strategies. United Nations.
- World Bank Group. (2021). Climate Risk Country Profile: Georgia. World Bank Group.
- World Bank. (2021). Climate Change Knowledge Portal. https://climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org/country/georgia
- Yadav, S. S., & Lal, R. (2018). Vulnerability of women to climate change in arid and semi-arid regions: The case of India and South Asia. Journal of Arid Environments, 4-17.
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.
FROGEE Training Workshop: Data Sources and Methods for Research and Policy Analysis
On 2 June 2023 CenEA will host an academic seminar day as part of a training workshop on “Data Sources and Methods for Research and Policy Analysis” organised in Szczecin.
The speakers include:
- Daniel Hamermesh (University of Texas at Austin and IZA Bonn)
- Arieda Muço (Central European University)
- Michał Myck (Centre for Economic Analysis, CenEA)
- Maria Perrotta Berlin (Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics)
The detailed programme of the Seminar day can be found here.
Registration
The seminar day is open to the public (the number of places is limited). If you would like to join please register by sending an e-mail to: Artur Król at: akról@cenea.org.pl.
If you would like to join via Zoom please register via Zoom registration page: (click here)
European Democracy Through the Lens of Party Manifestos
The subjects of political discourse are important but hard to quantify. This brief uses data from 30 years of party manifestos to study how the dominant topics in politics have evolved across Europe. Transition countries have seen the most significant shift in the content of political discourse. In the early 1990s, party manifestos in Eastern Europe focused on a distinct set of topics related to transition; by recent elections they had converged to those in Western Europe, with a heavy emphasis on the welfare state, education, infrastructure and technology. Political discourse can change rapidly in times of crisis as shown by the example of Ukraine.
“It’s the economy, stupid!”
James Carville, Bill Clinton’s strategist for the 1992 election.
The dominant topics in politics are not always as apparent as when Bill Clinton was elected US president in the midst of a recession. While it is easy to track winners across election cycles, it is much harder to know what got them elected and what they will do (or at least, promise to do) once in power. The key issues and topics that political parties and candidates talk about form as important a part in our democracies as vote shares.
In this brief, we use data collected by the Manifesto Project (Lehmann et al., 2022) to describe the development of political discourse across Europe, with a particular focus on the differences and similarities between western European countries and transition economies in Eastern Europe.
Political Manifestos as Data
In most countries, voters mainly participate in the democratic process by voting for candidates put forward by political parties. Political parties advertise themselves to voters and distinguish themselves from each other by issuing party programmes or party manifestos where they lay down their ideological and policy positions.
The Manifesto Project provides a publicly available dataset on parties’ policy platforms. The data are based on the manifestos of parties that have won at least one (Western Europe) or two seats (transition countries) in a national election. Coders manually analyse the content of the manifestos and provide the percentage of each party’s manifesto that falls into one of 56 content categories. These content categories summarise a party’s policy position on given issues, for instance, whether they favour environmental protection or an expansion of the welfare state or oppose protectionism or multiculturalism.
The Manifesto Project is an example of “text as data“. Quantitative analysis based on text is becoming increasingly important across the social sciences (Gentzkow et al., 2019) but it is particularly useful in political economy and political science given that “language is the medium of politics“ and objective numerical data are often limited (Grimmer and Stewart, 2013). Unlike many recent approaches which process data using automated text analysis tools, the Manifesto Project relies on the judgement of coders from over 50 countries who read the original text. The resultant dataset has limitations: the subjective choices made by individual coders, the to-some-extent arbitrary determination of content categories to summarise the most relevant issues across different contexts and time periods and the difficulty of imposing consistent classifications for texts written in over 40 languages. Despite these caveats, it is a unique resource for analysing the evolution of countries’ political discourse over time and across countries.
Key Issues in Political Discourse
Figure 1 summarises, through content categories, the policy positions of parliaments in Western Europe and transition countries at two points in time: the early 1990s (around the time of the first democratic elections in most transition countries) and after the latest election. We measure the importance of a policy position in a country’s parliament by weighting the importance of the relevant content category in each party’s manifesto by that party’s vote share. Over time, our measure of a policy position’s importance in political discourse may increase or decline for two reasons. First, parties may change the extent to which they emphasise a given position in their manifestos. For example, parties across the political spectrum are likely to have increased references to healthcare in their manifestos during election campaigns held during the Covid-19 pandemic. Second, as voters’ preferences shift, parties that gain support will see their issues receive greater weight in the aggregate measure relative to parties that lose vote shares. For example, if the pandemic shifted voters’ preferences towards a more comprehensive welfare system, voters could respond by voting for parties which discuss the expansion of the welfare state in their manifestos.
Figure 1. Policy positions of parties in parliament.
Source: The Manifesto Project and authors’ calculations.
Notes: This chart shows word clouds of the main topics that feature in the manifestos of political parties in parliament, weighted by each party’s vote share and averaged across countries within a region. Panels a and b are based on the first election after 1990 (and before 1995) and Panels c and d are based on the latest election (after 2015) in the sample. Western Europe includes Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Transition economies include Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine. Not all countries are represented in both periods.
Some striking patterns emerge. While the policy priorities of Western European parliaments remain relatively stable over the past 30 years, those of transition countries have changed markedly. During the transition period, many parties focused on the political and economic aspects of transition. Support for democracy, freedom and human rights, as well as the free market economy, featured heavily in the manifestos of parties that formed the first democratic parliaments. Over time, policy priorities in transition countries have become more similar to those of their western neighbours, and issues such as the expansion of the welfare state, the provision of education, and the importance of technology and infrastructure, have come to the fore in all countries.
Nevertheless, some differences still remain. For instance, environmental protection is one of the most important topics in western European parliaments, though its importance has declined over time. In transition countries, the environment is slowly becoming more important, but even in the latest elections it ranked at only number 16 out of 56 issues. In contrast, support for the “national way of life” was and continues to be a prominent part of the political discourse in transition economies and it is also becoming more mainstream in the Western European countries.
Political corruption and governmental and administrative efficiency have become relatively more important issues in the parliaments of transition countries, both over time and relative to their western neighbours. Meanwhile, parties in Western Europe are devoting more of their manifesto to calls for equality and social justice.
A Closer Look at Ukraine
A country’s parliament’s policy platform can change suddenly in response to shocks. Figure 2 shows the big topic groups in the manifestos of political parties in the Ukrainian parliament from 1998 to 2019. The parliamentary election in October 2014 closely followed the Euromaidan Revolution, the annexation of Crimea by Russia and the start of the Donbas war. Compared to the previous elections, external relations became a major issue in the Ukrainian parliament, driven in particular by increased mentions of the military and the relationship with the EU. Party manifestos heavily featured appeals to Ukrainian nationhood, national solidarity, and unity (as evidenced by the increasing importance of the content category “Fabric of Society”). The trend of increasing attention to freedom and democracy also continued in this election cycle. In contrast, the previously most important issues in elections (welfare and quality of life) received much less attention in parliament at times of political upheaval and military conflict.
Figure 2. Topics in Ukrainian elections.
Source: The Manifesto Project and authors’ calculations.
Notes: This chart shows the percentage of mentions of topic groups in the manifestos of political parties in the Ukrainian parliament from 1998 to 2019, weighted by each party’s vote share.
Distribution of Political Ideology
While the previous section discussed the main policy issues in parliament, we now turn our focus to the ideology of individual political parties that make up a country’s parliament. A commonly used summary measure of political ideology is a left-right scale (RILE), where left positions favour peace, state intervention in the economy and the expansion of the welfare state and right positions support security, traditional values and the free market economy. The Manifesto Project provides a RILE value for each party at each election (based on Laver and Budge, 1992), which is calculated by subtracting the share of a party’s manifesto devoted to left-leaning policy issues, for instance support for the welfare state, from right-leaning content, such as support for the free market economy. Condensing the complexity of party programmes into a one-dimensional measure based on fixed definitions has advantages and drawbacks. The RILE makes it possible to compare diverse political parties that campaign on different issues (for instance ecological parties compared to nationalist parties) and measure how the same party’s policy stance may have shifted over time. As the definition of left- and right-leaning issues were based on influential political theories around the 1900s, some scholars argue that this measure has become less appropriate to empirically differentiate between modern political parties, particularly in transition countries (see, e.g., Mölder, 2016). In particular, Tavits and Letki (2009) show that during the transition process many leftist parties in Eastern Europe pursued economically right-wing policies and Vachudova (2008) argues that right-wing parties in the region often appealed to a nationalist discourse.
With these caveats in mind, Figure 3 shows the distribution of all parties in parliament in the Manifesto Project database on the RILE scale, weighted by their respective vote shares. In Western Europe in the 1990s, the chart shows the prominence of both centre-left and centre-right parties, as well as smaller parties both on the more extreme left and right. In contrast, the parties in parliament in transition economies at the time were more concentrated in the centre (and slightly towards the right). Fast forward 30 years and the distribution of political ideology has changed in both the east and the west. In Western Europe, the majority of parliamentarians are now situated slightly right of centre with little mass in the more extreme tails. In contrast, in the former transition countries, there is evidence of political polarisation with party representation moving both to the left and the right on the ideological spectrum and relatively few parliamentarians occupying the centre.
Figure 3. Left-right position of parties in parliament.
Source: The Manifesto Project and authors’ calculations.
Notes: This chart shows the density of parties in parliament on the left-right policy scale (RILE), weighted by each party’s vote share within their country. The dashed lines are based on the first election after 1990 (and before 1995) and the solid lines are based on the latest election (after 2015) in the sample. Western Europe includes Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Transition economies include Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine. Not all countries are represented in both periods.
Conclusion
What are the main topics of political discourse? Are they different across countries? Do they change over time? While there is no perfect way to quantify and track political discourse over time, this brief uses data from parties’ manifestos provided by the Manifesto Project to illustrate some broad trends across Europe over the past 30 years.
We document two kinds of changes in the subject matter of party manifestos. First, there are gradual shifts in content that reflect underlying developments in society. As democracies have matured in Eastern Europe, the content of their parties’ manifestos has evolved away from the immediate concerns of economic and political transition and converged to those of Western European parties. Second, more abrupt shifts can arise when countries experience crises or institutional upheaval. Over the past decade Ukrainians have lived through a revolution, the Donbas war, and the ongoing Russian invasion. Most of the parties that represent them in parliament are new, and the issues that feature prominently in their manifestos are now markedly different from those before the Euromaidan revolution.
Manifestos are not just about substance but also about ideology. Using the Manifesto Project’s classification of parties on a left-right scale, we show how the distribution of parties has evolved in Western Europe and transition countries. By this measure, political polarisation has been increasing in transition countries where centrist positions are less well represented than in Western European parliaments.
References
- Gentzkow, Matthew, Bryan Kelly, and Matt Taddy. (2019). “Text as data”, Journal of Economic Literature 57, no. 3: 535-74.
- Grimmer, J., and Stewart, B. (2013). “Text as data: The promise and pitfalls of automatic content analysis methods for political texts”. Political analysis 21, no. 3: 267-297.
- Lehmann, P., Burst, T., Matthieß, T., Regel, S., Volkens, A., Weßels, B. and Zehnter, L. (2022) The Manifesto Data Collection. Manifesto Project (MRG / CMP / MARPOR). Version 2022a. Berlin: Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB). https://doi.org/10.25522/manifesto.mpds.2022a
- Laver, M. and Budge, I. (eds.). (1992). Party Policy and Government Coalitions, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: The MacMillan Press.
- Mölder, M. (2016). The validity of the RILE left–right index as a measure of party policy. Party Politics, 22(1), 37–48. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354068813509525
- Tavits, M. and Letki, N. (2009). When Left Is Right: Party Ideology and Policy in Post-Communist Europe. American Political Science Review, 103(4), 555-569. doi:10.1017/S0003055409990220
- Vachudova, M. A. (2008). Centre—Right Parties and Political Outcomes in East Central Europe. Party Politics, 14(4), 387–405. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354068808090252
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.
Spillover Effects from the Nordic Model of Prostitution Legislation
In recent years several European countries alongside Canada and Israel have adopted the so-called Nordic model of prostitution legislation to try and reduce the risk of sexual exploitation. While the reforms directly affect the regulation of the domestic sex market, their effects may also spill over to other outcomes in nearby areas and internationally – for example affecting sex tourism flows. Making use of data on tourism flows and Google searches, a new study examines the causal effect from the implementation of the reform in four different countries on sex tourism in popular destinations. The findings indicate that domestic reforms increase sex tourism, calling for the design of policies to account also for these adverse effects.
Introduction
Since 1999, when Sweden introduced the so-called Nordic model of prostitution legislation, similar legislation has been introduced in Canada, Iceland, Ireland, France, Norway, and most recently Israel. While the legislation design differs between countries (for an overview see Perrotta Berlin and Spagnolo, 2019), the common foundation is to effectively criminalize the purchase but not the selling of sexual services. The introduction of such reforms aims at battling human trafficking and reducing the risk of exploitation. While the effect from the asymmetric prostitution legislation has been found to increase rape incidence in Sweden (Ciacci, 2018), when it comes to the sex market the Nordic model is mainly thought to affect it in two contrasting ways. Firstly, it may suppress domestic supply, which could result in people travelling to destinations where prostitution is not criminalized. Secondly, it might affect the general view on prostitution (Kotsadam and Jakobsson, 2011), thus reducing domestic demand as well as international sex tourism.
Sex tourism is associated with human trafficking, child exploitation and increased spread of sexually transmitted diseases (Herold and Van Kerkwijk, 1992; Brooks and Heaslip, 2019; Newman et al. 2011). Despite this, few studies have explored the impact of prostitution laws on the practice – in part due to measurement difficulties.
This brief presents evidence from a forthcoming paper by Perrotta Berlin and Latour on sex tourism patterns following the implementation of the reform in four different countries.
Quantifying Sex Tourism
Perrotta Berlin and Latour use tourism patterns and Google searches to quantify sex tourism flows, in order to evaluate the effect from changes in prostitution legislation in Canada, France, Ireland and Norway. Specifically, they use data on the number of monthly tourist arrivals to Thailand and The Philippines, and weekly Google searches originating from the above-mentioned reform countries for popular sex-tourism and other tourism destinations, including attractions within cities. German tourism data and Google searches originating from France as well as Google searches originating in the US are used to estimate the effect on sex tourism to bordering countries (France to Germany and US to Canada, respectively). To evaluate the respective effects, they identify treated and control groups for each considered setting, and proceed to compare data between these groups before and after the reform (in line with the so-called difference-in-differences specification, as pioneered by Card and Krueger, 1994). In the following sections, each of these specifications and the subsequent results are discussed.
Evident Spillover Effects
Thailand and The Philippines
For Thailand and The Philippines, monthly data was available on tourist arrivals differentiated by country of origin from 2013 to 2020 and from 2008 to 2020, respectively. The underlying assumption is that, absent a prostitution legislation reform in the four considered countries (Canada, Ireland, France and Norway), the tourism flows from the country in question to Thailand and The Philippines would have remained the same over time. Thus, the change in the number of tourist inflow (out of which an unknown number are sex tourists) from the country in question – when compared to the number of tourists from other countries used as the control group – can be interpreted as a causal effect from the legislative reform on sex tourism.
The results show that, when compared to tourists arriving from other countries, the number of tourists arriving from one of the countries having recently implemented the Nordic model increased by 0.312 and 0.158 standard deviation points for The Philippines and Thailand respectively. Figure 1 below illustrates the results from an event study specification, in which the reform dates in the four different countries are aligned at 0, depicting how the increase is spread over the two years following the reform.
Figure 1. Number of tourists before and after the reform, The Philippines to the left and Thailand to the right.
Notes: The horizontal axis is the time variable. Time is normalized such that 0 is the month when the reform came into force. On the left panel the vertical axis is the number of tourist arrivals to The Philippines from reform countries in deviation from control countries. On the right panel the vertical axis is the number of tourist arrivals to Thailand from reform countries in deviation from control countries.
France-Germany Border
In Germany, the legislative status of prostitution is determined at the level of municipality. For the analysis, German municipalities where prostitution is to some extent legal were considered to form the treatment group and municipalities where it is illegal constituted the control group. The outcomes of interest were i) tourists travelling to German municipalities of interest, and ii) Google searches from France for the same municipalities.
The analysis shows an increase in foreign tourism to the treatment municipalities following the implementation of the Nordic model of prostitution legislation in France. At the same time, no changes in domestic tourism was detected. The conclusion that the increase in foreign tourism is driven by an increase in French tourists, by which one could then argue the implemented reform to increase cross-border sex tourism, was validated by the analysis of French Google searches. In these data it can be seen that distant German municipalities where prostitution is legal become relatively more interesting in French Google searches after the reform compared to municipalities where prostitution is illegal.
Figure 2. Searches of German municipalities originated in France relative their distance from the French border.
Notes: The vertical axis is the weekly index of Google Trends for searches for municipalities in Germany originated in France. The horizontal axis is distance from the French border. The red line shows that the slope decreased, i.e. distance became more salient for municipalities with illegal prostitution after the reform.
Canada-US Border
Data on Google searches for Canadian municipalities from one year before to one year after the reform in Canada were considered for the analysis. Searches originate in different US states, which also differ in the extent to which purchase of sexual services is legally punishable. The length of imprisonment in each US state determines whether a state was considered treated – when the length of imprisonment equals or exceeds that in Canada following the reform – or control. Results show that after the introduction of the Canadian reform, Google searches for Canadian municipalities dropped, in particular, in US states with high punishments for purchase of sexual services – most likely those where sex tourism to Canada used to originate before the reform. The results from the event study is depicted in Figure 3 below.
Figure 3. Number of searches of Canadian cities before and after the reform, deseasoned.
Notes: The horizontal axis is the time variable. Time is normalized such that 0 is the month when the reform came into force. The vertical axis is the number of searches from US states with high punishments in deviation from control states.
Sex Tourism Destinations
Finally, Google Searches for sex tourism destinations were considered as the outcome variable with the underlying idea being that – in the absence of a legislative change in the four considered countries – the difference in number of searches for sex tourism vs tourism destinations would have been the same over time. Sex tourism destinations were defined in two alternative ways: first, a list of popular destinations was selected within countries where prostitution is legal; second, this list was augmented with information from websites that list popular destinations for sex tourism, regardless of the legal status of prostitution in that country.
The results from this analysis are less clear, varying with the definition of sex tourism destinations and with the country of origin. But by and large they showed, if anything, that the interest in sex tourism destination countries decreased after the reform. This might indicate a change in attitudes towards lower acceptance of sex trade in general in the countries where the reform was implemented.
Conclusion
Prostitution legislation reforms affect the domestic sex market and have potential cross-border and international spillover effects. One such impact from criminalizing the purchase of sexual services domestically is increased levels of sex tourism, which might in turn impose adverse effects on the destination countries.
Filling a research gap by studying the effect from introducing asymmetric prostitution laws on sex tourism, Perrotta Berlin and Latour find evidence suggesting that harsher domestic regulation, while potentially changing attitudes in the general population (as indicated by Google Searches) also, in specific cases, increases, the outflow of tourists to destinations with less stringent laws.
After the introduction of the Nordic model, Norway has imposed legislation prohibiting their citizens to purchase sexual services even in countries where it is legal and implemented awareness campaigns on the detrimental effects of sex tourism on local populations. Given that sex tourism is associated with human trafficking, child exploitation and increased spread of sexually transmitted diseases, the results call for other countries to follow suit with domestic prostitution legislation taking on a more global approach to achieve greater effectiveness.
References
- Brooks, A. and Heaslip, V. (2019). Sex trafficking and sex tourism in a globalised world. Tourism Review, 74(5): 1104-1115. https://doi.org/10.1108/TR-02-2017-0017
- Card, D. and Krueger, A. (1994). Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. American Economic Review, 84(4): 772–793, September https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v84y1994i4p772-93.html
- Ciacci, R. (2018). Banning the purchase of prostitution increases rape: evidence from Sweden. https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/100393.html
- Herold, E. S. and Van Kerkwijk, C. (1992). Aids and sex tourism. AIDS society, 4(1):1/8.
- Kotsadam, A. and Jakobsson, N. (2011). Do laws affect attitudes? an assessment of the norwegian prostitution law using longitudinal data. International Review of Law and Economics, 31(2):103–115. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0144818811000196
- Newman, W., Holt, B., Rabun, J., Phillips, G. and Scott, C. (2011). Child sex tourism: Extending the borders of sexual offender legislation. International journal of law and psychiatry, 34:116–21. doi: 10.1016/j.ijlp.2011.02.005
- Perrotta Berlin, M. and Spagnolo, G. (2019). The Nordic Model of Prostitution Legislation: Health, Violence and Spillover Effects. FREE Policy Brief. https://freepolicybriefs.org/2019/04/21/the-nordic-model-of-prostitution-legislation-health-violence-and-spillover-effects
- Perrotta Berlin, M. and Latour, C. (2023). Cross-Country Impacts of Prostitution Legislation: Evidence from Reforms in five Countries. Unpublished manuscript.
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.
Democratic Backsliding and Electoral Autocracies
The Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) and the Forum for Research on Media and Democracy in Eastern Europe (FROMDEE) invite paper submissions to a one-day conference on “Democratic backsliding and electoral autocracies” with a keynote lecture by Arturas Rozenas (New York University).
Conference
The UN’s Secretary-General António Guterres recently observed that “across the world, democracy is backsliding”. This trend encompasses new democracies that have drifted towards electoral autocracy and established democracies where political polarization threatens institutional norms. Research can shed light on where and when democratic institutions are fragile and what can help make them resilient.
The Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) and the Forum for Research on Media and Democracy in Eastern Europe (FROMDEE) is organising a one-day conference on “Democratic backsliding and electoral autocracies” with a keynote lecture by Arturas Rozenas (New York University). The conference will take place on 13 October 2023 in Stockholm, Sweden.
Call for Papers
We would like to invite paper and extended abstract submissions, as well as expressions of interest in attending the conference by 15 June 2023 at the link below. We welcome submissions from economics and political science on threats to liberal democratic institutions, as well as other topics in political economy. We would especially like to encourage researchers working on or based in Eastern Europe to apply.
There is no conference registration fee and meals will be provided for all participants. Some funding is available for travel and accommodation, with preference given to presenters and participants from Eastern Europe.
Submission form: Click here
Download the call for paper in pdf-file: “Democratic backsliding and electoral autocracies”
Important dates:
- 15 June 2023 – Submission deadline (full papers or extended abstracts >10 pages)
- July 2023 – Notification of acceptance
- 13 October 2023 – SITE Academic Conference on “Democratic Backsliding and Electoral Autocracies”
The conference is organised as part of the FROMDEE initiative – the Forum for Research on Media and Democracy in Eastern Europe supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).
In case of technical difficulties, please send your submission to: site.free.conferences@gmail.com
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed during events and conferences are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.
Energy Infrastructure Resilience and Sustainable Future
The Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) and the Forum for Research on Eastern Europe: Climate and Environment (FREECE) would like to invite you to its 2023 SITE Energy Talk. This year it will focus on the opportunities and challenges that the energy infrastructure will face in the near future.
As we move towards sustainable, low-carbon energy systems, it is essential to guarantee the energy infrastructure’s resilience against various challenges, such as supply chain disruptions, network congestion, rising energy costs, and other potential threats. Valuable insights have been gained from recent shocks such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the energy crisis, and the ongoing Ukrainian war concerning the energy infrastructure’s resilience.
The next SITE Energy event will focus on the opportunities and challenges that the energy infrastructure will face in the near future.
Speakers
Ewa Lazarczyk Carlson
Associate Professor at Reykjavik University and also affiliated to Luleå University of Technology
Lazarczyk Carlson will focus on the Baltic Sea region’s energy security and the network dependency on Russia as an electricity power supplier.
Yuliya Markuts
Ph.D., Head of the Center of Public Finance and Governance at the Kyiv School of Economics, Associate Professor of Finance at the State University of Trade and Economics
Markuts will address the energy of Ukraine during the Russia full-scale invasion: resilience and future prospects for transformation.
Igor Piddubnyi
Analyst on Energy sector Damages and Losses, Researcher at the Center for Food and Land Use Research at Kyiv School of Economics
Piddbunyi addresses the question of Ukrainian energy infrastructure, its current status, and damage evaluations.
Mikael Toll
Senior Advisor at Ramboll Management Consulting
Toll will discuss how well-prepared the Nordic energy infrastructure is for the green transition from a security of energy supply perspective, in the light of recent and current energy crises.
Moderators
The seminar will be moderated by Chloé Le Coq, Professor of Economics at the University Paris-Panthéon-Assas (CRED) and Research Fellow at SITE, and Elena Paltseva, Associate Professor at SITE.
Registration
The event will take place in Terrasrummet at Holländargatan 32, 113 59 Stockholm (near the main building of SSE) and the registration opens at 11.45 near the entrance of Holländargatan.
The event will also be streamed online via Zoom for those who cannot join the event in person. Please register via the Trippus platform:
NOTE: A light lunch will be provided for those who will participate the event in person.
Please contact site@hhs.se if you have any questions regarding the event.
Russia’s Data Warfare
After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a broad spectrum of previously publicly available statistics on economic indicators has been removed from the public eye. This reduced transparency affects any analysis of the state of the Russian economy and assessments of the effects of sanctions. The strategy is also part of a larger disinformation campaign that has become an integral part of Russia’s war on Ukraine. In this brief we provide a short overview of the main indicators on economic activity that have been masked in various forms by Russia’s data producing institutions. We also touch upon some alternative strategies, employed to gain a better understanding of the actual state of the Russian economy while official data is unavailable or unreliable.
Following Russia’s war on Ukraine, Russia has ceased to publish large amounts of previously publicly available statistics on economic indicators. This reduced transparency affects any attempts to analyze the Russian economy with regular data and models, and is an integral part of the information war that has followed Russia’s aggression. In particular, it aims to reduce or obscure the analysis of the effects of sanctions that have been imposed on Russia by Ukraine’s partners. The reduced precision of this analysis is then used in various propaganda channels to claim that sanctions are useless and that they are, instead of hurting Russia, harming the EU, the US and other sanctions implementing countries.
In this brief we present a short overview of some of the most important statistics on Russia’s economic performance no longer publicly available (with a detailed list to be found in the Online Appendix). We also discuss some alternative measures to track the Russian economy which can be used to provide more accurate assessments of the effect of sanctions and thus reduce the impact of Russia’s data warfare.
What Data is Being Masked?
Russia’s cessation of statistical publications has occurred across several dimensions including foreign trade, budget, and finance. Most notably, data has been masked by the Central Bank of the Russian Federation (CBR), the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation (Ministry of Finance), the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) and the Federal Customs Service of Russia.
Budget Data
Data on federal and consolidated budgets in Russia was previously easily accessible on the Ministry of Finance’s and Rosstat’s webpages.
The Ministry of Finance has however, as of January 2022, ceased publishing data on budget expenditures. This includes monthly data for a wide range of budget expenditure categories such as spending for public administration, national defense and law enforcement, environmental protection, education, healthcare, social politics, mass media and culture. This data is no longer available despite the webpage for budget expenditures being updated as late as March 17th 2023.
Data on certain budget indicators is also missing on Rosstat’s webpage. While statistics on taxes, fees and other mandatory payments are available for 2022, budget expenditures are available only for 2021. This is however not surprising given that Rosstat receives its figures on the financial sector, including figures on public finances partly from the Ministry of Finance.
Foreign Trade Data
Foreign trade statistics is normally published by the Federal Customs Service of Russia, CBR and Rosstat.
Since the invasion, the Federal Customs Service of Russia has however stopped publishing statistics on foreign trade and commodity structure. The latest available monthly data on Russian foreign trade with its main partners (the EU, Commonwealth of Independent States countries and others), and the commodity structure of exports and imports – including processed goods and oil and gas – is from January 2022 (as of April 3rd 2023).
Foreign trade data from CBR has been withheld throughout 2022. CBR has however recently resumed parts of their publications and, as of April 3rd 2023, monthly data on total export and import is available for all of 2022 as well as for January 2023. Still, these figures display total exports and imports only and are not broken down by trade partner or commodity.
Similar to CBR’s publishing pattern, figures on export and import as part of GDP by use were unavailable on Rosstat’s webpage from February 2022 and throughout the year. As of April 7th 2023, quarterly aggregated data is however available for all of 2022. Monthly data on export and import by country is nonetheless still available only for 2021, despite the webpage being updated in November 2022.
Financial Data
To provide information on the national finance system and its dynamics is a main tasks of any country’s central bank, with Russia being no exception. Despite this there are about 40 financial indicators that, since the beginning of 2022, are no longer available on CBR’s webpage (as of April 3rd 2023). This contravenes CBR’s calendar, which states that statistics are supposed to be published in the next reporting period, i.e. the next quarter/month for quarterly and monthly data respectively.
The most deferred data (more than 20 indicators) can be found, or rather can’t be found, in the so-called External Sector Statistics category. For example, monthly data on balance of payments, remittances and financial transactions in the private sector, and international investment position of the banking sector is missing as of January 2022. Similarly, quarterly data on foreign investments, foreign assets and liabilities in the banking sector has been unavailable since January 2022. The same goes for data on external debt of the corporate sector of the Russian Federation in the form of loans, credits and deposits raised as a result of non-resident placement of Eurobonds and other debt securities.
In the so-called Banking Sector Statistics category, data on indicators such as assets, risks, operational data, international reserves and volume of FX operations is no longer available. Furthermore, figures on turnover of the interbank spot and forward markets have also been unavailable since February 2022.
Two comments are due considering the ease of access to above mentioned data/data sources. Firstly, in order to access the CBR’s and the Federal Customs Service of Russia’s webpages, one at times needs make use of a Virtual Private Network (VPN). Secondly, there are, for all sources mentioned, large discrepancies between the Russian language and the English language webpages, with the latter being severely patchier in its information.
Hiding Data: Reasons and Implications
What drives the authorities to mask seemingly relevant figures? Alexandra Prokopenko, an expert on Russian economic policy, argues that Russian authorities mask certain numbers related to the sanctions to impede evaluations of the effect of sanctions (Prokopenko 2023). Making the data less transparent and accessible in order to hide sanctions’ effect across various sectors to try and paint a better picture of the economic activity has also been a Russian policy goals. The head of the Federal Customs Services, Vladimir Bulavin, in April 2022 announced trade statistics were masked partly to “avoid […] speculation and discrepancies in import deliveries” (Uvarchev, 2022).
In this context, it is worth mentioning that Russia is obliged to report to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on several of the previously discussed indicators since the country is subscribing to the Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) as of 2005. SDDS aims at providing transparent economic and financial data to the public and according to the IMF “Serious and persistent nonobservance of the SDDS, therefore, will be cause for action” (IMF, 2023). If Russia does not publish data according to the SDSS commitments, it could be excluded from the list of countries that subscribe to the SDSS. This affects how the country is viewed by investors and others and will further increase the risk premia that is applied to dealing with Russia.
Further, in its efforts to restrict insight into how the Russian economy is faring following the sanctions, the authorities have however created a large uncertainty also for Russian domestic markets, adding to the sanction’s effects. For instance, Elvira Nabiullina, Russia’s Central Bank Governor, has been arguing to revoke the decision to classify large amounts of data saying that investors, analysts and researchers simply need the data to do their work properly (CBR News, 2023).
Alternative Ways of Understanding the Real State of the Russian Economy
How can we learn about the state of affairs in Russia without the previously discussed data? While deducing Russia’s budget expenditures and many financial indicators may be cumbersome, more can be done when it comes to trade data. Specifically, a BOFIT Policy Brief by Simola (2022) proxied Russia’s imports and exports by tracking the imports of Russia’s main trading partners (17 economies) between March and June 2022. Similar proxying efforts have been made by Darvas, Martins and McCaffrey (2023), who tracked Russia’s foreign trade by considering detailed trade data from China, the United States, South Korea, Japan, India, the United Kingdom, Turkey and the EU, putting together publicly available datasets which span from January 2019 to January 2023.
Proxying trade data by considering trade partner’s statistics is emphasized by Sonnenfeld et al. (2022), who not only considers such data but rather a wide variety of available and reliable data sources – emphasizing the need to also crosscheck data from official Russian statical sources with more reliable ones (for a full overview of the methodologies used, the estimated indicators on the Russian economy and the implications from this, see Sonnenfeld et al. 2022).
Other efforts to map out Russia’s economic activity consider more creative methods such as using satellite data and/or ship location (AIS) data. Examples of such efforts include a recent Bruegel dataset which tracks Russian crude oil trade (Heusaff et al., 2023) and CREA’s “Russia Fossil Tracker”. For both examples, the authors utilize the location data for individual crude oil tankers, and (for Heusaff et al. 2023) combine it with data from OPEC, BP and Eurostat, to assess monthly crude oil exports from Russia to a set of major destinations (mainly the EU, China and CIS countries).
Similarly, satellite data has been previously used to estimate carbon emissions from flaring (Böttcher et al., 2021). While there is an ongoing debate on whether flaring can be trusted to give insight into gas and oil production (World Bank, 2023), one could potentially make use of such data to get a better view of the productivity within the Russian oil and gas sector following the imposed price cap mechanism and sanctions.
The struggle of creating reliable estimates for an economy polishing or masking information did not arise with the withdrawal of certain Russian statistics. The actual status of the North Korean economy remains much of a mystery to analysts (see The Economist) as the country, in 2017, was yet to publish a Statistical Yearbook. While Russia is far from North Korea in several aspects, the reality is that the alternative measures used to estimate North Korea’s economic activity (such as making use of Chinese trade data etc.) are partly the ones now being undertaken by analysts looking beyond the figures from Kremlin.
Conclusion
Russia’s decision to stop publishing regular economic data is part of the disinformation and propaganda efforts that are integral parts of its war on Ukraine, with the purpose being to complicate any analysis of what is going on in the Russian economy. While being partially successful in this regard, the data withholding likely creates further negative implications for Russia’s external economic relations and undermines the functioning of its domestic markets.
Given the lack of data following Russia’s disinformation efforts it is essential that any analyst concerned with mapping the Russian economy not only considers alternative but also multiple sources and consult experts with a plethora of competencies. Already today, new creative ways of getting hold of relevant data is providing increasing insight into the state of the Russian economy. With continued efforts, these measures will progress over time, improving our understanding of how sanctions affect the Russian economy.
Online Appendix
An overview of all indicators discussed in this brief can be found in the Online Appendix. The information in the Appendix is valid as of April 7th 2023.
References
- Böttcher, K., & Paunu, V-V., Kupiainen, K., Zhizhin, M., Matveev, A., Savolahti, M., Klimont, Z., Väätäinen, S., Lamberg, H., Karvosenoja, N. (2021). Black carbon emissions from flaring in Russia in the period 2012-2017. Atmospheric Environment. 254. 118390. 10.1016/j.atmosenv.2021.118390.
- CBR News. (2023, March 17). Statement by Governor of the Bank of Russia Elvira Nabiullina following the meeting of the Board of Directors of the Bank of Russia on March 17, 2023. https://www.cbr.ru/press/event/?id=14629
- The Central Bank of the Russian Federation. (2023). https://www.cbr.ru/
- CREA. https://www.russiafossiltracker.com
- Darvas, Martins and McCaffrey (2023, March 23). Russian foreign trade tracker. Bruegel datasets. https://www.bruegel.org/dataset/russian-foreign-trade-tracker
- The Economist. (2017, February 9). How to measure North Koreas economy. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2017/02/09/how-to-measure-north-koreas-economy?
utm_medium=cpc.adword.pd&utm_source=google&ppccampaignID=18151738051&ppcadID=&utm
_campaign=a.22brand_pmax&utm_content=conversion.direct-response.anonymous&gclidh - The Federal Customs Service of Russia. (2023). https://customs.gov.ru/
- The Federal State Statistics Service. (2023). https://rosstat.gov.ru/
- Heusaff, Guetta-Jeanrenaud, McWilliams and Zachmann. (2023). Russian crude oil tracker. Bruegel datasets. https://www.bruegel.org/dataset/russian-crude-oil-tracker
- International Monetary Fund. (2023). Special Data Dissemination Standard. https://dsbb.imf.org/
- The Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation. (2023). https://minfin.gov.ru/ru/
- Prokopenko, A. (2023, January 20). How can you analyze the Russian economy amid data censorship? A guide. The Bell. https://thebell.io/en/your-guide-to-the-russian-economy/
- Simola, H. (2022). Russian foreign trade after four months of war in Ukraine. BOFIT Policy Paper No.5. BOFIT.
- Sonnenfeld, J., Tian, S., Sokolowski, F., Wyrebkowski, M. and Kasprowicz, M. (2022). Business Retreats and Sanctions Are Crippling the Russian Economy. https://ssrn.com/abstract=4167193
- Uvarchev, L. (2022, April 21). FCS suspends publication of export and import statistics. Kommersant. https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5318414
- The World Bank. (2023). Global Gas Flaring Tracker Report. https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/5d5c5c8b0f451b472e858ceb97624a18-0400072023/original/2023-Global-Gas-Flaring-Tracker-Report.pdf
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.
The Playing Field in Academia: Why Are Women Still Underrepresented?
The Forum for Research on Gender Economics (FROGEE) together with the Centre for Economic Analysis (CenEA) and the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) invites academic papers to a conference held in Warsaw, entitled: “The playing field in academia: Why are women still underrepresented?”
Conference
Women continue to be underrepresented in every stage of their academic career in many fields and they do not advance professionally at the same rate as men. A growing body of research in economics points towards social and institutional causes behind these inequalities and offers policy suggestions to address them. To discuss and disseminate recent developments in this area FROGEE together with CenEA and SITE invites academic papers to a conference held in Warsaw on 21-22 June 2023.
The conference is organised as part of the FREE Network initiative FROGEE, supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). It will combine contributed sessions, invited lectures and policy discussions.
Invited Lectures:
- prof. Carlo Schwarz (Bocconi University)
- prof. Sarah Smith (University of Bristol)
Call for Papers
We invite either full papers (early versions are welcome) or extended abstracts. Authors will have approximately 30 minutes for their presentations. There is no conference fee but participants are expected to cover their own travel and accommodation costs.
Submission Deadline
Online submission is open via site@hhs.se, please in the subject box type: “Submission: The playing field in academia”.
The deadline for submissions is 17 April 2023. Notifications are expected by 30 April 2023.
Save the date
21-22 June, 2023. More information about the conference can be found here.