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From Russia with Love?

Posted on December 20, 2021 | Policy Brief

Russia Moscow City representing money laundering

Some recently discovered money laundering schemes have funnelled large amounts of illegal money from former soviet states through European banks. This note briefly describes the evolution of the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regime for financial institutions, the introduction of which was concurrent with the post-soviet transition and the connected illegal flows of funds. It discusses the effectiveness of the current AML regime – and its ability to detect and seize illegal funds. The brief also highlights some of its deficiencies as well as lack of compliance with its prescriptions. It proceeds to stress that after judging the current framework insufficient, the US recently introduced whistleblower rewards for AML-infringements. Europe might want to follow their lead if it really aims at limiting money laundering.

Introduction

In recent years significant deficiencies in Anti-Money Laundering (AML) compliance have been discovered in some European banks (Spagnolo and Nyreröd, 2021). A notable example is the Danske Bank case that emerged in 2018.   Some have called it the largest money-laundering scandal in history: it is estimated that about $230 billion in suspicious funds went through its Estonian branch between 2007 and 2015.

In several of these cases, the sources of a large fraction of the illicit assets were Russia or other former Soviet states (Shaffer and Cassella, 2020).

Prior to the Danske revelations, several schemes have been uncovered that were aimed at laundering illicit money from former soviet states into the western financial system.

In a classic example going back to 2006, about $230 million were stolen in fraudulent tax refunds perpetrated by officials in Russia and then laundered through Moldova, Latvia and then UK shell companies and banks (Browder, 2009). Famously, the tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky investigated the theft and testified against the fraudsters and was later put in detention for the same tax theft he was investigating. About a year after he was arrested, Magnitsky passed away after allegedly being tortured and denied medical care. This tragic episode gave rise to the Magnitsky Act, which prohibits persons believed to be involved in the theft to enter the US and access its financial system.

Another famous (and partly related) case is the so-called Russian Laundromat (then Global Laundromat), a scheme estimated to have funneled over $70 billion of illegal money out of Russia, through Latvia, Moldova, and then the UK (Tofilat and Negruta, 2019).

Indeed, Russia is widely considered the country with the largest estimated amount of ‘dark’ money hidden abroad, both as a percentage of GDP and in absolute terms (estimated around $1 trillion by Novokmet et al., 2017).

However, the origin of money laundered in the transition region is not limited to Russia. For example, it is estimated that between 2012 and 2014, about $2.9 billion from Azerbaijan were illegally laundered through UK shell companies and then European banks.

Funds from all these schemes appear to have been transacted through Danske bank (Bruun and Hjejle 2018: 33), Swedbank (Clifford Chance 2020: 123), and other European banks.

This evidence warrants some reflection on the effectiveness of the AML framework, particularly in Europe.

The Current AML Regime

The development of the global AML framework has been largely concurrent with the transition from communism and the connected illegal flows of funds.

The Financial Action Taskforce (FATF) was formed in 1989, after an initiative by the G7. FATF’s mission is to develop policies to combat money laundering and blacklist countries that do not comply. The FATF issued its first recommendations in 1999 and continually updates them, most recently in FATF (2021).

These recommendations set out essential measures that countries should have in place to identify money laundering risks, including regulation on preventive measures for the financial and other sectors, powers and responsibilities for competent authorities, coordination of their actions, and the facilitation of international cooperation (FATF 2021: 7).

AML regulation requires financial institutions to know their customers and engage in due diligence to reduce the risk that they onboard criminals seeking to launder money. Information about suspicious transactions and activities should be forwarded to a national financial intelligence unit, usually the financial police. National Financial Services Authorities (FSAs) are usually responsible for enforcing compliance with AML rules – the “preventive” side of money laundering regulation. The “repressive” criminal law or “enforcement” side of the fight against money laundering is usually enforced by the national financial police (Reuter and Truman 2004, Svedberg Helgesson and Mörth 2018).

There are certainly valid questions to be raised regarding the effectiveness of the current AML framework. While the World Bank estimates that between 2 and 5% of global GDP is laundered annually, it is also estimated that less than 1% of the proceeds of crime laundered via the financial system are currently seized by regulators and law enforcement agencies (UNODC 2011: 7).

At the same time, the framework is quite costly to comply with. There have been six EU Directives related to AML. All require legal implementation and impose new demands on banks and other covered institutions. FATF also requires that its members frequently carry out National Risk Assessments, and countries are also subject to Membership Evaluation Reports which imposes additional costs. Compliance costs for banks are estimated in the billions of dollars (Spagnolo and Nyreröd, 2021), and a whole industry surrounding “AML Compliance” has emerged. Part of these costs, not only monetary ones, end up transferred to bank customers.

From a more rigorous policy evaluation point of view, the AML regime is also problematic. There is a remarkable lack of data for assessing the effectiveness of the framework relative to its objectives (see e.g., Halliday et al. 2014, Levi 2018, Levi et al. 2018, Pol 2018, 2020).

Bank’s Failures

A lack of compliance with this preventative framework has been widespread.  In Sweden, for example, most large banks have been fined for various degrees of AML deficiencies. Similarly, many banks in other European countries received fines from local and US regulators (in the order of billions of dollars) for failing to comply with this framework, including HSBC, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank (multiple times), BNP Paribas, MagNet Bank, and Barclays Bank. Since 2016, the US has issued AML-related fines on eight occasions to banks with headquarters in European countries for an aggregate amount of $1.7 billion (mean $217 million fine; data from violationtracker.org).

In the case studies we discuss in Spagnolo and Nyreröd (2021), most forms of internal controls failed to some extent. Whereas external whistleblowing was rare or non-existent, internal whistleblowers did not manage to rectify the problems either.

Simultaneously, there were often clear red flags that should have alerted board members and executives. At Danske Bank group, for example, returns on allocated capital in the non-resident portfolio at their Estonian branch, where a substantial part of the money laundering occurred, hit 402% in 2013, compared with the 6.9% average for the whole group, a clear red flag (Schwartzkopff, 2018).

Supervisor’s Failures

The extensiveness of AML non-compliance cannot only be traced to negligent banks – it also has to do with the ineffectiveness of the enforcement of AML rules by supervising authorities.

In the cases reviewed in Spagnolo and Nyreröd (2021), supervisors appeared by and large aware of at least part of the AML deficiencies. Oftentimes, banks were given warnings by regulators, yet continued to violate the same rules.

For example, both the Danish FSA and the Estonian FSA seem to have had some knowledge of the AML deficiencies at Danske Bank’s subsidiary already in 2007, with little consequences.

Coordination between regulators has also been poor. The Danish FSA argues that the primary AML oversight responsibility for the Estonian branch should be the local FSA (Finanstilsynet, 2019), while the Estonian FSA retorts that European rules are not as clear and that the Danish FSA at least has some responsibility to oversee the branches of Danske Group (Finantsinspektsioon, 2019).

On September 24, 2018, the European Banking Authority (EBA) opened an investigation to assess whether the Danish and Estonian FSAs have violated any European laws. On April 16, 2019, it voted to reject an internal draft into supervisory failings that allegedly identified several shortcomings in how Danish and Estonian authorities supervised Danske bank. (Brunsden 2019). The EBA supervisory board’s decision to close the investigation without adopting any findings drew criticism from a range of senior policymakers and spurred calls for its reform. The EBA has also been criticized for its reluctance to pass judgment on its members (Bjerregaard and Kirchmaier 2019: 38).

Conclusion

The limited regulatory enforcement and compliance with the current AML system are likely to only marginally increase the cost of money laundering for criminals. Policymakers should thus wonder whether the current system is delivering value for money. There could be different ways to improve it. Increased fines for non-compliance may for example induce covered entities to comply with the AML framework to a greater extent.

Moving forward, the inconsistent enforcement of AML rules has led experts and policymakers to suggest centralizing some supervision and enforcement of AML regulation at the EU level (Kirschenbaum and Véron 2018, 2020; Unger 2020; JPP 2019; EC 2020, p.8), and improving information sharing between supervisors.

We believe these measures may not be sufficient for facilitating compliance with AML, while imposing substantial enforcing costs.

One way to increase AML compliance at a relatively low cost could be introducing whistleblower reward programs, as done in the US early this year (Nyreröd and Spagnolo, 2021). These programs offer substantial monetary rewards, often in the order millions of dollars, for information on non-compliance, and have proven extremely effective in combating fraud against the government, tax evasion, and securities fraud. While national EU supervisors may not have sufficient resources or competence to manage such programs, centralized actors such as the European Commission appear able to do so. If we see more centralized supervision, together with increased resources and competence, a well-designed and properly implemented whistleblower reward program may become a highly effective way to fight money laundering in the EU.

References

  • Bjerregaard, E., and T. Kirchmaier (2019). “The Danske Bank Money Laundering Scandal: A Case Study.” Copenhagen Business School.
  • Browder, W (2009). “Hermitage Capital, the Russian State and the Case of Sergei Magnitsky.” REP Edited Transcript, Chatham House.
  • Bruun and Hjejle (2018). “Report on the Non-Resident Portfolio at Danske Bank’s Estonian Branch.” Danske Bank.
  • Brunsden, J. (2019). “EBA faces calls to reform after dropping Danske Bank probe.” Financial Times, April.
  • Clifford Chance (2020). “Report of Investigation on Swedbank AB (publ).” Swedbank.
  • EC (2020). “Communication from the Commission on an Action Plan for a Comprehensive Union Policy on Preventing Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing.” 7.5.2020 C(2020) 2800 final.
  • FATF (2021). “International Standards on Combating Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism & Proliferation: The FATF Recommendations.”
  • Finanstilsynet (2019). “Report on the Danish FSA’s Supervision of Danske Bank as Regards the Estonia Case.” Danish Financial Services Authority.
  • Finantsinspektsioon (2019). “Response to the Report on the Danish FSA’s Supervision of Danske Bank.” Estonian Financial Services Authority.
  • Halliday, T. C., M. Levi, and P. Reuter (2014). “Global Surveillance of Dirty Money: Assessing Assessments of Regimes to Control Money-Laundering and Combat the Financing of Terrorism.” Center on Law & Globalization. University of Illinois College of Law and American Bar Foundation.
  • JPP (2019). “Joint Position Paper by the Ministers of Finance of France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, and Spain.”
  • Kirschenbaum, J., and N. Véron (2018). “A Better European Architecture to Fight Money Laundering.” Peterson Institute for International Economics. Policy Brief 18-25.
  • Kirschenbaum, J., and N. Véron (2020). “A European Anti-Money Laundering Supervisor: From Vision to Legislation.” Peterson Institute for International Economics, January.
  • Levi, M. (2018). “Punishing Banks, Their Clients, and Their Clients’ Clients.” In King, C., C. Walker, and J. Gurulé (eds.) The Palgrave Handbook of Criminal and Terrorism Financing Law. Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Levi, M., P. Reuter, and T. Halliday (2018). “Can the AML System Be Evaluated Without Better Data?” Crime, Law and Social Change, 69(2): 307–328.
  • Novokmet, F., Piketty, T., and Zucman, G. (2017). “From Soviets to Oligarchs: Inequality and Property in Russia, 1905-2016”, NBER Working Paper Series, nr23712.
  • Nyreröd, T., and G. Spagnolo (2021). “Myths and Numbers on Whistleblower Rewards.” Regulation and Governance, 15(1): 82–97.
  • Pol, R. (2018). “Uncomfortable Truths? ML=BS and AML=BS².” Journal of Financial Crime, 25(2): 294–308.
  • Pol, R. (2020). “Response to Money Laundering Scandal: Evidence-Informed or Perception Driven?” Journal of Money Laundering Control, 23(1): 103–121.
  • Reuter, P., and E. M. Truman (2004). Chasing Dirty Money: The Fight Against Money Laundering. Peterson Institute for International Economics.
  • Schwartzkopff, F (2018). “Danske’s 402% Return Should Have Raised Red Flag, FSA Says.” Bloomberg, May.
  • Shaffer, Y. and Cassella, S (2020). ” The Causes, Effects, and Manifestations of the Money Laundering Problem in the Former Soviet Union.”, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, February 21.
  • Spagnolo, G., and T. Nyreröd (2021). “Money Laundering and Whistleblowers.” SNS Report.
  • Svedberg Helgesson, K., and U. Mörth (2018). “Client Privilege, Compliance and the Rule of Law: Swedish Lawyers and Money Laundering Prevention.” Crime, Law and Social Change, 69(2): 227–248.
  • Tofilat, S., and V. Negruta (2019). “The Russian Laundromat – a $70 billion money-laundering scheme facilitated by Moldovan political elites.” Transparency International Moldova.
  • Unger, B. (2020). “Improving Anti-Money Laundering Policy.” Study requested by the ECON Committee, European Parliament.
  • UNODC (2011). “Estimating Illicit Financial Flows Resulting from Drug Trafficking and Other Transnational Organized Crimes.” Research Report, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

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.

Social Distancing and Ethnic Diversity

Posted on December 14, 2021 | Policy Brief

20211214 Social Distancing and Ethnic Diversity Image 01

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

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

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

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

Method

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

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

Data and Results

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

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

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

Source: Egorov et al. (2021)

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

References

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

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

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

Posted on December 6, 2021 | Policy Brief

Photo Of People Doing Handshakes representing Belarusian higher education

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

Introduction

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

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

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

Women Are More Willing to Study Hard

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

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

Are Female Entrepreneur Families More Equal?

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

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

Source: based on GEM APS 2019

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

A Successful Woman is a Happy Mother and a Wife

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

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

Source: Author’s calculations based on GEM APS 2019

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

References

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

Foreign-Owned Firms and Labor Tax Evasion in Latvia

Posted on November 29, 2021 | Policy Brief

20211128 Foreign-Owned Firms Image 01

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

Introduction

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

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

Methodology and data

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

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

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

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

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

Results

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

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

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

Figure 1. Engel curve

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

Conclusions

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

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

References

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

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

Posted on November 15, 2021 | Policy Brief

Image with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn representing his work and Nobel Prize

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Solzhenitsyn’s Later Path-breaking Contributions

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

The 1970 Nobel Literature Prize Reconsidered in Hindsight

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

References

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

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

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

Posted on November 8, 2021 | Policy Brief

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

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

Introduction

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

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

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

Survey of Non-resource Exporters

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

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

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

Impact of the COVID-19 Crisis on Firms’ Performance

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

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

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

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

Adjustment to the Crisis

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

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

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

Dealing with Counterparties

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

References

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

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

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

Posted on November 3, 2021 | Policy Brief

20211102 Assessing a Model of Equal Pay

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

Introduction

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

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

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

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

International Experience

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Case of Georgia

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

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

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

The Excel Tool

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

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

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

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

Findings

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

References

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

Land Market and a Pre-emptive Right in Farmland Sales

Posted on October 25, 2021 | Policy Brief

20211025 Land Market Image 01

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

Introduction

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

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

Farmland Market in Ukraine

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

Table 1. Ukrainian farmland market structure 

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

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

Framework

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

Scenario 1. No Pre-emptive Right

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

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

Scenario 2. A Tenant Has the Pre-emptive Right

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

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

Empirical Approach

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

Table 2. Descriptive statistics

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

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

Results

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusions

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

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

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

References

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

Green Banking and Its Development in Belarus

Posted on October 12, 2021 | Policy Brief

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

Introduction

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

Green Banking: An Overview

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Green Banking in Belarus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recommendations

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

References

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

Dimensions of Well-being

Posted on September 20, 2021 | Policy Brief

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This brief summarizes the insights shared in the online workshop “Dimensions of Well-being“, where participants presented and discussed their latest research relating to the dimensions of well-being. The two-day workshop was organized by the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) as part of the Forum for Research on Gender Economics (FROGEE) and took place on 28-29 June, 2021.

Introduction

It has been roughly 18 months since the first cases of Covid-19 were reported in Europe. So far the total number of deaths worldwide has passed 4.4 million (John Hopkins University, 2021), unemployment is trending upward in most countries (ILOSTAT, 2021), roughly half of the world’s students have been affected by school closures (UNESCO, 2021), and an alarming increase in domestic violence has been reported across the globe (UN Women, 2020).

It is safe to say that this pandemic crisis has had a multifaceted impact on our lives. Identifying what factors contribute to overall well-being and understanding how they interact with one another is central in designing and implementing solid and effective recovery policies.

Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics invited international experts to an online workshop where they discussed and presented their recent research relating to the dimensions of well-being. The workshop was organized as part of the Forum for Research on Gender Economics (FROGEE).

Well-being in a Pandemic

The government response policies intended to contain the spread of Covid-19 have undoubtedly had a major impact on society. However, estimating the overall effect of these policies on individuals’ well-being is not necessarily straightforward. Economic support policies likely have a positive effect on income and decrease poverty. But at the same time, other responses such as lockdowns and mobility restrictions may not only have an opposite effect on these outcomes but also influence other known determinants of well-being such as social life or education.

Anthony Lepinteur, researcher at the University of Luxembourg, presented his recent work on the well-being consequences of the pandemic policy responses in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and Sweden. Lepinteur and co-authors link survey data on subjective well-being measures to data on government economic policy and stringency indices. The former index records financial policies such as income support, furlough schemes, and debt relief while the latter measures the strictness of Covid-19 containment and closure policies. The results show that more stringent policies reduce life satisfaction, and this negative effect is stronger for women, the unemployed, and those with relatively high incomes. Economic support policies are found to have no significant impact on reported life satisfaction.

As many countries have experienced major disruptions in many sectors of their economy, concerns have been raised about deteriorating labor markets and the effect this might have on living conditions and, ultimately, the well-being of individuals. Knar Khachatryan, associate professor at the American University of Armenia, shared research studying the impact of Covid-19 on multidimensional deprivation from labor market opportunities in Armenia. Knachatryan and co-authors base their analysis on two surveys from 2018 and 2020. To measure labor market opportunities, they adopt the “Alkire-Foster method” to develop a multidimensional index of labor market deprivation – a basket of indicators explaining an individual’s degree of labor market opportunities (e.g. education, employment status, income, type of work contract, and union membership). With respect to this index, they find that education is the most important determinant of multidimensional labor market deprivation – those having less than a bachelor’s degree are very likely to be deprived in terms of labor market opportunities. The results also show that the pandemic has widened the gender gap in labor opportunities. The number of people classified as deprived has increased more for women than men during the pandemic. This is primarily because women experienced stronger income reductions and more frequent job losses.

Thesia Garner, researcher at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, discussed how ex-ante levels of well-being have affected the outcomes of economic support policies during the pandemic. More specifically, her study investigates the role of individual’s well-being in determining their reported use of economic impact payments (EIP) in the U.S. Garner and co-author assess well-being using both objective measures (e.g. income sources, employment status) and subjective ones (e.g. depression, financial difficulty, expectations about job-loss or eviction). The findings show that those who report lower levels of subjective well-being are more likely to use the EIP to pay off debt, and this likelihood increases as the well-being measures worsen. Respondents who report having experiences of financial difficulty and negative expectations about the economy are more likely to spend the stimulus on nondurables and tend to allocate it to a wider range of spending categories.

In contrast to the U.S. and most other countries in the world, Belarus’ government offered very little support to its citizens during the pandemic. Lev Lvovskiy, researcher at BEROC, presented findings on how different sectors of the Belarusian economy and society were affected by the pandemic. Using the BEROC/Satio survey data, Lvovskiy and co-authors examine that the country still had sharp drops in mobility and economic shocks mainly caused by lockdowns of major trade partners. The pandemic significantly increased the probability of income reductions and they show that financial distress associates with the incidence of depression of Belarusians.

Gender and Wellbeing

Another central topic discussed at the workshop concerned the gender aspects of well-being and other related topics from gender economics.

An essential channel through which gender differences in well-being can arise is unequal representation in politics. Sonia Bhalotra, professor at the University of Warwick, presented a study on the relationship between maternal mortality and women’s political power in 174 countries. Maternal mortality is the leading cause of death and disability for women aged 15-44, and significantly higher in low-income countries – at levels similar to what high-income countries had in the early 1900s. Bhalotra and co-authors document that the costs of providing access to prenatal health services, antibiotics, and skilled birth attendance are relatively low. They therefore argue that there are likely other barriers to adopting these solutions. Male policymakers might have a weaker preference for preventing maternal mortality or less information on its prevalence and treatment. To gain insight, the authors use a staggered event-study approach and study the effect of gender quota implementations on the maternal mortality ratio (MMR, maternal mortality per birth). They find that, in countries that adopted quotas, the MMR declined by 10% following implementation, and this effect is stronger for larger quotas. Focusing on the mechanisms, the results show that gender quotas lead to a 5-8 percentage point (p.p.) increase in skilled birth attendance, a 4-8 p.p. increase in prenatal care utilization, 6-7 % decline in birth rates, and an increase in girl’s education by 0.5 years.

Elizaveta Pronkina, researcher at Université Paris-Dauphine, also shared findings relating to gender and politics but from a historical perspective.  Her research studies historic institutional differences across communist regimes and women’s work experiences. The paper focuses on Lithuania and Poland, two countries that experienced different gender policies under a communist regime. After the second world war, Lithuania was controlled by the central government of the Soviet Union while Poland’s government was able to preserve its independence although being part of the Soviet bloc. Based on anecdotal evidence, the two countries had the same religious and political policies but different enforcement – Lithuania faced a hard and Poland a soft form of communism. To isolate the impact of the Soviet policies on women’s life decisions and account for differences in the countries’ pre-communist era, the authors only include regions that were part of the Russian empire until the end of the first world war. The findings show that women living under the Soviet regime were more likely to educate themselves and have on average two additional years of work experience (by 50 years of age).

A productive environment and reliable social interactions at work are also likely to be formative elements of people’s well-being, and gender might factor in here. Yuki Takahashi,  PhD candidate in economics at the University of Bologna, presented his paper on how being corrected by others affects one’s willingness to collaborate with them in future work, as well as gender differences in these responses. Takahashi conducts a quasi-experimental design in which roughly 3000 participants individually and collectively solve a puzzle. The setting allows the researcher to observe individual ability, number of corrections, as well as whether the corrections were good (i.e., a mistake was corrected), or bad (i.e., a good move was corrected). The study analyzes how the different factors affect an individual’s likelihood of being selected as a collaborator in a last puzzle-solving stage where both participants win cash earnings based on joint performance. The results show that both genders respond negatively to a correction, but women more so than men. Men are less likely to collaborate with a person who has corrected their mistake, particularly men with high ability. The gender of the corrector is found not to matter.

Domestic violence (DV) is another gender aspect of well-being that has become particularly concerning during the pandemic. For many victims, lockdowns and curfews have meant more exposure to their perpetrator. Mobility restrictions have also implied more social isolation from family members and friends as well as increased economic distress, two other factors known to exacerbate DV. In a preliminary study presented by Damian Clarke, associate professor at the University of Chile, he and co-authors address the relationship between DV and quarantines in Chile. They use longitudinal data on police DV hotline calls and use of women’s shelters to measure DV incidence, criminal complaints of DV to police to measure reporting, and mobile phone data to measure mobility. Exploiting municipal variation in the timing of lockdown entry and exit, the study shows that lockdowns lead to more DV incidence and less reporting. DV shelter use increased on average by 11% with entry and reversed with exit. DV calls to the police hotline increased by 86% and persists after lockdown exit. DV crime reports decrease by 5% and increases by 10% with exit. Moreover, the authors document that lockdowns activate both DV mechanisms – increased economic distress and decreased mobility. In municipalities where lockdowns had a stronger impact on unemployment and mobility, they also find larger changes in DV.

Expectations About the Future and Parenthood

Two other studies presented at the workshop discussed the relationship between future expectations and well-being. Claudius Garten, researcher at the Technical University of Dortmund, presented findings on the role of homeownership. Garten and co-authors utilize individual-level survey data from 2007 covering 14 European countries. It contains information on homeownership status and wellbeing measures expressed as respondents’ expectations about future living standards five years from today. They find that expectations about future living standards are higher among homeowners relative to renters and strongly associated with the value of housing assets, suggesting that material security through housing ownership works as a channel for future wellbeing. Garten further argued that since most countries included in the sample have experienced rising house property prices and increased rents since 2007, the divergence between renters and owners is likely to be even more significant today, especially in urban areas.

The second presentation that discussed expectations about well-being in later life was by Alina Schmitz, researcher at the Technical University of Dortmund. Unlike housing, which is seen as a form of material security, Schmitz’s study focuses on the role of health infrastructure quality. Availability of care services may be seen as a safety net in case of illness and care dependency and should thus have a positive effect on wellbeing. The study performs a multilevel analysis on the individual, regional and, country level using micro-survey data on individuals’ life satisfaction and macro-data on the availability of long-term care beds, covering 96 regions from six European countries in 2015. The results show that the quality of care infrastructure is significantly related to the wellbeing of those aged above 50. Moreover, care infrastructure is particularly important for the wellbeing of those with health limitations (i.e. those who require that infrastructure either now or in the future).

Parenthood is another factor that is commonly thought of as a source of happiness. Contrary to this idea, European populations are aging rapidly and the young today have fewer children than the generations before them. The reason why people choose to have few children could be several – e.g. high opportunity costs and/or low benefits of having a large family. Is the fertility rate we see in the developed world today a result of the well-being-maximizing decisions of individuals? This is the main question asked in the paper presented by Barbara Pertold-Gebicka, assistant professor at the Institute of Economic Studies at Charles University. Her study utilizes European survey data to investigate the effect of having an additional unplanned child in five developed countries. To measure the effect of an additional unplanned child and deal with the fact that happy individuals tend to have more children, Pertold-Gebicka and co-author compare people who had twin births in their second pregnancy with parents of two children. Apart from life satisfaction, the most common wellbeing measure, the authors construct a second measure of wellbeing denoted as the happiness index – normalized value summarizing five questions about feelings over the last 5 months, interpreted as the relative frequency of positive feelings. They find no significant effect of having a third child on the well-being of parents. However, when separately looking at groups divided by age of children, they find that the effect of having an additional child on well-being is negative for fathers of younger children and positive for those of teenagers. For the parents of younger children, they show that the negative effect of having a third child is likely driven by increased feelings of nervousness and problems relating to accommodation.

Measuring Inequality and Social Deprivation

Some aspects of wellbeing such as feelings of unfairness or social connections can be quite ambiguous to study as they depend on context and are hard to quantify.

Nicolai Suppa, researcher at the Centre for Demographic Studies at the UAB, presented his research aimed to improve the measurement of deprivation in social participation (DSP) and complementing previous work with an additional outcome variable measuring a different dimension of deprivation. The study uses German survey data to measure how often common social activities are performed and then uses an intersectional approach (similar to the “Alkire-Foster method”) to assign individuals as deprived based on if and how often they practice these activities. The findings show that while the DSP measure correlates positively both with income poverty and material deprivation measures, it identifies a different sample of individuals. Being deprived in terms of social participation is associated with a significant loss of life satisfaction, a magnitude comparable to the loss of being unemployed.

Ingrid Bleynat, researcher at Kings College London, also discussed how to improve measurement but presented a study focusing on a different dimension of well-being, inequality. While quantitative approaches may give little account of the detailed mechanisms of inequality and its multidimensionality, qualitative studies often focus on a subset of the population which make results difficult to generalize. Bleynat and co-authors suggest a mixed approach, combining quantitative and qualitative assessments of inequality. They utilize neighborhood-level data on average household income in Mexico City to randomly select five households in each decile of the income distribution and conduct semi-structured interviews in these households to better understand the nuances of inequality. Based on these interviews they construct two qualitative measures. The first is called inequality of lived experiences and measures qualitative experiences in work, education, and health services across the income distribution. The second is called lived experiences of inequality, and measures feelings of stigma, discrimination, and social hierarchy across gender, ethnicity and location. The quantitative data confirms that Mexico City is highly unequal across the income distribution in terms of not only income but also social factors such as housing, health and food security. The results concerning the qualitative measures, such as inequalities in lived experiences or lived experiences of inequality confirm the existing understanding – e.g., that households belonging to the lower deciles are more likely to be mistreated in the public health sector, have a hostile school environment, and worse working conditions, or that women across the income distribution bear most of the childcare responsibilities, – but provide nuanced details on the interaction between material inequality and the reported experiences.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that the impact of Covid-19 on our well-being has been many-sided, and the presentations of the workshop have clearly demonstrated the broad spectrum of related problems and concerns, as well as their variation across institutional, social, political, economic, and cultural contexts.

Although we are well underway, further research and comprehensive data collection on how people have coped with and responded to the pandemic is needed to design sensible recovery policies and incentivize governments to implement them.

On behalf of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics, we would like to thank the experts who shared their insightful research and participated in “Dimensions of Well-being“.

List of Participants

Part 1 | Online Workshop on Dimensions of Well-being

Part 2 | Online Workshop on Dimensions of Well-being

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.