Tag: EU integration

Regional Economic Development Along the Polish-German Border: 1992-2012

Posted on May 3, 2021 | Policy Brief

Image of Europe at night from sky via NASA representing regional economic development

In this brief, we summarize the results of a recent analysis focused on the regional economic development in Poland and Germany along the Oder-Neisse border (Freier, Myck and Najsztub 2021a). Economic activity is approximated by satellite night-time light intensity, a comparable proxy available for regions on both sides of the frontier consistently between 1992 and 2012. This period covers the time of economic transformation and the first eight years of Poland’s membership in the European Union. We find that convergence in overall activity across the border has been complete: Polish municipalities that used to be economically much weaker have caught up with those on the German side of the Oder and the Neisse rivers.

Introduction

The question of the harmonious development of economic activity is at the heart of the European integration project (Art. 2, Treaty of Rome, 1957), and the Maastricht Treaty (1992) made economic convergence between member states an explicit objective. In a forthcoming paper (Freier et al. 2021), we take a new approach to the question of regional European integration.

This brief derives from a recent publication in Applied Economics (Freier et al. 2021a), in which we examine the degree of regional economic convergence along the German-Polish border by taking advantage of satellite night-time illumination data covering the period between 1992 and 2012. The data allows us to study detailed regional patterns of economic development along the river-delimited part of the frontier and further inland.

The seminal work by Henderson et al. (2012) was the first to use night-time light intensity data which covers the entire globe to measure economic activity. Unlike traditional regional economic indicators, light intensity data is independent of administrative border reforms and has been collected in a consistent format over the studied two decades.

Our analysis suggests that, over the analysed period from 1992-2012, there has been essentially full convergence in economic activity between municipalities on both sides of the Polish-German border. While the average value of night-time illumination in our selected group of municipalities in 1992 was 3.7 (on a scale between 0 and 63) in Poland and 7.7 in Germany, the respective values were 9.0 and 9.7 by 2012, and the latter difference is not statistically significant. This convergence suggests a much stronger rate of growth in economic activity on the Polish side of the border. Additionally, we show that within Germany, the distance to the border has much less relevance for economic activity compared to Poland, where it reflects interesting trends. In 1992, Polish towns farther from the border showed significantly higher economic performance. Within Poland, this gap has been greatly reduced over the 20 years we analyse, with regions closer to the border growing much faster compared to those farther away.

Night Lights Along the Polish-German Border

In our dataset, we include municipalities that are located within 100 km from the river delimited part of the PL-DE border. To avoid the sensitivity of the analysis to top censoring of the night-time light intensity data, we removed regional capital cities: Berlin (with surrounding municipalities), Dresden, Gorzów Wielkopolski, and Zielona Góra. This leaves us with 488 municipalities on the German side of the border and 193 municipalities on the Polish side.

The night lights data series, provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), starts as early as 1992 and continues in a consistent, comparable format to 2012. The data is independent of the administrative structures of local governments, which over time have changed on both sides of the border. This allows us to aggregate the night-time lights information for municipalities using the most recent available administrative borders. This data is essentially the only source of information on economic activity that is consistently available and comparable on both sides of the border over such a long period of time.

The night-time lights data has been applied widely as a proxy of economic development on the country and regional level (Henderson et al., 2012; Bickenbach et al., 2016). Clearly, the intensity of night-time lights does not capture the entire spectrum of economic activity. It has been pointed out that the relationship between night-time light intensity and conventional measures of economic development, such as GDP, is likely to differ depending on a region’s stage of economic development (Hu and Yao, 2019). However, we focus on mostly rural and sparsely populated areas (where there is little risk of top censoring of the data), and compare dynamics between regions that are similar in terms of their stage of economic development, geography, and weather. All these factors support the use of night lights as a proxy for regional development in our application (a number of technical steps are necessary to validate and calibrate the data for use in our analysis, see: Freier et al. 2021).

Economic Convergence Along the PL-DE Border

To understand the overall development of economic activity over the period of interest, we map the changes in the night-time light intensity in Figure 1. The colour scale on the map represents differences in light emissions between 1992 and 2012, with the range going from -40 to 40. A negative value indicates a reduction, and a positive value highlights an increase in light intensity. The negative values have been coloured in a blue-green scale (-40 to 0), while positive values in a red scale (0 to +40).

Figure 1. Night lights: changes in light intensity between 1992 – 2012 along the Polish-German border

Notes: municipalities along the PL-DE river border up to 100 km to the border; municipalities marked in grey treated as outliers and excluded from analysis due to high proportion of top-coded lights pixels in 1992; municipality borders as of 2013 (DE) and 2012 (PL). Source: GeoBasis-DE / BKG 2013, PRG 2012, DMSP OLS v4, OpenStreetMap, own calculations. For details see Freier et al. (2021).

As notable in Figure 1, the red areas are predominant. This exemplifies that between 1992 and 2012, nearly all municipalities in this area witnessed positive economic development as manifested in the intensity of night-time lights. We have a few areas that reflect negative dynamics on the German side of the border. This is mainly due to the regional implications of shutting down activity in agriculture and traditional industries as they were unable to compete with West-German technology and productivity. In Poland, green-blue areas are essentially non-existent, illustrating a universally positive economic development over the studied period. This difference in the pace of changes in light intensity between the German and the Polish side reflects a process of rapid convergence of economic development between municipalities on both sides of the border. These developments are represented in Figure 2 which shows the difference between the night-time light intensity in Germany and Poland by year and provides a test for its statistical significance. The estimation is done on mean log pixel values per municipality and clearly highlights the steep path of convergence. In the early nineties, the difference in mean light intensity was around 100 percent – i.e., the mean difference was as high as the mean level of lights on the Polish side of the border.  Already ten years later it reduced to around 50 percent and disappeared by the end of the analysed period. It is notable that, after an initial steep convergence, the difference in light intensity had a period of stagnation between 2002 and 2008. Interestingly, the full convergence which followed coincides with Poland’s entry into the Schengen agreement in December 2007. As seen in Figure 2, the difference in the average night-time light intensity between Poland and Germany was statistically insignificant and essentially zero since 2009.

Figure 2. Difference in mean night-time lights between Germany and Poland over time

Notes: Difference in log of average pixel values per municipality; year fixed effects included, weighted by municipality area; 95% CI. Source: see Figure 1.

Regional Development and Distance from the Border

Thanks to its high degree of geographical precision, the night-time lights data allows us to study the detailed spatial patterns within each country and, in particular, the relationship between distance to the border and economic activity. This is done by looking across the years 1992 to 2012 and examining three-year windows at each end of the analysed period. Our results, which are reported in Table 1, confirm a strong positive relationship between economic activity and distance to the border on the Polish side of the Oder-Neisse rivers. Overall, Polish regions farther from the border show a greater degree of economic activity, but this relationship has substantially diminished over time. While in Germany, economic activity was higher in regions farther from the border and increasing at the average rate of about 0.3% per km, this rate was about three times higher in Poland, falling from about 1.2% per km in 1992-94 to 0.6% in 2010-2012.

 Table 1. Total night-time lights along the Polish-German border, 1992-2012

Notes: Notes: municipalities along the PL-DE river border up to 100 km to the border; municipality borders as of 2013 (DE) and 2012 (PL); mean municipal total lights calculated using average pixel values per municipality and weighted by municipality area. Standard errors in parentheses, statistical significance: + p < 0.10, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001. Source: see Figure 1.

Table 2 reports changes in light intensity between the beginning and the end of a specific period. Here, we find some interesting and perhaps disconcerting results on the relationship between the distance to the border and changes in light intensity. While the distance-to-border coefficient in the Polish case for the full period is negative, suggesting that regions closer to the border were catching up to the more developed regions farther away, the corresponding coefficient for the final three years is positive. This means that, in the years 2010-2012, economic development was faster in municipalities farther away from the border. Although the relationship is not very strong (the change in light intensity grows by about 0.1% per kilometre of distance to the border), it still suggests a reversal in the fortunes of municipalities close to the border on the Polish side. This result points towards the fact that homogeneity of development cannot be taken for granted and that physical distance might continue to play a role in determining the regional rate of growth in the future.

Table 2. Changes in night-time lights along the Polish-German border: 1992-2012

Notes: Notes: municipalities along the PL-DE river border up to 100 km to the border; municipality borders as of 2013 (DE) and 2012 (PL); mean municipal total lights calculated using average pixel values per municipality and weighted by municipality area. Standard errors in parentheses, statistical significance: + p < 0.10, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001. Source: see Figure 1.

Conclusion

In this brief, we report results from a forthcoming paper (Freier et al. 2021) in which we evaluate regional development in municipalities on the German and Polish side of the Oder-Neisse border between 1992 and 2012, using night lights data as a proxy for economic activity. We find that driven by rapid growth in Polish municipalities and somewhat sluggish growth in German ones, the light intensity levels across the Oder-Neisse border show no significant differences by the end of our observation period. This is despite significant initial differences just 20 years earlier and the fact that municipalities on the German side also experienced increases in economic activity. In as far as economic development can be proxied by the intensity of night-time illumination, it seems that economic convergence between regions on both sides of the border was complete by 2012.

We also show interesting patterns regarding the relationship between economic activity and distance from the border. For Germany, this relationship is weakly positive and remains stable throughout the analysed period. In Poland, distance is strongly and positively correlated with light emissions at the beginning of the period, hence indicating that municipalities farther from the border show higher average economic activity. By 2012, however, the border regions have closed most of the gap and the distance to the border is a substantially weaker predictor of economic activity, suggesting a much more homogenous pattern of activity.

Acknowledgements

This brief draws on results reported in Freier et al. (2021a). The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Polish National Science Centre (NCN), project number: 2016/21/B/HS4/01574. For the full list of acknowledgements and references see Freier et al. (2021a).

References

  • Bickenbach F, Bode E, Nunnenkamp P and Söder M (2016) Night Lights and Regional GDP. Review of World Economics 152(2): 425–47.
  • Freier, R., Myck, M., Najsztub, M (2021a) Lights along the frontier: convergence of economic activity in the proximity of the Polish-German border, 1992-2012. Applied Economics, available online: doi: 10.1080/00036846.2021.1898534.
  • Freier, R., Myck, M., Najsztub, M (2021b) Night lights along the PL-DE border 1992-2012. Dataset used in Freier et al. (2021a), Zenodo, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4600685.
  • Henderson JV, Storeygard A and Weil DN (2012) Measuring Economic Growth from Outer Space. American Economic Review 102(2): 994–1028.

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.

Ukraine’s Integration into the EU’s Digital Single Market

Posted on February 15, 2021 | Policy Brief

Blue EU flags in front of European Commission representing Ukraine’s integration into the single market

This brief is based on a study that investigates how Ukraine’s integration into the EU Digital Single Market (DSM) could affect EU-Ukraine bilateral trade as well as Ukraine’s GDP growth.  The major benefits of integration are expected to come from 1) reduction of cross-border regulatory barriers and restrictions to EU-Ukraine digital trade 2) acceleration of the development of Ukraine’s digital economy in line with EU standards. According to the results, enhanced regulatory and digital connectivity between Ukraine and the EU is expected to increase Ukraine’s exports of goods and services to the EU by 11.8-17% and 7.6-12.2% respectively. At the same time, the acceleration of the digital transformation of the Ukrainian economy and society will produce a positive effect on its productivity and economic growth – a 1%-increase in the digitalization of the Ukrainian economy and society may lead to an increase in its GDP by 0.42%.

Background

Integration into the EU has been one of the key topics on Ukraine’s political agenda for a number of years. Recently, more emphasis has been put on an essential component of issue – integration into the EU’s Digital Single Market (DSM). The DSM is a strategy aimed at uniting and enhancing digital markets and applying common approaches and standards in the digital sphere across the EU. The Ukraine-EU Summit, held on October 6, 2020, stressed the paramount importance of the digital sector in boosting its economic integration and regulatory approximation under the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. Implementation of the provisions of this agreement, in particular the updated Annex XVII-3, would introduce the latest EU standards in the field of electronic communications in Ukraine. The country is also gradually approximating its regulations with regard to other components of the EU DSM – electronic identification, electronic payments and e-payment systems, e-commerce, protection of intellectual property rights on the Internet, cybersecurity, protection of personal data, e-government, postal services, etc. These steps will, in turn, ensure Ukraine’s gradual integration into the EU’s Digital Single Market, which will facilitate digital transformations within the country and open a new window of opportunity for individuals and businesses.

This brief summarizes the results of our recent work (Iavorskyi, P., et al., 2020), in which we estimate the effect that Ukraine’s integration into DSM could have on EU-Ukraine bilateral trade as well as Ukraine’s GDP growth.

Benefits of Integration into the EU DSM

The EU DSM strategy comprises three pillars: (1) better access for consumers and businesses to digital goods and services across Europe; (2) creating the right conditions and a level playing field for digital networks and innovative services to flourish; (3) maximizing the growth potential of the digital economy (EC, 2021).

These goals suggest that the major benefits of Ukraine’s integration into the DSM are likely to come from 1) reduction of cross-border regulatory barriers and restrictions to EU-Ukraine trade, 2) acceleration of the development of Ukraine’s digital economy in line with EU standards.

Indeed, the trade of goods and services is increasingly becoming “digital” – i.e., involving “digitally enabled transactions in goods and services that can be either digitally or physically delivered” (OECD, 2019). Trade digitalization (e.g., electronic contracts, electronic payments, e-customs, etc.) simplifies export and import procedures, reduces trade costs for exporters, and creates new opportunities for trade with the EU, in particular for SMEs. Therefore, the reduction of regulatory restrictions on cross-border digital trade reduces the overall level of restrictiveness of trade in goods and services.

Thus, digitalization is expected to facilitate and intensify the total EU-Ukraine trade in goods and services. It is also anticipated to increase the productivity of Ukraine’s economy which will have a positive impact on the country’s economic growth.

Major benefits include lower prices and greater access to EU online markets for Ukrainian consumers and business, digital innovative products and services, greater online consumer protection, lower transaction costs for businesses, improved quality and transparency of public digital services and e-government as well as an intensification of innovation development in Ukraine.

At the same time, Ukraine’s integration into the DSM entails several obligations: to align national legislation and standards with EU legislation and standards; to ensure institutional and technical capacity as well as interoperability of digital systems. For businesses in Ukraine, this means facing new EU requirements aimed at improving consumer and personal data protection, as well as increased competition from European companies in digital markets. However, these changes are necessary if the country wants to build a common economic space with the EU, especially given the growing impact of digital technologies on international trade and economy.

Ukraine in International Digital Rankings

Many international digital development rankings show that Ukraine lags behind EU countries, including its neighbors that recently joined the EU.

According to the UN e-Government Development Index (EGDI) for 2020, Ukraine ranks 69th among 193 countries and is included in the group of countries with high levels of e-government development. It received the lowest scores for Telecommunications Infrastructure and Online Services, and the highest for Human Capital. Nevertheless, Ukraine is lagging behind its neighboring EU members, – Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, etc., – which belong to the group of countries with very high levels of e-government development (UN, 2020).

In the Network Readiness Index (NRI) ranking for 2019, Ukraine ranked 67th among 121 countries. As for the components of the index, Ukraine ranks worst in the following indicators: Future technologies (82nd out of 121), ICT Use by Government and Online Government Services (87th), and Regulatory Environment (72nd). Neighboring EU countries have higher rankings (Poland – 37, Latvia – 39, Czech Republic – 30, Croatia – 44). Other neighboring countries do somewhat better than Ukraine (Turkey is ranked 51st, Russia – 48th) or occupy positions close to Ukraine (Belarus – 61, Moldova – 66, Georgia – 68) (Portulans Institute, 2019).

In 2019, the country ranked 60th among 63 countries included in the World Digital Competitiveness Ranking (WDCR) rating. Just as in the other rankings, Ukraine scored well in the Knowledge component (40th among 63 countries), while in terms of Technology and Future Readiness it was at the bottom (61st and 62nd position respectively) (IMD, 2019).

Hence, it is primarily the technological and regulatory issues, that need to be addressed in order to improve Ukraine’s digital position in the region and the world.

Methodology

Measuring Ukraine’s Digitalization level

In order to estimate the impact of digitalization, a Composite Digitalization Index is calculated for Ukraine, the EU, and other countries included in the model. This index is based on 11 digital indicators, combined into five components that characterize different areas of the digital economy and society – Connectivity, Use of the Internet by citizens, Human capital, Integration of digital technology by businesses, and Digital public services.

Our results confirm that the level of digital development in Ukraine is far below the EU average. It also lags behind the new EU Member States, which have a lower level of digital development compared to the other EU countries. As of 2018, the widest gaps between Ukraine and the EU average are found in Digital Public Services, Connectivity and Use of Internet by citizens. At the same time, Ukraine performed better in Human Capital and Integration of digital technology by businesses.

Measuring Digital Services Trade Restrictiveness in Ukraine

To assess the impact of digital regulatory barriers on trade, we use the Digital Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (Digital STRI) (OECD, 2020). It quantifies the regulatory barriers in five different policy areas (communication infrastructure, electronic transactions, electronic payments, intellectual property, other restrictions) that affect trade in digital services (Ferencz, J., 2019). OECD calculates Digital STRI for OECD countries and some non-OECD countries. As Ukraine is not included in this index, we estimate it for 2016-2018 using the OECD methodology.

Our estimations show that the level of digital services trade restrictiveness in Ukraine is much higher than the EU average. The regulatory differences in the digital sphere between Ukraine and the EU increase the cost of cross-border digital transactions between countries.

For Ukraine, most barriers are related to cross-border electronic payments and settlements, protection of intellectual property rights on the internet, cross-border electronic transactions (for example, the divergence of the national requirements for foreign trade agreements, including electronic ones, from international practices and standards, lack of practical mechanisms for the application of the electronic digital signature in foreign trade contracts, lack of mutual recognition of electronic identification and electronic trust services between Ukraine and major trading partners, etc.), other barriers (requirements for the use of local software and cryptography, etc.). These regulatory restrictions significantly hinder the development of cross-border cooperation and Ukraine’s integration into the European and global digital space.

Ukraine’s integration scenarios

In the event of Ukraine’s integration into the EU DSM, the country’s regulatory environment and digital development are expected to gradually approach the EU averages. We model it through assuming that the regulatory differences between Ukraine and the EU (captured by the Digital STRI Heterogeneity Indices – see OECD, 2020) will be decreasing, and level of digitalization in the country (captured by the Digitalization Index – OECD, 2020) will converge towards that of EU-DSM members.

We considered three integration scenarios that imply high, medium, and low levels of Ukraine’s approximation to the regulatory environment and digital development of the EU. For instance, the high scenario implies the highest level of Ukraine’s digital development and the lowest level of regulatory differences between Ukraine and the EU.

Models

We study the effect of reduced regulatory differences in the digital sphere on Ukraine-EU trade using a gravity model – one of the traditional approaches in the international trade literature. A gravity model predicts bilateral trade flows based on the size of the economy and trade costs between countries (affected by distance, cultural differences, FTAs, tariffs, etc.)

The study uses the following specification of the model for exports of goods and services in 2016-2018:

• Dependent variable – the total export flow of goods and services from country into country j (all possible pairs of countries).

• Independent variables – distance between countries and common characteristics (borders, language, law), existence of a free trade agreement, level of tariff protection (for goods), level of regulatory heterogeneity in the digital sphere between the two countries, and a set of fixed effects for each country.

We also estimate how digital development affects technical modernization, productivity, and economic growth. Technically, we use a Cobb-Douglas production function to describe each country’s output and model its total factor productivity component as a function of digital development (captured by the Digitalization index).

Results

The results suggest that Ukraine’s integration into the EU DSM will be beneficial for both Ukraine and the EU. Under all integration scenarios, bilateral trade between Ukraine and the EU is expected to intensify considerably due to enhanced regulatory and digital connectivity between the two.

Ukraine’s total exports of goods and services to the EU are estimated to grow by 11.8-17% ($2.4-3.4 billion) and 7.6-12.2% ($302.5-485.5 million), respectively – a cumulative increase throughout the period of implementation of reforms aimed at regulatory and digital approximation of Ukraine to the EU.

 Figure 1. The impact of Ukraine’s integration into the EU’s DSM on the exports of services from Ukraine to the EU*: three integration scenarios

Source: Authors’ own calculations. The current level of Ukraine’s exports of services to the EU – as of 2018

Figure 2. The impact of Ukraine’s integration into the EU’s DSM on exports of goods from Ukraine to the EU*: three integration scenarios

Source: Authors’ own calculations. The current level of exports of Ukrainian goods to the EU as of 2018

The EU would increase its exports of goods and services to Ukraine by 17.7-21.7% ($4.1-5 billion) and 5.7-9.1% ($191-305 million), respectively.

The acceleration of Ukraine’s digital development will bring productivity gains that would transform into higher GDP growth. It is estimated that a 1% increase in Ukraine’s digitalization level is expected to raise its GDP by 0.42%. As a result, the country’s gradual approximation to EU levels of digitalization would result in additional Ukraines GDP growth of 2.4-12.1% ($3.1-15.8 billion), depending on the scenario.  

Figure 3. Impact of digitalization on Ukraine’s GDP growth: three digitalization increase scenarios

Source: own calculations. The left axis – GDP growth (%), the right axis – the level of digitalization. The current level of digitalization of Ukraine as of 2018.

Conclusion

According to our estimations, improved digitalization and reduction of regulatory barriers in the digital sphere between Ukraine and the EU will have a positive effect on trade for both Ukraine and the EU. There is also a significant potential for economic growth to be attained in Ukraine by increasing digitalization and productivity of various spheres of the economy and society.

Realization of this potential would, however, require a substantial regulatory approximation on the Ukrainian side to achieve alignment with the EU DSM. The main emphasis needs to be put on electronic identification and transactions, payment systems and electronic payments, protection of intellectual property rights on the internet, cybersecurity, and personal data protection.

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.