more shock than therapy market transition employment and income in russia 1991 1995 sixteen predictions from market transition theory are assessed using survey data on employment earnings and income in russia during the first five years of market reform although the private sector has grown self employment is still rare incomes are down and unemployment is up a distended income distribution reflects unprecedented income inequality distinctive features of late soviet era stratification persist low returns to education a gender gap in earnings and low earnings among professionals the russian market transition offers more opportunity in trade consumer services and speculation and less in manufacturing than do other emerging makets this corresponds to merchat capitalism and contradicts the predictions of market transition theory everything the communists told us about communism was a lie everything they told us about capitalism turns out to be true popular russian joke circa 1996

the effect of human capital on countries economic efficiency the paper applies time dependent conditional frontier estimators in order to examine the effect of human capital on countries economic efficiency levels specifically time dependent conditional full and partial efficiency measures are applied to a sample of 123 countries for the period of 1970 2011 the results from the nonparametric analysis reveal a nonlinear relationship between countries human capital technological change and efficiency levels

multi criteria revision of the hungarian renewable energy utilization action plan review of the aspect of economy abstract in 2012 the hungarian government has decided to revise the country s national renewable action plan mostly due to the experienced changes of the economic environment and the continuously decreasing cost of renewable energy technologies present paper introduces the methodology and the most important results of this revision process carried out by the centre for energy research of the hungarian academy of sciences first the results of hungarian initiatives aiming the increase of the share of renewable were examined then by analysis of technological and economic trends of recent years new scenarios were set to reach the targets set by adopting the 2009 28 ec directive 1 a multiple criteria decision analysis mcda of all potential renewable technologies and their respective fuels served as a basis for the most competitive scenarios the authors focused on five aspects economy environment climate job creation and innovation due to coverage constraints present paper dominantly focuses on the review of the economical aspect but in addition to those mentioned further aspects may also be considered in the optimisation process the results of the revision highlight that by 2020 hungary will still mostly be using bioenergy in its renewable portfolio which also allows the country to exploit its significant potential

economic reforms and democracy evidence of a j curve in latin america this article explores the relationship between economic reforms and democracy in latin america between 1970 and 1995 existing theories suggest divergent effects across time horizons the implementation of reforms economic liberalization may initially destabilize democracy due to popular backlash or overzealous reformers usurpation of democratic institutions however the potential outcome of reforms greater economic liberalism may later foster or reinforce democracy by dispersing economic assets making rulers more susceptible to international constraints or demobilizing social groups that may otherwise make politically destabilizing redistributive demands time series cross section analyses using an error correction model provide evidence of this j curve relationship although countries engaging in economic reforms may experience a temporary deterioration of democracy they tend to become more democratic in the long run findings are robust to numerous control variables country and time fixed effec

multiple objectives in agricultural planning a compromise programming application this article shows how multiobjective programming compromise programming and filtering techniques can be used to tackle some problems found in agricultural planning a real case involving the establishment of workers cooperatives within an agrarian reform program in andalusia spain is studied the underlying problem is to find a compromise between the following objectives employment seasonal labor and business profitability the multiobjective programming approach is used to find the efficient set among these objectives and after a filtering procedure a compromise between the objectives is established based on the compromise programming approach

patterns of transition from plan to market patterns of transition from plan to market martha de melo cevdet denizer and alan gelb hungary s bankruptcy experience 1992 1993 cheryl w gray sabine schlorke and miklos szanyi why and when do governments initiate public enterprise reform jose edgardo campos and hadi salehi esfahani roads land use and deforestation a spatial model applied to belize kenneth m chomitz and david a gray industrial centralization in indonesia j vernon henderson and ari kuncoro guidlines on searching for a dalton improving tax reform an illustration with data from indonesia shlomo yitzhaki and jeffrey d lewis a new data set measuring income inequality klaus deininger and lyn squire

multiattribute utility analysis the case of filipino rice policy major uncertainties and conflicting objectives often arise in public policy analysis this paper advances a framework that is appropriate for public policy problems frequently encountered in agriculture and food systems among other possible benefits its principal value is to provide focus on the major conflicts trade offs and subjective perceptions among affected groups it can be used to isolate major disagreements needed empirical evidence appropriate degrees of risk aversion equity value judgments and consensus solutions in an empirical setting the framework is used to evaluate price policy for rice in the philippines

multicriteria analysis for agricultural resource management a critical survey and future perspectives abstract this paper reviews multicriteria analysis applied to agricultural resource management the applications utilize either methods for selecting multiattribute discrete alternatives including multiattribute utility theory or methods for solving multiobjective planning problems including goal programming our main purpose is to classify and evaluate the criteria attributes objectives used for modeling agricultural systems and to identify the difficulties for practitioners in applying the methodology the fields of study in agricultural decisions requiring further investigation are also discussed

does human capital matter for growth in oecd countries a pooled mean group approach abstract unlike previous panel data studies using an improved dataset and pmg estimators we find a significant impact of human capital on growth the estimated long run elasticity of output to human capital is consistent with the microeconomic evidence on returns to schooling

the transition to a market economy pitfalls of partial reform we present a theory of a partial economic reform of a planned economy similar to the one that took place in russia since 1988 and in china earlier in such a reform some markets are liberalized in the sense that producers can sell output to whomever they want including private firms at free prices but at the same time must sell to state firms at state prices we show that such a reform can result in a substantial diversion of subsidized inputs away from state firms and toward private firms even when state firms value these inputs more the result may be a reduction of total output the simple analysis sheds light on many consequences of the soviet reform such as breakdown of coordination of production increased state policing of delivery quotas prohibitions of trading cooperatives and opposition to privatization the model also explains why partial reform failed in russia but worked in china

a model of crop planning under uncertainty in agricultural management abstract the crop planning problem is often formulated as a linear programming problem but in many actual cases the profit coefficients for agricultural products are not certain values because of the influence of the future weather so a linear programming model with constant coefficients does not describe the environment of decision making properly therefore we propose a model of crop planning with uncertain stochastic values which may support decision making of agricultural farms in this paper we treat such uncertain elements as the values with the fuzziness and randomness

a critical review of multi criteria decision making methods with special reference to forest management and planning abstract this paper provides a review of research contributions on forest management and planning using multi criteria decision making mcdm based on an exhaustive literature survey the review primarily focuses on the application aspects highlighting theoretical underpinnings and controversies it also examines the nature of the problems addressed and incorporation of risk into forest management and planning decision making the mcdm techniques covered in this review belong to several schools of thought for each technique a variety of empirical applications including recent studies has been reviewed more than 60 individual studies were reviewed and classified by the method used country of origin number and type of criteria and options evaluated the review serves as a guide to those interested in how to use a particular mcdm approach based on the review some recent trends and future research directions are also highlighted

economic growth and human capital accumulation simultaneity and expanded convergence tests abstract earlier economic growth studies are extended to account for simultaneity between economic growth and human capital accumulation the speed of income convergence and contribution of human capital to economic growth are underestimated if contemporaneous human capital growth effects are ignored

modeling synergies in multi criteria supplier selection and order allocation an application to commodity trading abstract we propose a novel meta approach to support collaborative multi objective supplier selection and order allocation ssoa decisions by integrating multi criteria decision analysis and linear programming lp the proposed model accounts for suppliers performance synergy effects within a hierarchical decision structure it incorporates both heterogeneous objective data and subjective judgments of the decision makers dms representing various groups with different voting powers vps we maximize the total value of purchasing tvp by optimizing order quantity assignment to suppliers and taking into consideration their synergies encountered in different time horizons we apply the proposed model to a contractor selection and order quantity assignment problem in an agricultural commodity trading act company we maximize the strategic effectiveness of both the customers and the suppliers minimize risks increase the degree of cooperation between trading partners on all levels of supply chain integration enhance transparent knowledge sharing and aggregation and support collaborative decision making

democratization and economic liberalization in the postcommunist world how does economic liberalization affect political regime economic liberalization is widely regarded as inimical to democratization the washington consensus which generally endorses shock therapy and envisions a basic compatibility between economic liberalization and democratization is widely disdained in social science many scholars hold that neoliberal economics depresses popular living standards and exacerbates socioeconomic inequalities thereby compromising democratization focusing on the postcommunist region this article tests this hypothesis it examines the data that have been used to assess the relationship between economic liberalization and political democratization and presents analyses using more appropriate and differentiated techniques the authors find that economic liberalization advances rather than undermines democratization using engle granger analysis they find that although economic liberalization has no discernible impact on democratization in the short term democratiza

a review of multi criteria decision making mcdm towards sustainable renewable energy development abstract in the current era of sustainable development energy planning has become complex due to the involvement of multiple benchmarks like technical social economic and environmental this in turn puts major constraints for decision makers to optimize energy alternatives independently and discretely especially in case of rural communities in addition topographical limitations concerning renewable energy systems which are mostly distributed in nature the energy planning becomes more complicated in such cases decision analysis plays a vital role for designing such systems by considering various criteria and objectives even at disintegrated levels of electrification multiple criteria decision making mcdm is a branch of operational research dealing with finding optimal results in complex scenarios including various indicators conflicting objectives and criteria this tool is becoming popular in the field of energy planning due to the flexibility it provides to the decision makers to take decisions while considering all the criteria and objectives simultaneously this article develops an insight into various mcdm techniques progress made by considering renewable energy applications over mcdm methods and future prospects in this area an extensive review in the sphere of sustainable energy has been performed by utilizing mcdm technique

handling uncertainty in agricultural supply chain management a state of the art given the evolution in the agricultural sector and the new challenges it faces managing agricultural supply chains efficiently has become an attractive topic for researchers and practitioners against this background the integration of uncertain aspects has continuously gained importance for managerial decision making since it can lead to an increase in efficiency responsiveness business integration and ultimately in market competitiveness in order to capture appropriately the uncertain conjuncture of most agricultural real life applications an increasing amount of research effort is especially dedicated to treating uncertainty in particular quantitative modeling approaches have found extensive use in agricultural supply chain management this paper provides an overview of the latest advances and developments in the application of operations research methodologies to handling uncertainty occurring in the agricultural supply chain management problems it seeks to i offer a representative overview of the predominant research topics ii highlight the most pertinent and widely used frameworks and iii discuss the emergence of new operations research advances in the agricultural sector the broad spectrum of reviewed contributions is classified and presented with respect to three most relevant discerned features uncertainty modeling types programming approaches and functional application areas ultimately main review findings are pointed out and future research directions which emerge are suggested

the state and economic involution russia through a china lens abstract why has the russian economy declined at the rate the chinese economy has grown in china the party state has made possible the decentralization of property relations and the hardening of budget constraints whereas in russia the disintegration of the party state has led to privatization and soft budget constraints whereas the former combination entailed accumulation the latter combination entailed involution that is an economy that eats away at its own foundations by funnelling resources from production to exchange russia s involution has proceeded in a combined mode that is through a series of phases in which government policies try to rectify the unintended consequences of previous policies involution is also uneven as different industries adopt different strategies some rapidly exited from the old order and then disintegrated while others voiced their demands to the state and declined more slowly

entrepreneurship and advancing national level economic efficiency we explore the channels under which entrepreneurship fosters productivity by disentangling its impact on national level economic efficiency and find that more entrepreneurship in aggregate is not always good for economic growth and most importantly identifying the form and activity of entrepreneurship is critical for policy makers to better manage changes in their economies our national level results also suggest that the new product entrepreneurship and to a lesser extent improvement driven opportunity entrepreneurship both significantly contribute to the improvement of national level efficiency however both measures would benefit from further development and it seems a higher coincidence of both is more likely to advance a nation s economic efficiency

challenges in the wind turbines location process in central europe the use of spatial decision support systems abstract the implementation of a framework for climate and energy policies in europe entails a number of development projects connected to renewable energy resources as far as many western countries have realized some of those investments during recent decades and have more experience in that field most of the countries in central europe have to face that challenge right now however a rapid increase in renewable energy production in those countries can cause some dysfunctions in the investment process national control authorities in poland marked that the decision making process concerning the location of wind turbines has not been carried out properly the paper presents a review of the studies regarding the use of spatial analysis in renewable energy policy implementation and a proposition for the use of the multi criteria spatial decision support system based on geographical information systems the presented model has a character of an open framework which allows a user to add any location parameter or factor which is possible to be represented as a metric value the spatial character of the proposed solution exceeds only mathematical models in the way of interpretation of the results an intuitive model supports communication with stakeholders and helps to explain the correlations between human activity and the location of power plants the model was tested on the case study of wroclaw agglomeration area poland and includes 13 location factors the use of a multi criteria model guaranteed a broader point of view in comparing five different scenarios of wind farms development in the decision making process as it combines conflicted interests groups minimalizes subjective assessment and enables to define priorities while setting weights of factors

why does schooling generate economic growth abstract this paper examines the relationship between schooling and gnp growth found in cross country growth regressions using a standard decompositional technique i divide education s effect on economic growth into three parts 1 an effect from the change in the returns to schooling over time 2 an indirect effect coming from schooling s positive effect on schooling growth and 3 a direct effect coming from education s raising income growth even holding education growth constant the lion s share of the schooling gdp growth connection comes from the schooling schooling growth connection

the political foundations of post communist regimes marketization agrarian legacies or international influences this article explores the causes of differing post communist regime transitions in eastern europe and the former soviet union emphasizing the increasingly prominent thesis that economic liberalization promotes political democratization we explore this argument in light of findings from other regions that have emphasized modernization agrarian class structure and international influences our results are based on a multilevel design strategy first analyzing data on 26 post communist countries over a 7 to 9 year period using time series cross sectional methods and then turning to a comparative analysis of four purposively selected cases to explore the causal mechanisms implied but not tested in the quantitative analysis our results suggest that faith in economic liberalization as a cause of democratization may be misplaced however there is support for the notion that large agrarian sectors are unfavorable to democratic development whereas positive democratic conditionality from outside agents can p

a linear goal programming model for developing economies with an illustration from the agricultural sector in egypt in this study we formulate a multi regional single time period linear goal programming model for agricultural planning in a developing economy in addition to specifying different levels of input and output for each activity we describe explicit crop interdependencies which account for rotational requirements constraints are developed for land labor water machinery fertilizer and capital resources economic aspects are addressed through the use of different production functions and the incorporation of several objectives this last point marks a departure from conventional models which stress maximization of economic welfare defined as efficiency through maximum social product without consideration for income distribution the emphasis on income distribution is reflected in our model in delineation of regional employment goals in addition foreign exchange expenditures and regional demand satisfaction goals reflect the importance of limiting foreign trade deficit and providing basic nutrition fo

the influence of public subsidies on farm technical efficiency a robust conditional nonparametric approach the objective of this paper is to assess the influence of public subsidies on farm technical efficiency using recent advances in nonparametric efficiency analysis to this end we use robust conditional frontier techniques as well as insights from recent developments in nonparametric econometrics the paper contributes to the ongoing methodological discussion on how to model the effect of public subsidies on farmers production decisions the analysis is conducted using an unbalanced panel data of 1604 observations from 313 french farms located in the french region meuse over the period 2006 2011 the estimates indicate that public subsidies influence negatively the conditional technical efficiency of farms this suggests that public subsidies affect both the range of the attainable set for the inputs and outputs and the distribution of the efficiency scores inside the attainable set

dynamic properties of energy affordability measures measures of affordability are applied in practice e g to assess the affordability of energy services water or housing they can be interpreted as measures of deprivation in a specific domain of consumption the large body of literature on affordability measure has little overlap with the existing literature on poverty measurement a comprehensive assessment of the response of affordability measures as a result of changes in the distribution of income or expenditure is missing this paper aims to fill this gap by providing a conceptual discussion on the dynamics of energy affordability measures several types of measures are examined in a microsimulation framework to assess their dynamic properties our results indicate that some measures exhibit odd dynamic behavior this includes measures used in practice such as the low income high cost measure and the double median of expenditure share indicator odd dynamic behavior is attributed to definitions made with respect to higher moments of the expenditure distribution definitions that rely on a percentage share of expenditure relative to income or an absolute or relative income poverty line fare well from a dynamic perspective

assessing the fuel poverty vulnerability of urban neighbourhoods using a spatial multi criteria decision analysis for the german city of oberhausen abstract tackling fuel poverty has become an increasingly important issue on many european countries political agendas consequently national governments local authorities and ngos have established policies and programmes to reduce the fuel poverty vulnerability of households however evaluations of such policies and programmes show that they barely reach those who are most in need the reasons for this failure are diverse and include fuel poverty measurement metrics local scale data availability and policy design this raises the question of how fuel poor homes can be more effectively identified and targeted to ensure that limited local and national budgets are used to benefit those who most need help area based approaches which pinpoint spatial units highly affected by fuel poverty due to their specific characteristics offer an opportunity for creating more tailored policies and programmes in this study the author developed a gis mcda multi criteria decision analysis using an ahp analytical hierarchy process and applied the approach to the german city of oberhausen the overall issue of fuel poverty was broken down into three vulnerability dimensions heating burden socio economic and building vulnerability the relative importance of fuel poverty criteria and the dimensions were evaluated by experts and an overall fuel poverty index was created to assess the relative fuel poverty vulnerability of 168 urban neighbourhoods the analysis offers insights into the spatial pattern of fuel poverty within a city and thus provides an opportunity to channel efforts towards households in those neighbourhoods most in need it also demonstrates that a trade off between ecological and social targets should be considered in the development of future policies for tackling fuel poverty