Search results

The global financial crisis hit the economy of the Kyrgyz Republic by the third wave of its transmission in early 2009. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of the global financial economic crisis on the transition economy of the Kyrgyz Republic. As there is a low level of the Kyrgyz Republic’s integration into the global financial and economic processes, it is obvious that channels of transmissions are different.

The empirical model is the vector autoregression approach. The quarterly data from 2005 to 2013 of the remittances from abroad, trade volumes, exchange rates, credits, deposits and liquidity of the banking system, gross domestic product (GDP) and foreign direct investment (FDI) were used in the empirical analysis.

The authors found a significant positive relation between transmission channels such as remittances flow, banking sector, international trade and GDP within the first six months. Thus, a decline in the aforementioned variables has a significant affirmative effect on the country’s GDP. Notwithstanding, the exchange-rate channel adversely influences GDP. Thereby, the depreciation of the national currency leads to an increase in GDP.

The study findings allow the Kyrgyz policymakers to foresee the global crisis transmission through the primary channels of transmission mechanism. Nevertheless, a decrease of the deposit level by 1 per cent leads to 2.91 per cent decline in FDI inflows. On the contrary, an increase of the exchange rate by 1 per cent leads to 1.54 per cent decrease in imports.

This paper attempts to fill the knowledge gap in the area of foreign direct investment (FDI) research in the regions of Caucasus and Central Asia. Various dimensions of FDI were analyzed from a comparative perspective drawing on a number of selected case studies of inward investors in Georgia and Kyrgyz Republic. The results indicated that the FDI activity in Georgia and Kyrgyz Republic was a market‐seeking type focusing heavily on location‐specific attractions of the two countries. Although the issue of corruption affects foreign investors, it does not act as a major deterrent of FDI infl ows. The most serious problem influencing the performance of FDI firms was found to be inefficiency of local labor force, excessive bureaucracy and red tape, and differences inherent in the business practices of host countries. In general, however, it was found that foreign investors have been satisfied with their performance largely due to the relatively smooth competition and the availability of several market niches in both host country markets.

The concept of technical assistance predicates that international experts have information that the host country community of practice lacks. At the same time, elementary education is deeply personal and familiar to everyone in the post-Soviet environment; it was a point of pride in the USSR. Navigating this territory requires patience and thoughtful partnership with the Ministry of Education officials and host communities.

The post-Soviet environment has documented achievement of universal primary education and near-universal literacy. However, new forms of testing and literacy measurement indicated that literacy rates in the former Soviet Union did not necessarily represent functional composition and comprehension skills. At the same time, many of the smaller former Soviet republics lack the financial resources to support their education systems to the level provided by the USSR. This presents unique challenges in providing technical assistance in education.

Turkish and Kyrgyz investors linked up to introduce Coca‐Cola to the Kyrgyz Republic. However, the Kyrgyz people are very traditional, and the future of Coca‐Cola, in this market, will be a function of marketing efforts.

On August 31, 2011, Kyrgyzstan celebrated 20 years of independence. During this relatively short period in its history, the nation undertook a host of reforms intended to make its public sector institutions and its policy system and processes more democratic, effective, and efficient. Early successes earned Kyrgyzstan the title “island of democracy” in Central Asia.

This chapter is about education in four Central Asian states which were part of the former USSR until 1991. These countries have common legacy, yet, have been evolving with their own trajectories. The chapter provides the demographic information, politics, economy, social system, religion and worldview, followed by the presentation of education system of each country. The chapter presents both accomplishments and setbacks of the four counties in the education sector, highlighting key trends and strategic growth areas.

The purpose of this paper is to document the transformation of developing Asia's manufacturing sector during the last three decades.

The paper briefly discusses the transformation during the last 30 years and benchmarks the sector by estimating a regression based on the logistic pattern of growth. It then summarizes the main findings.

It is found that: the share of developing Asia in world manufacturing output has increased significantly since the 1970s; the increase is concentrated in a number a countries, mostly the NIES, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand; and there has been an important technological upgrading as the share of more technologically advanced manufacturers has increased. However, the increase is also concentrated in a reduced group of countries.

The findings in the paper should be of value to both other researchers and policy makers trying to understand industrialization.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate energy efficiency of 132 countries from 2007 to 2014 according to their performance, categorizing the nations into similar groups.

Data envelopment analysis model based on Goal Programming and then K-Means clustering algorithm are used to determine the efficiency and clustering the nations based on their efficiency performances.

The results of the study reveal that developing low-income countries could lead to high energy-efficiency scores, and countries with different development and income levels can become efficient in the field of energy consumption. Following the nations during a seven-year period also indicates that the changes in energy-related indicators such as renewable energy consumption and energy productivity are the main drivers to move a country between clusters.

The present study aimed to investigate whether similar nations with similar energy efficiency level in a cluster are similar in their development and income level, and changing the energy consumption pattern during the seven-year period could move the countries from a cluster to another one.

The purpose of this paper is to comparatively analyze the corporate governance codes of transition economies, particularly five Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) members (i.e. Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia). Specifically, the convergence or divergence of these countries’ corporate governance codes among themselves as well as relative to the best practices of the UK Corporate Governance Code (UK Code) and the OECD Principles of Corporate Governance are investigated.

Initially, the existing literature on corporate governance with special focus on transition countries is reviewed. Afterwards, benchmarking the international best practices, based on main chapters and contents, the corporate governance codes of all countries in the sample are analyzed.

The paper finds that even though some principles of the corporate governance codes of the countries in the sample differ in some aspects, they do converge to some extent. However, high misalignments between the UK Code and the OECD Principles and the codes of selected countries in some aspects were found.

The conclusion and implications of the study characterize the corporate governance of selected developing countries; thus, they might not be generalizable to other countries.

The codes of the countries in the sample should be revised, and more specifications regarding the stakeholder, board structure, its subcommittees, independence, diversity and transparency issues need to be addressed.

The paper comprehensively analyzes the contents of corporate governance codes of transition countries; from both practical and academic point of view, it was important gap that needed to be fulfilled.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the China’s outward FDI efficiency and it determinants in 69 countries along the Belt and Road over the period of 2003-2013.

This paper defines the extent of the Belt and Road in terms of geographical boundaries, justifying the application of the stochastic frontier gravity model to the FDI analysis, and then constructing a frontier regression model to assess the China’s outward FDI efficiency and it determinants in countries along the Belt and Road.

Regarding the core gravity parameter estimates, China’s outward FDI was highly consistent with the gravity model. As far as policy parameters are concerned, China’s outward FDI was significantly restricted by some man-made barriers in host countries. According to the estimated FDI efficiency scores, China has huge outward FDI potential in countries along the Belt and Road. In general, China’s outward FDI efficiency demonstrated a consistent uptrend from the perspectives of both FDI flows and stocks over the period of 2003-2013. Although China’s outward FDI performance indicated a very uneven pattern across different countries and periods, there were no significant performance differences between the Road and Belt.

The Belt and Road initiative can be largely beneficial to China’s outward FDI, but the specific framework of cooperation should be designed on the basis of determinants of China’s outward FDI. The regional cooperation with the Road countries should mainly focus on the removal of business barriers and financial barriers. The regional cooperation with the Belt countries should mainly concern the improvement of local intellectual property protection, the reduction of local tax burden, and removal of business barriers and financial barriers.

To the authors’ best knowledge, no existing literature has specifically examined the efficiency of China’s outward FDI in the countries along the Belt and Road and its determinants.