Substantial upward economic mobility in the majority of countries in Europe and Central Asia in the 2000s translated into achievements in reducing poverty and boosting shared prosperity.
... Voir la suite Although factors associated with upward mobility vary significantly by country, education and jobs undoubtedly play an important role in lifting households out of poverty and helping them to improve their living standards. This study finds there is a puzzling mismatch between the objective economic mobility patterns observed in survey data and people's subjective perception of their mobility. A majority of people in the region perceives they are worse off economically than in the past and voice frustration over limited opportunities to improve their lives. This disconnect is partly explained by increased inequality in the region, an increasing sense of unfairness in the processes to move up, and a more marked sense of insecurity and vulnerability. Although the region has been making headway in lifting households out of poverty, ensuring sustainable progress toward poverty reduction and shared prosperity requires policies that promote human capital accumulation, foster job creation, and offer adequate protection to improve households' resilience to shocks.
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Document de travail de recherche sur les politiques WPS7173 JAN 01, 2015
The Financial Sector Advisory Centre (FinSAC) helps national financial sector authorities prepare to effectively manage financial crises, reducing risk of problems in individual financial institutions and financial markets, having systematic consequences.
... Voir la suite Technical assistance through the use of tailor-made crisis simulation exercises (CSEs) seeks to test financial stability arrangement and assess how legal and regulatory frameworks work under distressed conditions. Undertaking practical, simulated but realistic crisis scenarios allows those involved to "learn by doing" and contributes to team formation and trust development, vital for successfully addressing policy issues in the event of an actual crisis. CSEs are designed as diagnostic tools. In practice they also function as validation tools for existing crisis management frameworks, confirming what works well and what does not.
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This paper presents new indicators for 185 economies measuring the accessibility of business regulatory information. The paper shows that the new data can serve as meaningful proxies for the overall transparency of governments and the new data have explanatory power for the quality of business regulation.
... Voir la suite The paper finds the regulatory environment to be most opaque in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa, where businesses can often only access basic regulatory information by meeting a government official. By contrast, in countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, access is more direct via websites, public billboards, and brochures. Moreover, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development economies are more consistent in their transparency efforts across government agencies. The paper also finds that while resources as proxied by income levels play some role in explaining why some economies make more information easily accessible than others, those resources are not the only determining factor; regardless of income, more democratic governments tend to make greater transparency efforts. Finally, easier access to basic regulatory information is associated with greater regulatory quality and less corruption.
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Document de travail de recherche sur les politiques WPS7132 DEC 01, 2014
This paper examines support for reducing inequality and for income redistribution to specific groups in Europe and Central Asia. The paper uses the Life in Transition Survey to analyze cross-country differences in redistributive preferences and the determinants of individual-level differences in such preferences.
... Voir la suite The analysis tests for various possible motivations, such as self-interest, beliefs about the fairness of the income-generating process, past social mobility experience, or expectations of future social mobility. Fewer people wanted to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor in 2010 than in 2006 in transition countries. Support for redistribution toward specific groups is highest for the disabled and the elderly, but there is high heterogeneity across countries in support for various redistributive policies, as well as in the alignment between average beliefs and actual policies. The empirical analysis confirms the importance of beliefs about fairness in influencing redistributive preferences, together with self-interest and past and expected social mobility in European Union member states (Western European and new member states), but only to a limited extent in the non-European Union member state group of transition countries. Regarding redistribution to specific groups, self-interest appears to be an important motivation for support for the elderly and families with children, whereas values and beliefs are important drivers of support for the working poor and the unemployed. Although framing matters, the results are broadly robust to alternative measures of support for reducing inequality.
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Document de travail de recherche sur les politiques WPS7097 NOV 01, 2014