Download or read book Europe and Central Asia Economic Update Fall 2019 written by World Bank and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2019-10-09 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The share of immigrants in Western and Eastern Europe has increased rapidly over the past four decades. Today, one of every three immigrants in the world goes to Europe. Furthermore, although globally only one-third of migration takes place within regions, intraregional migration is especially high within Europe and Central Asia, with 80 percent of the region's emigrants choosing to move to other countries in the region. In high-income destination countries, migrants are often blamed for high unemployment and declining social services. There are also widespread concerns about brain drain in the migrant sending countries of Eastern Europe, the Western Balkans, and Central Asia. This update focuses on the design of policies on labor mobility and presents the trends, determinants, and impacts of low- and high-skilled labor.

Download or read book Europe and Central Asia Economic Update April 2019 written by World Bank and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2019-04-05 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With slowing global growth and increasing uncertainty clouding the global economic prospects, the Europe and Central Asia region faces a more challenging context than previously envisioned. Growth in the emerging markets and developing economies in the region slowed in 2018 and is projected to decline to further in 2019, before picking up in 2020-21. What challenges does the region face in the coming year? In the long run, how should policy makers design policies that boost growth and help individuals and firms adjust to the interplay between globalization and technological change? Within the global context, this update summarizes the recent developments and outlook for the region. The focus of this issue is on financial inclusion in the region, as one of the important policy areas that can promote long-term growth, reduce poverty, and enhance resilience to shocks.

Download or read book Europe and Central Asia Economic Update Spring 2024 written by The World Bank and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2024-04-11 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economic activity in the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region is expected to remain resilient but slow this year as a weaker global economy, slowdown in China, and lower commodity prices weigh on the region's growth outlook. Regional growth is likely to drop to 2.8 percent in 2024, following substantial strengthening to 3.3 percent last year because of a shift from contraction to expansion in the Russian Federation and war-hit Ukraine, and a more robust recovery in Central Asia. Regional output growth is projected to moderate further to 2.6 percent in 2025. The outlook faces multiple headwinds. A slower-than-expected recovery in key trading partners, restrictive monetary policies, and exacerbation of geopolitical developments could further dampen growth across the region. Weak productivity growth in ECA in the recent decade has resulted in a sharp slowdown in income convergence with advanced economies. Fundamental drivers of productivity growth, including progress in advancing institutional and market reforms, technology adoption, and innovation, are key for enabling private sector-led growth. Boosting business dynamism in ECA will require addressing several challenges, including upgrading the competitive environment, reducing state involvement in the economy, dramatically boosting the quality of education, and strengthening the availability of finance. While meeting these challenges will look different across countries, addressing them is an essential condition to achieve stronger economic growth and overcome the middle-income trap.

Download or read book Europe and Central Asia Economic Update Fall 2022 written by World Bank and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Globalization, demographic trends, the green transition, and technological innovations are transforming labor markets in Europe and Central Asia, altering their institutional and contractual arrangements, and creating disparities and vulnerabilities in the labor force. Systemic risks—economic, health, or climate-related—are also playing an increased role in driving poverty and vulnerability. Social protection systems in Europe and Central Asia will need to be reformed to address these challenges and provide adequate protection to workers and families. Countries in the region responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by implementing social protection packages with a substantial contribution of job protection policies. Analysis of the impact of these policies suggests that while job protection policies may have preserved employment in the short run, this may have come at the expense of efficiency and growth. In the long run, income protection policies may be better at addressing the needs of vulnerable groups as labor markets continue evolving. A policy package that combines a guaranteed minimum income with labor market policies that facilitate job transitions can best help countries address long-term challenges.

Download or read book Europe and Central Asia Economic Update Fall 2023 written by Ivailo Izvorski and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2023-10-05 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Europe and Central Asia (ECA) continues to be negatively impacted by the Russian Federation's invasion of Ukraine, tighter global financial conditions, persistent inflation, and global economic fragmentation. Economic growth in the region is projected to remain weak relative to the long-term trend, delaying the convergence of living standards to those of high-income countries. Climate change is becoming a serious constraint on growth, as extreme weather events are affecting the region with increased frequency and severity. Economic growth for the emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) of the Europe and Central Asia region has been revised up to 2.4% for 2023. The pickup in growth reflects improved forecast for war-hit Ukraine and for Central Asia as well as consumer resiliency in Türkiye and better-than-expected growth in Russia because of a surge in government spending on the military and social transfers. Nevertheless, growth remains weak relative to the long-term pre-pandemic averages. Downside risks cloud the outlook for the 23 EMDEs in Europe and Central Asia. High inflation may persist amid heightened volatility in global commodity markets and a surge in energy prices. Global financial markets may become more volatile and restrictive due to tightening financing conditions. Global growth for 2020-2024 is the weakest than during any five-year period since 1990 and may weaken further.

Download or read book Europe and Central Asia Economic Update Spring 2020 written by World Bank and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2020-04-08 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2018, the World Bank launched the Human Capital Index (HCI), which is designed to highlight how improvements in current health and education outcomes will shape the productivity of the next generation of workers. The HCI measures the amount of human capital that a child born today can expect to have by age 18, in view of the risks of poor education and poor health that prevail in the country where she or he was born. This update presents the ECA- HCI, which extends the HCI in two dimensions to make it more relevant for countries in Europe and Central Asia. First, the extension includes quality-adjusted years of tertiary education, in addition to basic education. Second, going beyond the child stunting and adult survival rates, the ECA-HCI proxies health status by including risk factors such as obesity, smoking, and heavy drinking, which are prevalent in the region. This exercise reveals that a child born today in the average country in the region would be only half as productive as he/she could have been with full tertiary education and full health.

Download or read book Europe and Central Asia Economic Update Spring 2022 written by World Bank and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2022-04-10 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In February 2022, the world was shocked by the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine. The war is having a devastating impact on human life and causing economic destruction in both countries, and will lead to significant economic losses in the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region and the rest of the world. It comes at a particularly vulnerable time for ECA as its economic recovery was expected to be held back by scarring from the pandemic and lingering structural weaknesses. The economic impact of the conflict has reverberated through multiple channels, including commodity and financial markets, trade and migration links, and the damaging impact on confidence. Moreover, the war has added to mounting concerns about a sharp global slowdown, surging inflation and debt, and a spike in poverty levels. Neighboring ECA countries are likely to suffer considerable economic damage because of their strong trade, financial, and migration links with Russia and Ukraine. The war is also causing a destabilizing wave of refugees, financial stresses in vulnerable countries, runaway inflation expectations, and food insecurity. A protracted conflict could further heighten policy uncertainty and fragment critical trade and investment networks.

Download or read book Europe and Central Asia Economic Update Spring 2023 written by Ivailo Izvorski and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2023-04-06 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economic growth slowed sharply last year in Europe and Central Asia, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a surge in inflation, and the sharp tightening of monetary policy and financing conditions hit private consumption, investment, and trade. The marked increase in food and energy prices boosted inflation to a pace not seen in 20 years. The burden of inflation was spread unevenly across households. The poorest households faced inflation that was more than 2 percentage points higher than the inflation faced by the richest households, with this difference exceeding 5 percentage points in some countries. Poverty and inequality rates derived from household-specific inflation rates differ from those based on the standard consumer price index (CPI) approach. These differences have important policy implications, because many programs use CPI†“based inflation adjustments, which do not accurately capture changes in the cost of living of targeted populations. Output growth in the region is projected to remain little changed in 2023 but better than projected in January 2023, largely reflecting upgrades to the pace of expansion in Poland, Russia, and Türkiye.

Download or read book Critical Connections written by David Michael Gould and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical Connections examines how trade, investment, migration, and other linkages among countries drive economic growth in the Europe and Central Asia region. The study breaks new ground by using a multidimensional approach that recognizes how each connectivity channel for growth is likely to be affected by the strength of other channels. This multidimensional view makes it easier to see that diversity in country connections and balance in all channels of connectivity are critical for achieving the greatest impact on growth. Europe and Central Asia provides a great laboratory for observing the role of multidimensional connectivity in action. The region’s 30 countries vary widely in the openness of their economies. Its collective experience shows how the various elements of cross-border connectivity work together to accelerate progrowth knowledge transfers, which in turn boost productivity through participation in today’s global value chains. A country’s economic partner might be just as important as the type of connection. Being well connected to highly connected countries can provide benefits beyond being well connected to comparatively isolated countries. Although greater connectivity can expose countries to external shocks, the report presents fact-based argument for policies that seek to build deeper and more diverse connections within the Europe and Central Asia region and globally. The message is timely. Europe’s once-confident march toward economic integration has slowed over the past decade, with voices in many countries questioning the wisdom of opening to the global economy. Critical Connections serves as a reminder to citizens and policy makers that greater regional and global connectivity has been a tremendous “convergence machine,†? raising living standards of lower-income countries toward those of wealthier middle- to high-income countries.

Download or read book Europe and Central Asia Economic Update Fall 2020 written by World Bank and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2020-10-07 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The COVID-19 pandemic has hit human capital directly in Europe and Central Asia, adversely affecting both education and health. School closures may lead to learning losses equivalent to a third to a full year of schooling, and they are likely to exacerbate inequalities, by disproportionately affecting students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The disease has already killed thousands of people, and some patients who survive will suffer long-term damage to their health. Recovery from the pandemic will thus require strong investment in education and health. This update examines human capital outcomes in the region and the ways in which the pandemic is likely to affect them. A focus on the quality of tertiary education and health risk factors of obesity, smoking, and heavy drinking highlights the challenges that are particularly important for the region. Post-COVID 19 policy initiatives to improve education and health will need to recognize the challenges posed by increased reliance on remote learning and the importance of being prepared for future pandemics, given the vulnerability of the region’s aging societies and the large number of people with underlying health risks.

Download or read book World Economic Outlook October 2019 written by International Monetary Fund. Research Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Global growth is forecast at 3.0 percent for 2019, its lowest level since 2008–09 and a 0.3 percentage point downgrade from the April 2019 World Economic Outlook.

Download or read book Europe and Central Asia Economic Update Fall 2021 written by World Bank and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although global economic activity is recovering and output in Europe and Central Asia (ECA) is expected to grow in 2021, containing COVID-19 remains a challenge in the region. Enterprise survey data for the emerging and developing countries in the region show that COVID-19 had a profound and heterogeneous impact on firms. Smaller, younger, and female-run businesses were hit harder and had greater difficulty recovering. But the crisis also played a cleansing role and economic activity in ECA appears to have been reallocated toward more productive firms during the crisis, particularly in countries with more competitive markets. Firms with high pre-crisis labor productivity experienced significantly smaller drops in sales and employment than firms with low pre-crisis labor productivity and were also more likely to adapt to the crisis by increasing online activity and remote work. Many governments in ECA implemented broad policy support schemes to address the initial economic fallout from the crisis. Overall, this government support was more likely to go to less productive and larger firms, regardless of the level of their pre-crisis innovation. As economies enter the economic recovery phase, it will be important for policy makers in all countries to phase out broad policy support measures as soon as appropriate and focus on fostering a competitive business environment, which is key to a strong recovery, resilience to future crises, and sustainable, long-term economic growth.

Download or read book Europe and Central Asia Economic Update April 2016 written by World Bank and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2016-04-14 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The economies of Europe and Central Asia (ECA) are facing complex challenges. In the eastern part of the region the task of governments is to orchestrate a coordinated crisis response. The collapse of oil revenues and the associated decline in remittances triggered a chain reaction of shocks. Adjustment to these shocks requires a new monetary policy regime, resolution of serious fragilities in banking sectors, fiscal reforms that put government finances on a sustainable path, while guaranteeing fair burden sharing, and facilitation of job creation in sectors that compete internationally. In the western part of the region policy coordination within the European Union is being tested by the refugee crisis and a possible Brexit. Meanwhile the Chinese economy has slowed down and is in the process of fundamental transformation. Also these developments have major impacts on the ECA region. The report analyses all these challenges and points at the opportunities to become more competitive in global markets.

Download or read book Europe and Central Asia Economic Update Spring 2021 written by World Bank and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2021 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Governments play a critical role in the economies of Europe and Central Asia, where government expenditures are close to 40 percent of gross domestic product and the public sector accounts for nearly 27 percent of total employment, which is almost twice the global average. The public sector often attracts some of the best educated workers in the region. And support for a larger public sector is increasing due to aging populations and their growing health care and long-term care needs, rising inequality and greater support for redistribution, and increasing expenditures as governments address the challenges posed by the COVID-19 crisis. The significant role that government plays underscores the importance of the quality of governance in determining productivity and growth and effectively responding to the region’s economic and social challenges. Digital technology and the data revolution offer the potential to increase efficiency, transparency, responsiveness, and citizen trust, directly impacting the quality of government. Across the world, the quality of government is increasingly informed by the extent to which governments harness digital tools and GovTech to optimize management, service delivery, and overall state capacity. Technology and data are also key for fostering collaboration between governments and civil society to improve public sector efficiency and service delivery. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the costs associated with delaying digitalization and GovTech implementation and the opportunities that lie in public sector modernization.

Download or read book Global Economic Prospects June 2019 written by World Bank Group and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2019-07-11 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Global growth appears to be stabilizing after a period of marked weakness, but it remains fragile. A modest recovery in emerging market and developing economies continues to be constrained by subdued investment, which is dampening prospects and impeding progress toward achieving critical development goals. Downside risks to the outlook remain elevated, and policymakers continue to face major challenges to boost resilience and foster long-term growth. this issue includes essays on the benefits and risks of government borrowing, recent investment weakness in emerging market and developing economies, the pass-through of currency depreciations to inflation, and the evolution of growth in low-income countries.

Download or read book The Central Asian Economies in the Twenty First Century written by Richard Pomfret and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes the Central Asian economies of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, from their buffeting by the commodity boom of the early 2000s to its collapse in 2014. Richard Pomfret examines the countries’ relations with external powers and the possibilities for development offered by infrastructure projects as well as rail links between China and Europe. The transition of these nations from centrally planned to market-based economic systems was essentially complete by the early 2000s, when the region experienced a massive increase in world prices for energy and mineral exports. This raised incomes in the main oil and gas exporters, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan; brought more benefits to the most populous country, Uzbekistan; and left the poorest countries, the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan, dependent on remittances from migrant workers in oil-rich Russia and Kazakhstan. Pomfret considers the enhanced role of the Central Asian nations in the global economy and their varied ties to China, the European Union, Russia, and the United States. With improved infrastructure and connectivity between China and Europe (reflected in regular rail freight services since 2011 and China’s announcement of its Belt and Road Initiative in 2013), relaxation of United Nations sanctions against Iran in 2016, and the change in Uzbekistan’s presidency in late 2016, a window of opportunity appears to have opened for Central Asian countries to achieve more sustainable economic futures.

Download or read book Global Economic Prospects January 2019 written by World Bank Group and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2019-02-12 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The outlook for the global economy has darkened. Global financing conditions have tightened, industrial production has moderated, trade tensions have intensified, and some large emerging market and developing economies have experienced significant financial market stress. Faced with these headwinds, the recovery in emerging market and developing economies has lost momentum. Downside risks have become more acute and include the possibility of disorderly financial market movements and an escalation of trade disputes. Debt vulnerabilities in emerging market and developing economies, particularly low-income countries, have increased. More frequent severe weather events would raise the possibility of large swings in international food prices, which could deepen poverty. In this difficult environment, it is of paramount importance for emerging market and developing economies to rebuild policy buffers while laying a stronger foundation for future growth by boosting human capital, promoting trade integration, and addressing the challenges associated with informality,