Research Seminar of International Laboratory for Macroeconomic Analysis: Veronika Matkovskaya «Welfare Convergence in Economies of Transition»

Dear Colleagues,

International Laboratory for Macroeconomic Analysis invite everyone to join our research seminar on the 24th  of  June 2021 (Thursday) at 04:00 PM (Moscow). 

Speaker: Veronika Matkovskaya (ILMA, HSE)

Theme: «Welfare Convergence in Economies of Transition»

Abstract:

At the beginning of the transition process, it was generally expected that a series of structural reforms directed to create a democratic political system and market-based institutions would bring the post-socialist economies closer to the standard of living of developed countries. However, the transition paths of Central and South-Eastern Europe, on the one hand, and the Former Soviet Union, on the other significantly diverged. The paper provides an analysis of the welfare convergence between 28 transition economies based on the evaluation of a micro-based summary statistic (Jones & Klenow, 2016). The well-being metric allows combining consumption, leisure, life expectancy, and inequality into a single indicator using an expected utility framework. The results show that the welfare gap between transition economies widened due to the transformation crisis in the period 1990-1998. Afterwards, the trend was reversed, and countries achieved a certain degree of convergence. However, the patterns were different inside groups of countries. While the transition economies of Central and South-Eastern Europe were the most successful at catching up with the standard of living of developed countries, they also steadily converged with each other from 1990 to 2017. At the same time, the welfare gap between Former Soviet Union members significantly increased through the period.

Working language: Russian

Link: https://zoom.us/j/8915494425

ID: 891 549 4425

Looking forward to see you.