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Environment
- Climate change mitigation
- Environmental modelling
- Climate change impacts
- Agricultural economics
- Solutions for Freshwater Management
- Fisheries Management
- Devolution and the Resource Management Act
- Value and Natural Capital
- The Adoption of Environmentally Friendly Technologies in Agriculture
- Policy-Induced Technology Adoption: Evidence from the U.S. Lead Phasedown
- Transaction Costs and Tradable Permit Markets: The United States Lead Phasedown
- A Case Study for Devolution: The problem of preserving kiwi habitat in the Far North
- Devolution and the New Zealand Resource Management Act
- A guide to just transitions for communities in Aotearoa NZ
- Urban & regional
- Wellbeing & macro-economics
- Population & labour
- Human rights
- Productivity & innovation
Development
Because of increased globalisation in recent decades, many less-developed countries have become more integrated into world markets. This integration has brought a higher risk of exposure to economic fluctuations and, in some cases, dramatic economic crises.
Motu has completed research into the volatile economies of the former Soviet bloc. This research programme examined the impact of the transition to a market-based economy on the well-being of the Russian population, and the coping strategies used by individuals and households to manage economic uncertainty.
Motu does not have a current focus on development.
Publications
Improved Modelling of Spatial Cost of Living Differences in Developing Countries: A Comparison of Expert Knowledge and Traditional Price Surveys
Authors: Trinh Le | John Gibson
Article
Most developing countries lack spatially disaggregated price data, despite the importance of spatial transactions costs in these settings. We experimented in Vietnam with a new way of obtaining disaggregated price data, using local expert knowledge…
Prices, Engel Curves, and Time-Space Deflation: Impacts on Poverty and Inequality in Vietnam
Authors: Trinh Le | Bongguen Kim
Article
Many developing countries lack spatially disaggregated price data. Some analysts use “no-price” methods by using a food Engel curve to derive the deflator as that needed for nominally similar households to have equal food shares…
The Response of Consumption in Russian Households to Economic Shocks
Author: Steven Stillman
Other
This paper examines the extent to which consumption in Russian households responds to exogenous income shocks. During the time period studied in this paper (1994 – 1998), Russia experienced two major economic crises. Both featured…
Insights from Book Translations on the International Diffusion of Knowledge
Author: Isabelle Sin
Other
Increases in the stock of ideas possessed by societies are central to modern economic growth. The implications of idea flows are striking: Klenow and Rodriguez-Clare (2005) estimate world production would be just 6% of its…
Health and Nutrition in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union during the Decade of Transition: A Review of the Literature
Author: Steven Stillman
Article
The collapse of the Soviet Union was the most important historical event at the close of the 20th century. The jarring nature of this transition has resulted in large fluctuations in household resources and increased…
Employment Decisions during the First Decade of Transition in Russia
Author: Steven Stillman
Article
Since the fall of communism, Russia has undergone an extraordinary transition to a market economy. Under the Soviet system all able-body adults were expected to be employed and were for the most part. By 1998, the…
Understanding Interhousehold Transfers in a Transition Economy: Evidence from Russia
Authors: Steven Stillman | Randall Kuhn
Article
This article uses data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey to describe the patterns and determinants of private interhousehold transfers.
Russian households have experienced large reductions in income during the post-Soviet transition period, with a particularly…
The Determinants of Private and Government Sector Earnings in Russia
Author: Steven Stillman
Working Paper
Produced as RAND Labor and Population Working Paper 00-17.
This report estimates sectoral-earnings equations for rural and urban men and women in Russia. The equations control for:
self-selection into the workforce, and
self-selection into either the private or government…
Labor Market Uncertainty and Private Sector Labor Supply in Russia
Author: Steven Stillman
Working Paper
Commissioned as the William Davidson Institute Working Paper 359.
The development of a vibrant private sector has been one of the key failures of the transitional period in Russia.
This paper develops a theoretical and empirical model of…
Book Translations as Idea Flows: The Effects of the Collapse of Communism on the Diffusion of Knowledge
Authors: Isabelle Sin | Ran Abramitzky
Working Paper
We use book translations as a new measure of international idea flows and study the effects of Communism"s collapse in Eastern Europe on these flows.
Using novel data on 800,000 translations and difference-in-differences approaches, we show…
Social capital and regional social infrastructure investment: Evidence from New Zealand
Authors: Arthur Grimes | Jacques Poot | Philip McCann | Matthew Roskruge
Working Paper
In this paper we link unique data on local social infrastructure expenditure with micro-level individual survey data of self-reported social capital measures of trust and participation in community activities.
We use both probit and tobit models…
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