Experience in Implementing Social Benefits Monetization Reform in Russia. Literature Review.

The present paper is an integral part of the "Preparation of the strategy for social benefits monetization reform in Ukraine" project, co-financed by the 2008 Polish aid programme of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland and carried out by CASE in 2008. The paper was prepared as background material aimed at obtaining a better understanding of the main bottlenecks in reforming a vast in-kind benefits system typical for many countries of the Former Soviet Union (FSU). The paper focuses on the following issues: aims and motives of monetization reforms in Russia; expected outcomes of the reform; description of the implementation process; changes of the roles of various actors and agencies; compensation of housing and communal services (HCS) expenses in the course of HCS and monetization reforms; and the major gains and failures of the reform. The paper concludes with lessons that can be derived from the Russian monetization experience for the planned Ukrainian monetization reform. The paper is based on extensive research on the monetization reform in Russia and literature published by leading Russian independent research centers including the Independent Institute for Social Policy (IISP), the Institute for Urban Economics, the Centre for Economic and Financial studies (CEFIR), and the Institute for the Economy in Transition (IET).in-kind benefits, monetization, housing and communal services benefits,targeted social assistance, social sector reform, Russia, transition

On the Monetization of Deficits

Whether or not a deficit is monetized is often thought to have important macroeconomic ramifications. This paper is organized around two questions.The first is: Does monetization matter?, or morespecifically, For a given budget deficit, do nominal or real variables behave differently depending on whether deficits are monetized or not? Virtually all macro models givean affirmative answer. After sorting out some theoretical issues that arise in a dynamic context, I present some new time series evidence which suggests that monetization matters mostly for nominal variables.The second question is: What factors determine how much monetization the Federal Reserve will do?After discussing some normative rules, I offer a game-theoretic argument to explain why a central bank may choose not to monetize deficits at all and may even contract bank reserves when the government raises its deficit. The empirical work turns up a surprisingly systematic link between budget deficits and growth in reserves. This relationship suggests that the Federal Reserve monetizes deficits less when inflation is high and when government purchases are growing rapidly.

APIs and Your Privacy

Application programming interfaces, or APIs, have been the topic of much recent discussion. Newsworthy events, including those involving Facebook’s API and Cambridge Analytica obtaining information about millions of Facebook users, have highlighted the technical capabilities of APIs for prominent websites and mobile applications. At the same time, media coverage of ways that APIs have been misused has sparked concern for potential privacy invasions and other issues of public policy. This paper seeks to educate consumers on how APIs work and how they are used within popular websites and mobile apps to gather, share, and utilize data. APIs are used in mobile games, search engines, social media platforms, news and shopping websites, video and music streaming services, dating apps, and mobile payment systems. If a third-party company, like an app developer or advertiser, would like to gain access to your information through a website you visit or a mobile app or online service you use, what data might they obtain about you through APIs and how? This report analyzes 11 prominent online services to observe general trends and provide you an overview of the role APIs play in collecting and distributing information about consumers. For example, how might your data be gathered and shared when using your Facebook account login to sign up for Venmo or to access the Tinder dating app? How might advertisers use Pandora’s API when you are streaming music? After explaining what APIs are and how they work, this report categorizes and characterizes different kinds of APIs that companies offer to web and app developers. Services may offer content-focused APIs, feature APIs, unofficial APIs, and analytics APIs that developers of other apps and websites may access and use in different ways. Likewise, advertisers can use APIs to target a desired subset of a service’s users and possibly extract user data. This report explains how websites and apps can create user profiles based on your online behavior and generate revenue from advertiser-access to their APIs. The report concludes with observations on how various companies and platforms connecting through APIs may be able to learn information about you and aggregate it with your personal data from other sources when you are browsing the internet or using different apps on your smartphone or tablet. While the paper does not make policy recommendations, it demonstrates the importance of approaching consumer privacy from a broad perspective that includes first parties and third parties, and that considers the integral role of APIs in today’s online ecosystem

Regional Debt in Monetary Unions: Is it Inflationary?

This paper studies the inflationary implications of interest bearing regional debt in a monetary union. Is this debt simply backed by future taxation with no inflationary consequences? Or will the circulation of region debt induce monetization by a central bank? We argue here that both outcomes can arise in equilibrium. In the model economy, there are multiple equilibria which reflect the perceptions of agents regarding the manner in which the debt obligations will be met. In one equilibrium, termed Ricardian, the future obligations are met with taxation by a regional government while in the other, termed Monetization, the central bank is induced to print money to finance the region's obligations. The multiplicity of equilibria reflects a commitment problem of the central bank. A key indicator of the selected equilibrium is the distribution of the holdings of the regional debt. We show that regional governments, anticipating central bank financing of their debt obligations, have an incentive to create excessively large deficits. We use the model to assess the impact of policy measures within a monetary union.Monetary Union ; Inflation tax ; Seigniorage ; Public debt.

Monetization of Environmental Externalities (Emissions) from Bioenergy

Bioenergy from agriculture is today in the heart of sustainable development, integrating its key components: environment and climate change, energy economics and energy supply, agriculture, rural and social development. Each bioenergy production route presents externalities that must be assessed in order to compare one bioenergy route to another (bio)energy route. The lack of primary and reliable data on externalities is, nevertheless, an important nontechnological barrier to the implementation of the best (bio)energy routes. In this article, we want to monetize one environmental externality from bioenergy: emissions (GHG: CO2, CH4, N2O, O3; CO, NOx, SO2, metal, and PM). We have to monetize emissions on the basis of their effects on health, global warming, and soil and water quality. Emissions will be quantified through Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) and ECOINVENT database. Impacts on health will be monetized on the basis of mortality (number of life expectancy years lost multiplied by Value Of Life Year (VOLY)) and morbidity (number of ill persons multiplied by Cost Of Illness (COI)). Impacts on global warming will be monetized by Benefits Transfers from the Stern Review and its critics. Finally, impacts on soil and water quality will be monetized by Averting Behaviour or Defensive Expenses methods. Monetization results will be gathered, weighted, and incorporated in states and firms’ decisionmaking tools. They would enhance capacity of policy makers and managers to chose the best (bio)energy routes.Sustainable development, externality, monetization, bioenergy, emissions

The ISCIP Analyst, Volume X, Issue 2

This repository item contains a single issue of The ISCIP Analyst, an analytical review journal published from 1996 to 2010 by the Boston University Institute for the Study of Conflict, Ideology, and Policy

The Nature of Fiscal Crisis in Transition Economies

Fiscal stance is at the center of economic debate all over the post socialist countries. The most important issues that are more or less realized seem to be following. 1. To what extend will public sector budget deficits be monetized in the future i.e., do they eventually spell inflation?. 2. How can one reconcile the "twin deficits" i.e. the current account and budget deficit with the need for long run growth and the need for servicing the external debt. 3. Is it true, as argued by M. Friedman and R. Barro that the only relevant aspects of the budget are the volume and composition of public spendings on goods and services and that the choice of financing method is irrelevant? 4. Is a financial crowding out of private saving an issue of concern? 5. How do we assess the solvency of a government i.e. how do we evaluate the consistency of the government's spending and revenue plans with its outstanding debt obligations and its inflation objectives? 6. What are the structural and distributional effects of budget deficits? It is not easy to solve these or similar problems in mature developed market economies. Trying to answer to these questions with regards to transition economies appears to be very hard work. Specially if these problems are to be placed within the framework of fiscal crisis. Therefore it seems sensible to start the analysis with describing the nature of fiscal stance in post socialist countries and then use the concept as a background for further more detailed questions.economic transition, fiscal crisis, Central Eastern Europe