Do institutions matter for technological change in transition economies? The case of the Russia's 89 regions and republics

We explore the impact of institutions on technological change in a transition economy. We use regional panel data for Russia's 89 regions and republics during the period of recovery and growth from 1998 to 2004 to show the impact of large variation in institutional development, ranging from full enforcement of property rights in the Northwest to red belt Communist regimes in the southeast. We find an unambiguous relationship between strong and sustained institutional development and technological change. We provide one model proxying the quality of institutions by the investment risk rating compiled by the rating agency ExpertRA Regions

Does greater financial openness promote external competitiveness in emerging markets? The role of institutional quality

Studies have shown that external capital account liberalisation can boost capital inflows and augment economic development. Nevertheless, in the case of developing and emerging economies (DEE), adverse currency fluctuations could hamper external competitiveness due to relative price differences creating currency overvaluation, which might not be mitigated via financial openness alone. Therefore, this paper uses annual panel data for 35 DEEs over 40 years to explore whether financial openness of countries can help preserve their external price competitiveness, in the presence of greater trade openness and better institutional quality. Our findings suggest that financial openness alone does not aid export competitiveness, unless it is supported by greater trade openness. In addition, both cross country and regional analyses show that financial openness can benefit economies in maintaining their export competitiveness if they have stronger quality of institutions. Our results remain robust when we estimate the role of financial openness and institutional quality jointly on external competitiveness across regions, and during the pre‐ and post‐crisis periods. We conclude that financial openness alone is not sufficient to improve external competitiveness of an emerging economy, but it does help in the presence of greater trade openness or better institutions, enabling reduction in trade costs and thereby making these countries more price‐competitive

Integral Difference Ratio Functions on Integers

number theoryInternational audienceTo Jozef, on his 80th birthday, with our gratitude for sharing with us his prophetic vision of Informatique Abstract. Various problems lead to the same class of functions from integers to integers: functions having integral difference ratio, i.e. verifying f (a) − f (b) ≡ 0 (mod (a − b)) for all a > b. In this paper we characterize this class of functions from Z to Z via their a la Newton series expansions on a suitably chosen basis of polynomials (with rational coefficients). We also exhibit an example of such a function which is not polynomial but Bessel like