Social Security, Labour Market and Restructuring: Current Situation and Expected Outcomes of Reforms

The paper focuses on the social safety nets in Russian Federation and Ukraine in the view of changes on the labour market since the beginning of economic transition. We showed that many past phenomena (e.g. restructuring of the economy, wage and pension arrears, new groups at-risk-of-poverty, demographic transition) caused a need to change an old type social safety net (SSN) into the new one, better adapted to emerging more liberal economy problems. Additionally, we analysed some gender specific issues related to social security that are caused mainly by inequalities in the labour market. Differences of earnings between men and women in Russia caused by sector segregation account for seem to be more important than the gap between gender earnings attributed to the position. In Ukraine the main contributors to gross gender differential of log earnings (that equals to 32%) explained by our model are sector segregation and occupation. We also pointed out to future policy challenges in the area of social security systems in both countries. The retirement reforms introduced recently are a step in the right direction, although their impact will not be felt for a number of years. Other reforms, with more immediate results, are necessary. Social safety nets should be made more efficient and social benefits should be better targeted

A 3d Regional Scale Photochemical Air Quality Model. Application to a 3 Day Summertime Episode over Paris

This paper presents AZUR, a 3D Eulerian photochemical air quality model for the simulation of air pollution in urban and semi-urban areas. The model tracks gas pollutant species emitted into the atmosphere by transportation and industrial sources, it computes the chemical reactions of these species under varying meteorological conditions (photolysis, pressure, temperature, humidity), their transport by wind and their turbulent diffusion as a function of air stability. It has a modular software structure which includes several components dedicated to specific processes :-MERCURE, a meso-scale meteorological model to compute the wind field, turbulent diffusion coefficients, and other meteorological parameters. It is a 3D regional scale model accounting for different ground types and urban densities. It includes a complete set of physical parameterizations in clear sky. -MIEL, an emission inventory model describing the pollutant fluxes from automotive transportation, domestic and industrial activities. This model includes a mobile source inventory based on road vehicle countings together with global information on transportation fluxes extracted from statistical population data. It uses specific emission factors representative of the vehicle fleet and real driving patterns. -MoCA a photochemical gas phase model describing the chemistry of ozone, NOx, and hydrocarbon compounds. This model, with 83 species and 191 reactions, is a reduced mechanism well adapted to various air quality conditions (ranging from urban to rural conditions). For interpretative reasons, the identity of primary hydrocarbons is preserved. -AIRQUAL, a 3D Eulerian model describing the transport by mean wind flux and air turbulent diffusion of species in the atmosphere, associated with a Gear type chemical equation solver. The model has been applied to a 3-day summertime episode over Paris area. Simulation results are compared to ground level concentration measurements performed by the local monitoring network (Airparif)