Mapping Uncertainties, Challenges and Future Opportunities of Emerging Markets: Informal Barriers, Business Environments and Future Trends in Eastern Europe, The Caucasus and Central Asia

Project Information

MARKETS

Grant agreement ID: 861034

DOI

10.3030/861034

Project closed

EC signature date 12 May 2020

Start date 1 August 2020

End date 30 April 2025

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 3 925 791,36

EU contribution

€ 3 925 791,36

Coordinated by

DUBLIN CITY UNIVERSITY
Ireland

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - MARKETS (Mapping Uncertainties, Challenges and Future Opportunities of Emerging Markets: Informal Barriers, Business Environments and Future Trends in Eastern Europe, The Caucasus and Central Asia)

Reporting period: 2022-08-01 to 2025-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The MARKETS project (“Mapping Uncertainties, Challenges and Future Opportunities of Emerging Markets”) addressed the urgent need to understand how informality shapes governance, economic behaviour, and resilience in the EU’s eastern neighbourhood and Central Asia. Informal practices—economic activities and social arrangements not fully captured by state regulation—are critical to everyday survival and business strategies in these regions, yet remain poorly understood and often mischaracterised as simply “shadow” or “illegal” activities.

The relevance of this agenda grew sharply during the project due to global disruptions: the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, which both reconfigured informal practices and highlighted their role in adaptation, inequality, and resilience. For the EU, better understanding informality is central to policy design, external action, and economic relations with neighbouring regions.

Overall objectives were to:

Collect original empirical data on informality practices and their interaction with governance, business models, and entrepreneurial strategies.
Generate strategic intelligence for economic and policy actors at macro and micro levels.
Advance theory on informality in global debates by producing cutting-edge, interdisciplinary doctoral research.
Deliver actionable recommendations to policymakers and businesses on navigating reforms and local business environments.
Through 15 doctoral projects across diverse disciplines and sectors, MARKETS built new knowledge, trained a cohort of highly skilled researchers, and delivered policy-relevant outputs to EU and international stakeholders.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

From its start, MARKETS recruited and trained 15 Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) across partner universities. Despite delays caused by COVID and the war in Ukraine, all ESRs were enrolled in doctoral programmes, supported by intersectoral supervision teams (academic, external, and non-academic mentors). Fellows completed structured training plans combining coursework, summer schools, secondments, and network events.

Research Work Packages
WP1 Institutional Framework: Five PhDs analysed informality in migration, gender, healthcare, taxation, and consumer behaviour. Outputs include mixed-methods studies of migrant labour brokers in Europe, ethnographies of women entrepreneurs in Kyrgyzstan, and analyses of tax evasion measurement.
WP2 Private Sector: Five PhDs studied informality in water governance, wine trade, procurement, labour market policies, and anti-corruption reforms. Results highlight how informal governance shapes resource allocation, state–business relations, and reform dynamics in contexts such as Uzbekistan, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine.
WP3 Social Roots: Five PhDs explored patient participation in healthcare, knowledge hiding in organisations, Western-educated elites in Kazakhstan, migrant entrepreneurship in Russia, and gendered labour in Uzbek bazaars. Findings advance understanding of identity, participation, and gendered economies.

Training & Capacity Building
ESRs completed ≥30 ECTS in doctoral training, ≥7 network events, and ≥1 summer school each.
All undertook secondments (academic/non-academic) of ≥3 months.
Fellows gained transferable skills in proposal writing, stakeholder engagement, data management, ethics, and public communication.
Dissemination & Exploitation
25+ peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Social Science & Medicine and Central Asian Survey.
22 policy briefs targeting OSCE, UNDP, WEF, OECD, and national ministries.
100+ public-facing outputs (blogs, podcasts, videos, photo stories).
Contribution to Global Encyclopaedia of Informality Vol. 3.
Creation of a Zenodo community (30+ open outputs, CC-BY licensing).

Milestones & Risk Mitigation
Recruitment, ethics clearances, fieldwork, secondments, training, and mid-term review validated.
Risks (COVID, war in Ukraine, regional instability) mitigated through project extensions, redeployment of fellows, online events, and termination of collaborations with Russia/Belarus.
Overall, all deliverables were achieved; some dissertations are still under defence but research results and outputs are secured.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

MARKETS advanced beyond the state of the art in several ways:

Empirical innovation: First large-scale, comparative, interdisciplinary dataset on informality across Eurasia and Central Asia.
Methodological innovation: Use of mixed methods, digital tools (web scraping, network analysis), and institutional ethnography to capture informal practices.
Theoretical contribution: Reframing informality not simply as absence of regulation, but as adaptive governance that coexists with formal systems. New frameworks link informality with resilience, gender, migration, and healthcare governance.
Expected results until the end of the project

Defence of all 15 doctoral theses (several already completed).
Additional peer-reviewed publications under review/accepted.
Ongoing uploads to the Zenodo community (policy briefs, datasets, teaching material).
Fellows continuing dissemination through academic and non-academic careers.

Potential Impacts
Scientific impact: Establishment of an interdisciplinary network and new conceptual frameworks for studying informality globally.
Socio-economic impact: Policy briefs and exploitation outputs already inform organisations such as UNDP, WEF, and OSCE; SMEs and business chambers have access to actionable intelligence on navigating informal practices.
Wider societal impact: Open access resources, multilingual outputs, and public engagement (schools, podcasts, media) improve public understanding of informality and its effects on daily life.
Human capital: Training of 15 ESRs with advanced research, transferable, and intersectoral skills, enhancing employability in academia, policy, business, and NGOs.
By addressing how informality shapes governance and resilience in a time of geopolitical uncertainty, MARKETS delivered knowledge, skills, and policy insights of direct relevance to Europe’s external action, economic partnerships, and societal resilience.

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