Periodic Reporting for period 1 - 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)
Período documentado: 2020-08-01 hasta 2022-07-31
• Why is it important for society?
Occupying 1/6 of the Earth’s dry land, the post-Soviet region is one of the main EU economic partners for import and export of materials. While providing natural gas, oil, metals, cotton, the post-Soviet region is also a prospective market for luxury goods and specialised services. Political and diplomatic relations have intensified over the past years, leading to growing economic exchanges. This has been made possible thanks to the progressive opening up of post-Soviet republics giving clear signals to foreign investors and, in particular, EU-based actors, of their availability to intensify exchanges.
MARKETS addresses the currently limited existence of clear guidelines that could enable new, and existing, business actors to get a clear overview of the hidden risks associated with engaging in business in the post-Soviet region. It does so by embedding an aggregate of research projects intended to provide a wide and deep understanding of the loci of informality in the business sector by providing a wider framework. We will look at the way domestic and international institutions, as well as governance actors, deal with informality, what happens when they fail to encourage business actors to formalize they activities and come “out of the shadows”. We will also look at private sector perspectives and motives for engaging with informal practices, and how these practices are generated, develop or get phased out and what are the main determinants of their fate. Finally, we will look at the societies in which these business operate.
• What are the overall objectives?
The program will collect original empirical data (O.1) (drawing from new research solidly grounded in fieldwork) to identify how informality, here defined as the aggregate of (monetary and non-monetary) practices that are concealed from a state, affects modes of governance and business models/market strategies/entrepreneurial initiatives in the economy, as well as related societal implications. (O.2). These empirical findings will enable us to frame our research in current theoretical debates, and to produce new findings on the region useful for informality enquiries worldwide (O.3). Eventually, this will contribute to the capacity of the network to issue recommendations for policy and business actors on how to contribute to reforms in the region and how to navigate local business environments bringing in views from a variety of sectors, regions and actors (O.4).