How will countries in Eastern Europe, the Baltic Sea region, and the Caucasus region handles the opening of their respective borders and what is the next step in the socioeconomic aspects?

Policy brief: The Belarus economy was already struggling to generate growth before both the corona pandemic and the political protests following the August presidential election. The lack of growth was the result of an incomplete transition process to modernize the economy combined with a strong reliance on the Russian economy and its dependence on international commodity prices that have not paid off in recent years. With the added political turmoil and, so far, lack of a new political and economic strategy, the economic outlook for Belarus looks grim. Even if a full-blown crisis may be avoided by restrictive economic policies, stagnation will nevertheless be the most likely outcome without fundamental reforms.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected our well-being in many dimensions. Understanding how these dimensions interact and what factors influence the overall level of well-being can be instrumental in policy design today and in the process of recovery once the pandemic is over. With this in mind, the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics and the FREE Network invites academic paper submissions to an online workshop focused on dimensions of well-being.

Policy brief: Most reports on the labor-market effects of the first wave of COVID-19 have pointed to women, low-skilled workers and other vulnerable groups being more affected. Research on the topic shows a more mixed picture. Researchers from the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE); Pamela Campa, Jesper Roine and Svante Strömberg explores the Swedish labor market during COVID-19 crisis.

Policy brief: Violence within the home is the most common form of interpersonal violence for women. While children and men are also victims of abuse of various kind within the family, intimate partner violence committed by men against women is generally the most common form of domestic violence. Has intimate partner violence increased in Sweden during the current COVID-19 pandemic?

Policy brief: Russia’s real GDP fell by a modest 3 percent in 2020. The question addressed here is how a major oil-exporting country can go through the COVID-19 pandemic with a decline of this magnitude when oil prices fell by 35 percent at the same time as the domestic economy suffered from lock-downs. The short answer is that it is mainly a statistical mirage. Read the policy brief to learn more!

Policy brief: There are great expectations that vaccinations will enable a return to normality from COVID-19. However, there is massive variation in vaccination efforts, vaccine access, and attitudes to vaccination in the population across countries. This policy brief compares the situation in a number of countries in Eastern Europe, the Baltics, the Caucasus region, and Sweden. The brief is based on the insights shared at a recent webinar “Addressing the COVID-19 pandemic: Vaccination efforts in FREE Network countries” organized by the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics.

Policy brief: The COVID-19 pandemic has drawn attention to a pre-existing threat to global health: the quality of air in cities around the world. Prolonged exposure to air pollution has been found to increase the mortality rate of COVID-19. This is a particular concern for much of Eastern Europe, where emissions regularly exceed safe levels.

House of Innovation Assistant Professor, Erik Wetter, joined a panel of data experts convened in late 2020 to address concerns about data, analytics, automation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.

After having been relatively mildly affected in the first wave, Eastern Europe is currently in the midst of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic with much higher levels of infected and dead compared to the spring. This health crisis not only has economic consequences, but also has contributed to political instability in parts of the region. Learn more on the presentations and discussions held at the SITE Development Day conference 2020!