News at SITE

The need for urgent climate action and energy transformation away from fossil fuels is widely acknowledged. Yet, current country plans for emission reductions do not reach the requirements to contain global warming under 2°C. What is worse, there is even reasonable doubt about the commitment to said plans given recent history and existing future investment plans into fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure development. This policy brief shortly summarizes the presentations and discussions at the SITE Development Day Conference, held on December 8, 2021, focusing on climate change policies and the challenge of a green energy transition in Eastern Europe.

COVID-19 has brought economic shocks of unprecedented scale and impact. The global value chain is not an exception. What policies and investments are needed to improve global value chains post pandemic? On December 20, 2021, Erik Berglöf, Chief Economist at Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, presented key findings from the Asian Infrastructure Finance 2021 report: Sustaining Global Value Chains.

Policy brief: Some recently discovered money laundering schemes have funnelled large amounts of illegal money from former soviet states through European banks. This note briefly describes the evolution of the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regime for financial institutions, the introduction of which was concurrent with the post-soviet transition and the connected illegal flows of funds. It discusses the effectiveness of the current AML regime – and its ability to detect and seize illegal funds. The brief also highlights some of its deficiencies as well as lack of compliance with its prescriptions. It proceeds to stress that after judging the current framework insufficient, the US recently introduced whistleblower rewards for AML-infringements. Europe might want to follow their lead if it really aims at limiting money laundering.

On December 15th, Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) will be organising an online book launch event of a new eBook co-edited by SITE researcher Giancarlo Spagnolo titled “Procurement in Focus: Rules, Discretion, and Emergencies”.

This year’s SITE Development Day conference will focus on environmental policy in Eastern Europe, with a particular emphasis on global warming, energy transformation, and energy security.

The recently declassified proceedings of the Swedish Academy shed new light on why it awarded Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn the literature prize in 1970. His novels reflected unique experiences of many prisoners. The Academy characterized his work as a renewal of the great Russian literary tradition. However...