Research projects

 
Research of CERISE has focussed on the problems of economic transition in CIS-countries, among which Russia is by far the largest country, and various aspects of EU-enlargement. Different specific research projects were initiated. This resulted in a number of published papers and a large pipe-line of future research.

 
Project I: Understanding the Russian banking sector
A database with bank balances and profit and loss accounts was created. These data are employed to analyse the Russian bank sector. In a first paper, we analyse how bank supervision has been enforced by the CBR and find indications that the CBR's bank licensing policy is driven by tacit objectives, related to systemic stability ). In a second paper, a trade recognition model is built to predict bank failure. In a third contribution we analyse why banks are often so reluctant to restructure their bad loan portfolios, while firms are usually more eager to do so. In a fourth contribution we look at market discipline in the Russian banking market and find evidence of both price and quantity discipline that seems to be largely drive by corporate deposits.
 
 
Project II: Understanding the Russian economy
Our group built a fully-fledged structural model of the Russian economy that works fine in capturing past economic performance and will be used to simulate several future economic scenarios. The model explicitly considers the special role oil prices have in Russia. In another paper we look at the collapse of the ruble zone and the disintegration of the Soviet Union and analyze the consequences of this process for trade flows and economic welfare in the former Soviet republics.
 
 
Project III: EU-integration
After accession the EU, the new members will become members of the EMU also. But the differences in monetary policy transmission are important and should be well understood before their EMU accession. We analyze the transmission of monetary policy in the countries concerned in several papers. We also look at the integration of equity markets and the institutional issues of the enlargement process in two seperate contributions. Koen Schoors also functioned as an expert for the EU in the strategy review process to review the EU's strategy towards Ukraine.
 
 
Project IV: Economic reform in transition countries
Economic reform has affected economic growth in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. In a number of papers we study how economic reform affected economic growth and FDI-inflows. Also we contribute to the big-bang versus gradualism debate with the use of empirical simulations.
 
 
Project V: Foreign direct investment in transition countries
We study foreign direct investment in Russia as in transition countries. Specifically we look at the determinants of FDI inflows and at the spillover effects of FDI on local companies. There are currently two finished papers on these topics and a very large and ambitious research project is in the pipeline.