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Paper Long abstract: Informality and shadow transactions have been acknowledged as a main component of a large amount of companies operating in post-socialist spaces (Polese 2014; Putnins and Sauka 2015; Schneider 2013; Williams 2016). Little is known, however, on the reasons why companies prefer to remain in the shadow; the relationship between informality, informal practices and performance.

The main goal of this paper is to present the results of the SHADOW survey (Marie Curie RISE project - 2018 - 2022) conducted in five countries of the former USSR (between January and March 2019): Georgia, Russia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan).

We scale up the Baltic Managers Survey used to calculate the shadow economy index in the Baltics (Putnis and Sauka 2015) to three post-Soviet regions to explore: 1) the correlation between the institutional (and macro-economic) environment and the likelihood of a company to engage in informal transactions; 2) the main alleged motivations by company managers to justify this behaviour. In turn, this will allow us to engage with the theorization of informal practices in a cross-country and cross-regional perspective and how they can be interpreted and taken advantage of in public policy perspective

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The work explores the role of akyn – a Central Asian poet-improviser - as a powerful means of ameliorating the financial literacy of the population in Kyrgyzstan, boosting trust, combating informality, indebtedness as well as anti-debt protests in the country.

Paper long abstract

Валюта курсу акчанын сыры болот эмеспи

Exchange rate is a character of the money,

Ар акчанын өзүнчө ыры болот эмеспи

Each money has its own song.

Ачыктап даана айтканда

Frankly speaking,

Ар улуттун өзүнчө,

Each nation has

Пулу болот эмеспи

Its own currency

(excerpt from the song of Kyrgyz improvisational poet-singer Bayan Akmatov,

translated from Kyrgyz by the authors).

Within the financial literacy awareness project, the National Bank of Kyrgyz Republic (NBKR) launched a series of videos in 2019 that aimed to acquaint the population with financial terms. The NBKR deployed a traditional and historically established transmission channel to apprise the public of the bulk of the activities that the country’s central bank undertakes. The platform selected by NBKR was the voice of the akyn - a poet-improviser widely known for both the delicacy of his language as well as the freedom used in songs to criticize the existing powers and its decisions. Touching upon the various economic themes such as inflation, monetary policy, exchange rate, family budget as well as the role of the National Bank, the akyn represents, it can be argued, an intermediary figure who efficiently relays information between the official institutions and the general public.

Within the current research project, the authors examine how the NBKR deploys traditional means of art form such as the recitation performed by akyn in order to increase public awareness on key economic concepts. Provided that the country has been combatting the problem of financial illiteracy and prevalent informality which, among other things, triggered massive anti-debt movements, the usage of akyn presents a powerful means in educating the population about the financial system.

The authors will discuss the original use of the akyn tradition in history, which has been standing in the interval between the power and the population, playing the spokesman alternatively for each of them, and analyze how this association between the NBKR aims to boost public trust in country’s financial institutions as well as raise public awareness on key economic concepts.

Keywords: Akyn tradition, trust, National Bank, finance, informality, Kyrgyzstan

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This study analyses the interconnectedness between global development architecture and the dominance of neoliberal socio-economic agenda in Kazakhstan. The country has become a place where neoliberal development projects are employed to embed neoliberal mode of governance.

Paper long abstract

This study analyses the interconnectedness between global development architecture and the dominance of neoliberal socio-economic agenda in the post-Soviet Kazakhstan. From the political economy perspective, this post-socialist country has become a space for the expansion of global capital where neoliberal development projects such as sustainable development goals are employed to embed neoliberal mode of governance. Global development architecture (GDA) premised on the ‘market episteme’ where market-oriented restructuring and commercial interests are at the centre of policy solutions has been adopted and implemented in the countries of the Eurasia region. The case of Kazakhstan is exemplary in demonstrating how the institutionalization of neoliberal socio-economic agenda works for the interests of transnational capital maintained by the GDA and the global financial order (GFO) of the post Bretton Woods era. This global capital accumulation and sustainable development organisation through the GFO and GDA respectively, helps to facilitate the current political economy regime in the country based on the premise of neoliberal ideology having nothing to do with truly national agenda of sustainable development and egalitarian ideals. On the epistemological level, it deprives of the ability to look beyond neoliberal orthodoxy of governance advocated by the newly developed Kazakh comprador class and technocrats indoctrinated into the mainstream (neoclassical) economics.

The research provides new insights into the evolution of contemporary capitalism and how it is adapting its upward capital accumulation goal in the Eurasian region. This is demonstrated by examining case examples on over-emphasis on economic growth, microcredit and obsession with competitiveness.

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The development of cooperative interactions between enterprises of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and the formation of regional value chains contribute to the deepening of the division of labor and specialization in the region, the productivity growth and competitiveness of industrial enterprises of the three countries, the strengthening of regional ties and the intensification of integration processes. The creation and development of regional value chains will allow countries to acquire new comparative advantages, achieve economies of scale of production, thereby opening up new opportunities for the development of mutual trade and diversification of its commodity structure. In the future, the development of regional production networks will create preconditions for the inclusion of enterprises of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in global value chains with a concentration on links with high added value.

Paper long abstract

An important direction in the development of regional cooperation in Central Asia is the expansion of industrial cooperation between enterprises of the countries. The development of cooperative interactions between enterprises of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and the formation of regional value chains contribute to the deepening of the division of labor and specialization in the region, the productivity growth and competitiveness of industrial enterprises of the three countries, the strengthening of regional ties and the intensification of integration processes. The creation and development of regional value chains will allow countries to acquire new comparative advantages, achieve economies of scale of production, thereby opening up new opportunities for the development of mutual trade and diversification of its commodity structure. In the future, the development of regional production networks will create preconditions for the inclusion of enterprises of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in global value chains with a concentration on links with high added value.