Denis Ivanov (p), Vasily Burov, Anton Kazun, Michael Rochliz, Andrei Yakovlev

Emmanuelle Faure

For a nation to prosper in the era of digitalization, it is crucial to attract highly skilled IT professionals. This group is noteworthy for its high rates of international mobility and abundant opportunities for remote work, rendering the aforementioned task both challenging and pertinent. As a case in point, Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, already traditional hubs of sprawling IT diasporas (Biagioli & Lepinay, 2019), have witnessed a more pronounced outflow of IT professionals since 2020, precipitated by a series of political crises and military conflicts (Korobkov et al., 2022; Petrakova, 2022; Berte, Paolotti & Kalimeri, 2023). Conversely, countries such as Armenia, Cyprus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Turkey have benefited from their relative safety and stability, attracting numerous IT professionals from neighboring nations, at least on a temporary basis (Geiger & Syrakvash, 2023). From a broader perspective, it is crucial to comprehend the political institutions required to attract high-level talent and stimulate technological innovation.
In our paper, we concentrate on the following question: which factors render a country more attractive to IT professionals? We scrutinize a sample of 864 Russian IT professionals recruited online through a market research company. Employing a forced-choice conjoint experiment framework, we queried the respondents about various aspects of a pair of hypothetical projects they had the opportunity to engage in, including the novelty of tasks involved (novel vs. standard), salary level (market rate vs. 20% above vs. 50% above), and two characteristics of the country where a respondent must be located while working on the project, namely the risks of personal safety due to crime (high vs. low) and risks of civil rights and freedoms violation (high vs. low). We utilize a linear probability model to estimate the likelihood of choosing a project.
Our findings reveal that, while standard tasks are preferred over novel tasks (a project involving them is 12.6 percent more likely to be selected by the respondents), and, surprisingly, salary has no statistically significant effect on the likelihood of choosing a project, country-of-location features also play a prominent role. Crime risks significantly reduce the likelihood of choosing a project (32.9 percent lower), and civil rights violations also decrease the attractiveness of a country (11.9 percent lower).
Our preliminary conclusion is that, while personal safety is by far the most crucial factor considered, governments should also ensure personal safety and civil rights protection to attract highly skilled IT workers.

Itsaso Lopetegui (p), Ikerne del Valle

Denis Ivanov

This paper focuses on alternative theoretical and empirical specifications of risk and diversity in the fisheries domain, and the empirical correlation among them. Theoretically, risk and diversity are expected to be negatively correlated. The lower the diversity, the higher the concentration, dominance and dependency of that fishing sector to the evolution of the dominant fish species. Therefore, the higher the risk of a potential collapse in the fishing sector. Firstly, we study the country-level diversity of the EU fishing countries, using conventional diversity indices, namely Berger Parker, Concentration ratio, Simpson's index and Shannon index. Notice that each member-state has an individual marine sub-ecosystem (Ωjt) comprised by different fish species, that besides, may change over time. Accordingly, special attention will be paid on checking whether there are potential differences between the diversity patterns of EU fishing countries by means of parametric and not parametric tests such as ANOVA and Kruskal Wallis. Secondly, based on financial risk analysis, we estimate the left-tail risk of landings in the EU fishing countries, a country level proxy variable for the risk inherent to the fishing activity itself, i.e. an empirical and probabilistic measure of the worst-case loss. Thirdly, we investigate the correlation between risk and diversity. However, surprisingly, our results reveal that risk and diversity patterns are positively correlated. This is because the risk of a country may be potentially determined not only by the diversity itself, but also by the specific distribution of the fish landings. Accordingly, it may well happen that it is the fish species risk shares what mainly determines the overall risk of the fishing countries.

Giedrė Dzemydaitė (p), Rima Rubčinskaitė, Laurynas Naruševičius

Itsaso Lopetegui

The changing balance of international power in Europe and other regions of the world, along with global shocks such as financial crises and COVID-19, significantly impact the development of regional economies. In the context of these external shocks, there is a pressing need for scientific knowledge on how emerging challenges can be leveraged for adaptive changes in regional economies. This involves reorienting them toward new promising business and technology areas and discovering pathways for economic growth. While changes in economic structures are constant, they may intensify in the presence of certain economic or geopolitical shocks.

Our objective is to explore the case of small and open economies, evaluating how various global events, among other factors, influence the adaptive changes in their economic structures. Drawing from the literature on evolutionary economic geography and economic complexity, and using export and patent data, we aim to answer questions such as whether the scale of an economy matters, whether a country's/region's neighbors matter, what aspects to focus on in the economic policies of small open economies to increase the production of high-value-added output, and whether a more balanced approach is needed. Additionally, we examine whether focusing on the resilience of the economy is the key to this process.

The small open economies of the Baltic States have a unique experience, transforming from planned economies to open market economies and joining the European Union market. Over the last few decades, all three states have faced three major shocks – the Russian financial crisis, the global financial crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic. All three countries implemented European and national industrial policies, emphasizing structural and technological changes in the economy. While maintaining relatively high growth rates compared to the rest of the EU, the Baltic States face the challenge of having more competitive and resilient economies.

Emmanuelle Faure (p)

Giedrė Dzemydaitė

Understanding France’s current competitive base structure and its impact on economic performance of its employment zones is crucial for the implementation of appropriate industrial policies, particularly in objective of reindustrializing the French territory. In this paper we test
whether a relationship between local economic performance and related variety exists within the industrial sector in mainland French EZ over the period 2016-2021 using a spatial econometric model. To do so, we mobilise Theil’s notion of entropy as translated by Frenken et al. (2007)
in the construction of related and unrelated varieties. We first test this relationship, while controlling for the effect of urbanisation externalities and specialisation. Secondly, we investigate whether there is any heterogeneity in this relationship, by grouping EZ according to their level of relatedness and employment using a hierarchical ascendant classification. The results provide no evidence of a positive effect of total related variety on local economic performance while employment seems to be more sensitive to changes in unrelated variety. However, if we restrict our measure to the industrial sector, we find a positive relationship between industrial related variety and the employment growth rate, as well as evidence of spatial and urbanisation externalities. Finally, the effect of industrial relatedness on local economic performance appears to be driven by a sub-group of EZ.