2010 in review
Analysis published during 2010.
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The neighbourhood beyond one border: five countries that mattered more than expected
Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Moldova were treated as secondary relationships for two decades. Between 2014 and 2023 they became the routes through which the entire economy connected…
Trade & Investment -
St Nicholas Day, 19 December 2010
A greeting for the morning of the small gift, and a note on the parents doing the work.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Holodomor Remembrance Day 2010
A candle in the window on the fourth Saturday of November.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Why an economy this size should want foreign capital, stated without the slogans
The argument for openness is usually made in terms that persuade nobody. The real case rests on three specific mechanisms — the cost of capital, technology transfer and…
Trade & Investment -
Import quality: the reputation problem and the standards system that fixed it
For most of the 2000s Ukraine received the low grade of everyone's export range. That was not a preference; it was a consequence of how the certification system…
Trade & Investment -
The media sector: ownership, reach, and why it matters commercially
Television dominated for two decades, ownership was concentrated in the same groups that owned the steel plants, and the advertising market was smaller than the political value of…
Society & Regions -
Emigration: the constraint that outlasts every other problem
Ukraine has been losing working-age people continuously since 1991. It is the single most important long-run economic variable in the country and receives the least policy attention.
Society & Regions -
Day of Ukrainian Writing and Language 2010
Six years in, at the stage where a language stops being a subject and becomes a tool you no longer notice using.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Religion in Ukraine: jurisdictions, numbers and why church questions carry political weight
Two Orthodox jurisdictions, a large Greek Catholic west, Protestant communities with unusual reach, and a Muslim population with a specific history. The map is complicated and the complications…
Folklore & Esoterica -
How large capital is organised in Ukraine, and what it means for an entrant
Half a dozen financial-industrial groups, assembled from privatisations in the 1990s, holding metals, energy, chemicals, banking and media in the same structures. Understanding the pattern matters more than…
Economy & Macro -
Ukraine Market Report — Q3 2010
A drought in the wider region lifted world grain prices, Ukraine restricted exports in response, and the same policy reflex of 2007 produced the same commercial consequences.
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Kyiv's traffic and the transport economics behind it
Car ownership tripled over two decades on a road network designed for a city where almost nobody had a car. The metro is why the city still functions…
Society & Regions -
Knowledge Day, 1 September 2010
A first-of-September greeting, and the moment in the ceremony that gives the whole thing away.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Tourism: what the sector was, and what a recovery would require
Mountains, a coastline, three cities with genuine architectural interest and one of Europe's most complete folk traditions. The assets are real; the infrastructure and the marketing never were.
Society & Regions -
Independence Day 2010: a recovery, and a quiet change of constitution
The nineteenth anniversary arrives with growth back, a new IMF programme signed, a gas discount traded for a naval base lease — and a court case pending that…
National Days & Anniversaries -
Andriyivskyy Descent and the old upper town: reading a city from one street
A curved cobbled street of about seven hundred metres connects the ancient upper town to the old merchant quarter below. Every layer of Kyiv's history is legible along…
Society & Regions -
Kyiv for the visiting professional: districts, distances and what is worth the time
A city of three million on high ground above a very wide river, with business in three separate clusters and a metro that is the only reliable way…
Society & Regions -
Ukraine Market Report — Q2 2010
An agreement in April reduced the gas import price in exchange for extending the lease of a naval base to 2042. A new IMF programme followed in July…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Ivana Kupala, 7 July 2010
A midsummer greeting, and the one instruction everybody gives you before the fire.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Constitution Day, 28 June 2010
A short note on the anniversary of the 1996 constitution, with the arguments left to those they belong to.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Vyshyvanka Day, 20 May 2010
A greeting for the day, and a note on the one place a shirt is always worn regardless of the calendar.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Ukraine's agricultural sector: what the structure actually looks like
Forty-two million hectares of farmland, a quarter of Europe's arable total, yields well below what the soil should deliver, and an ownership structure that explains the gap.
Agriculture & Food -
The Kharkiv accords: why a gas discount for a base lease was a bad trade
Thirty-two years of basing rights were exchanged for roughly a hundred dollars per thousand cubic metres off the gas price. The problem is not the politics; it is…
Energy & Infrastructure -
Ukraine Market Report — Q1 2010
A presidential election concluded in February and a new government formed in March. The economy was recovering from a very low base, and the policy question was how…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Easter, 4 April 2010
An Easter greeting, and a note on the egg-tapping that decides who has the strongest shell.
National Days & Anniversaries -
International Women's Day 2010
By 2010 I was working, and the eighth of March had become a workplace occasion with its own unwritten rules that nobody explains to a foreigner.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Ukraine Annual Review 2009: the deepest year, and what it rebuilt
Output down around fifteen percent, the sharpest contraction of the independence period, and the year that produced the sectoral composition Ukraine still has.
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Day of Unity, 22 January 2010
A unity day greeting, and a note on what a commemoration of a failed union is actually for.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Ukraine Market Report — Q4 2009
The worst year in the country's independent economic history ended with output stabilised, the currency steady and a presidential election weeks away. What had been destroyed was not…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Christmas 2010
The seventh of January, and the carol singers who still come to the door in some places.
National Days & Anniversaries -
New Year 2010
A New Year at the end of a bad year, and the observation that a calendar is a useful fiction.
National Days & Anniversaries
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