2011 in review
Analysis published during 2011.
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St Nicholas Day, 19 December 2011
A greeting for the first gift of the winter.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Holodomor Remembrance Day, 26 November 2011
A remembrance message, and a note on the difference between a number and a name.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Germany as Ukraine's principal European economic partner
The relationship is built on one under-discussed industrial fact: a cluster of automotive component plants in western Ukraine supplying German assembly lines, employing tens of thousands of people.
Trade & Investment -
Ukrainian Language Day, 9 November 2011
A language day greeting, and a note on the date, which commemorates a monk and a script.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Ukraine and the IMF: the pattern across eight programmes
Programmes are agreed, the first tranche arrives, one or two conditions prove politically impossible, reviews slip, the programme goes off track and is renegotiated. Understanding why produces a…
Economy & Macro -
Ukraine Market Report — Q3 2011
The conviction of a former prime minister in October froze the EU relationship at the moment the association agreement negotiations were concluding. A political event with a direct…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Austrian banks and the central European model: what a foreign lender changes
Austrian banking groups expanded across central and eastern Europe faster than anyone, and Ukraine was among their destinations. What that presence brought, what it cost when the cycle…
Trade & Investment -
Knowledge Day 2011
Twenty years of independence, and a first of September when the children starting school had no memory of anything else.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Ukraine and Switzerland: commodity trading, arbitration and quiet capital
Switzerland appears near the top of Ukraine's trade statistics for a reason that has nothing to do with Swiss consumption. Understanding why explains a great deal about how…
Trade & Investment -
Independence Day 2011: twenty years, and what was actually built
Two decades is long enough to judge. On the anniversary, an inventory of what Ukraine constructed since 1991 — and of the one thing it did not.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Ukraine Market Report — Q2 2011
A pension reform passed in July raised the retirement age for women — one of the few structurally significant measures of the period, and one that arrived only…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Ukraine and Italy: machinery, migration and an unusually durable pattern
Italian industrial equipment goes east, Ukrainian labour goes west, and the relationship has survived every political rupture of the past twenty years without meaningful interruption. The reason is…
Trade & Investment -
Ivana Kupala 2011
By my seventh Kupala I had stopped finding it exotic and started finding it sensible, which is what happens when you live somewhere long enough.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Constitution Day, 28 June 2011
A short note on the anniversary, with the argument left where it belongs.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Emerging-market story or special case? The framing determines the analysis
Whether you treat Ukraine as one member of a broad emerging-market class or as a country requiring its own model changes almost every conclusion you reach. Both framings…
Economy & Macro -
How foreign business communities organise, and what a newcomer actually gets from them
Every market has a layer of foreign companies who have already made the mistakes a newcomer is about to make. Finding that layer and getting useful information out…
Society & Regions -
Vyshyvanka Day, 19 May 2011
A greeting for the day when the office, the tram and the whole street change colour, and a note on where the day came from.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Easter 2011
The greeting exchanged three times, and the correct response, which took me several years to say without thinking.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Ukraine Market Report — Q1 2011
Recovery continuing on external demand, an IMF programme running into its first conditionality problem, and a currency held fixed at a level the central bank was beginning to…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
International Women's Day 2011
A greeting, and an observation about who is actually in the room when a difficult decision gets made.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Why a market of forty million deserves attention, and why it usually does not get it
Ukraine is one of the largest consumer markets in Europe by population and one of the least covered by the companies that should be looking at it. The…
Trade & Investment -
The construction sector: what it can build, and where the ceiling is
Ukraine has contractors capable of delivering large projects to deadline — Euro 2012 proved it. What it does not have is enough of them, and the constraint is…
Reconstruction & Recovery -
Ukraine Annual Review 2010: recovery on two channels
A change of administration, a gas price agreement, a new IMF programme and an export-led recovery that never reached the domestic economy. The year's decisions postponed an adjustment…
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
Day of Unity 2011
Twenty years of independence approaching, and a January day about the geography of a single country.
National Days & Anniversaries -
Ukraine and Kazakhstan: two post-Soviet economies that diverged
Similar starting points in 1991, similar populations, similar Soviet industrial inheritance. Thirty years later the per-head gap is large, and the explanation is mostly resource endowment rather than…
Trade & Investment -
Ukraine Market Report — Q4 2010
A tax code passed in December brought small business onto the streets, and the recovery closed its first full year led entirely by exports.
Quarterly & Annual Reports -
The wealth ranking a year on: what moved, and what the movement actually tells you
Published rich lists are read as gossip and are more useful as sector data. Year-on-year changes in the largest fortunes are a rough but revealing indicator of which…
Economy & Macro -
Christmas, 7 January 2011
A Christmas greeting on the January date, from a guest at the table.
National Days & Anniversaries -
New Year, 1 January 2011
A New Year greeting, at the hour when the whole country is at the same table.
National Days & Anniversaries
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