This proceedings volume examines accounting and financial issues and trends from both global and local economic perspectives. Featuring selected contributions presented at the 19th Annual Conference on Finance and Accounting (ACFA) held in Prague, Czech Republic, this book offers a mixture of research methods and micro- and macroeconomic approaches to depict a detailed picture of the impact of global and local determinants on the globalized economy.

This report provides a case study for the development of sustainable energy lending in Ukraine. It reviews the macro-economic and political context for green investments in Ukraine, before looking in more detail at the role and capacity of the banking sector. The study is part of a wider OECD project promoting access to private finance for green investments in the EU Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries, and follows on from a regional assessment undertaken in 2015. This work forms part of the "Greening Economies in the European Union's Eastern Neighbourhood" (EaP GREEN) programme, which aims to support the six Eastern Partnership countries to move towards a green economy by decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation and resource depletion.

Capital market and banking sector reforms have been proceeding at different speeds and scales in transition economies. Housing finance markets in this region are typically small in scale and under-developed, though it is generally recognised that fostering housing finance markets contributes to economic development and brings social benefits to the public. Taking account of the unfavourable environment for households in terms of income level, house prices and loan interest rates in the region, enhancing access to housing finance for low- and middle-income households is a key to developing these markets. In particular, mortgage lending that makes use of the property as collateral is a very important method of housing finance in terms of risk management in the region. Housing Finance Markets in Transition Economies contains a comparative study on housing finance markets in central and eastern European countries. This study is based on an OECD market survey conducted in 2004 and on selected country data prepared for the OECD workshop on housing finance in transition economies, held in December 2004. It reports on the progress and challenges in housing finance markets in Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia and Ukraine.

For the last few years, Ukraine and its financial sector have gradually sought to apply and comply with EU standards. Most recently, the signing of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement has given Ukraine's transition towards EU standards a formal basis. Ukraine, with EU support, is in the process of implementing EU regulations according to this Agreement. Against this background, the publication Ukrainian Banking Regulation: Its Challenges and Transition towards European Standards elaborates on this process by providing an in-depth background of the current Ukrainian banking regulation, its economics and the challenges of complying with the new EU standards.

By presenting research from a multi disciplinary perspective, this book will serve as an important reference tool for researchers and others interested in the land use issues of Central and Eastern Europe as well as agribusiness leaders seeking potential trading relations with and within these European countries.

This book provides an overview of the evolution of distortions to agricultural incentives caused by price and trade policies in the economies of Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECA) that are transitioning away from central planning. It includes country and sub-regional studies of the ten transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe that joined the European Union in 2004 or 2007, of seven other large member countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and of Turkey. Sectoral, trade and exchange rate policies in this region have been changed hugely since the dissolving of the Soviet Union in 1991, but much remains to be done to reduce trade barriers, and with it the anti-export bias in the policy regime of especially those countries exporting primary products.To progress reform - and to see how recent policies line up with those of the European Union (EU) - requires better information on the extent of progress during the past fifteen years and of current policy influences on incentives within and between sectors. Prior to their transition to market economies, policies in ECA countries greatly distorted producer and consumer incentives, especially for agricultural products. While those distortions have been reduced substantially in several countries, large variations remain - and distortions appear to be growing again in some of the countries. This book provides the necessary stocktake required for these countries- policymakers to be able to move reforms forward in an informed way.

This book is organized in two parts. Part I presents a brief overview of the agricultural policy environment in Ukraine before and after 2000, followed by a detailed discussion of the legal foundations of land and farm reform and an overall picture of the impacts of reform on the farm sector since 1990. Part II presents the findings of a survey of nearly 1,400 individual and corporate farms conducted in the spring of 2005 in eight oblasts. The survey has been designed to provide focused information highlighting the changes that occurred at the farm level since the 1999 Presidential Decree. The Executive Summary at the beginning of the volume contains the main findings of the study and some policy recommendations. The last chapter (Chapter 16) brings together our main conclusions in a more detailed format.

The issues linked to the Ukrainian fuel sector are rarely given publicity in the mass media. This comprehensive analysis reveals that there has been a painful and durable collapse in this strategic branch of the economy.

Energy has been an important element in Moscow's quest to exert power and influence in its surrounding areas both before and after the collapse of the USSR. With their political independence in 1991, Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania also became, virtually overnight, separate energy-poor entities heavily dependent on Russia. This increasingly costly dependency - and elites' scrambling over associated profits - came to crucially affect not only relations with Russia, but the very nature of post-independence state building. The Politics of Energy Dependency explores why these states were unable to move towards energy diversification. Through extensive field research using previously untapped local-language sources, Margarita M. Balmaceda reveals a complex picture of local elites dealing with the complications of energy dependency and, in the process, affecting the energy security of Europe as a whole. A must-read for anyone interested in Eastern Europe, Russia, and the politics of natural resources, this book reveals the insights gained by looking at post-Soviet development and international relations issues not only from a Moscow-centered perspective, but from that of individual actors in other states.