Authors: Blagica Petreski, Despina Petreska
Policy study 4: The case study of “Krushevo women” as a model of social entrepreneurship
FISCAST: Building capacity and tools for fiscal accountability, sustainability and transparency in Macedonia
The overall objective of the project is twofold: first, to improve the capacity of civil society and media to contribute to evidence-based economic dialogue in the country, enabling more participatory and transparent policymaking, with strong focus on fiscal policymaking; and, second, to increase the public awareness for the process of spending public money.
Supported by the British Embassy Skopje
Duration: August 2015 – March 2016
Visualization of the gender wage gap in Macedonia: Demystifying wages and advocacy for gap minimization
The objective of this project is to raise the awareness for the gender wage discrimination in Macedonia.
In particular, the project builds on an ongoing work, consisting of two pillars: i) calculating the gender wage gap in Macedonia, after workers’ characteristics and selectivity bias have been taken into consideration; and ii) building the EdPlaKo-MK web tool which enables individuals to test their gender-neutral wage and companies to test their wage system against gender discrimination. The main activity of this proposal consists of visualization of the gender wage gap in Macedonia that will be added to the EdPlaKo-MK site, as well through two flyers, so as it gives further information on gender wage gap at the level of sector, occupation, age, experience and education, and further promotes the EdPlaKo-MK tool.
Duration: 7 months (2015)
Donor: TTF Open Society Foundations
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Expert opinion in “Lice v Lice“
Flyer 2 – Distribution through “Economics and Business” monthly
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Video – The gender wage gap in Macedonia through the perspectives of 5 women
Fostering female self-sustainability through embedding traditional values into alternative touristic attractions in Krushevo
The main objective of the project is to improve self-sustainability of women through development of alternative touristic attractions out of their skills for traditional, homemade and ecological production: embroider linen, knittings, wild berry jams, pasta peeling and grains, natural tea and the like.
Project activities envisage: training of Krushevo women for skills for entrepreneurship, promotion and sales of traditional products, expanding and strengthening the mini-cluster developed within the previous project, developing of three alternative touristic attractions embedding traditional values and promotional campaign involving an event “Days of alternative touristic attractions in Krushevo” and the Fair “It’s homemade, it’s from Krushevo…”. Designed in this way, the project offers an innovative way of combining social entrepreneurship and sustainable tourism, into an individual business model for women’s self-sufficiency.
Donor: US Embassy Skopje
Duration: 2015-2016 (10 months)
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Call for female participation October 2015 – Call – Application
Workshop for designing alternative touristic attractions, Krushevo, 25-26 December 2015 – Gallery
Piloting of “Botanic tour” and “Aronia grove”, Krushevo, 28 May 2016 – Gallery
Piloting of “Churches from Krushevo and a Vlach house – religion, arts, colors”, Krushevo, 05 June 2016 – Gallery
Brochure: “Krushevo is more beautiful on foot…”
Video: “Krushevo is more beautiful on foot…”
Tour: Botanic walk, Krushevo, 30 July 2016 – Gallery
Tour: Aronia plantation, Krushevo, 30 July 2016 – Gallery
Fair of traditional, homemade, ecologic products “It’s homemade, it’s from Krushevo…”, Krushevo, 31 July 2016 – Gallery
Tour:”Churches from Krushevo and a Vlach house – religion, arts, colors”, Krushevo, 31 July 2016 – Gallery
Local development or current expenditures: What purpose are municipal money spent for?
The main objective of the project is to increase the transparency and efficiency of the use of budget funds within municipalities.
Short-term goals include:
- Increasing the awareness of citizens about the budget spending in the municipalities;
- Raising the awareness of citizens about the effectiveness of the spending of the budgetary funds in their municipality, compared to other municipalities;
- Identifying the purpose of the budget spending: development goals or current consumption.
The research covers the 15 largest, according to residents, municipalities in Macedonia.
Donor: Metamorphosis Foundation, in partnership with MCET and Reactor, within IPA Civil Society Facility.
Duration: 2014 (5 months)
Web tool “Sledi gi parite”
Analysis – Working paper
Policy brief 8: Local development or current consumption: For what purpose are municipal money spent for?
Policy study 3: Local development or current consumption: What purpose are municipal money spent for?
Authors: Despina Petreska, Blagica Petreski
Does motherhood explain part of the gender wage gap in Macedonia?
The objective of the research is to estimate the contribution of the motherhood wage gap for the gender wage gap in Macedonia after considering workers’ characteristics and selectivity bias onto the labour market, for childbearing-age population.
In particular, we aim to disentangle to which extent the natural role of women to have and raise children potentially affects the gender wage gap. Recent study (Petreski et al. 2014) estimated the adjusted gender wage gap in Macedonia at 5.7%. However, motherhood may still explain some portion of this gap and the preliminary descriptive analyses suggest that it likely biases the gap upwards. This suggests that once motherhood wage gap has been considered, the unexplained adjusted gender wage gap in Macedonia (gender wage discrimination) may be even lower. The literature is abundant in analysing selectivity-corrected gender wage gaps and motherhood wage gaps separately, but merging the two literatures, and estimating these gaps together and at the same time correcting them for selectivity is rare. Hence, we propose a novel methodological approach to tacking this issue. Namely, we will estimate the gaps by employing a repeated imputation technique, which will impute the wages of those who are unemployed or inactive by making assumption on their position with respect to the median wage. Then the imputed samples will be compared to the base sample and the size of the selectivity bias obtained. The fairly standard Heckman estimates will be provided for comparison. Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition will be then applied to the imputed sample to disentangle the explained and unexplained parts of the gender and motherhood wage gaps, giving a figure of the contribution of the latter in the former. Non-parametric alternatives to the decomposition will be pursued as robustness checks. The Survey of Income and Living Conditions (2010) will be used.
Provider: CERGE-EI and Global Development Network (RRC-15)
Duration: 1 year (2015)
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Presentation at CERGE-EI / GDN Workshop, Prague, August 16-17, 2015
Working paper
Policy study 2: Leading composite index produced by Finance Think: Forecasting power reassessed
Authors: Marjan Petreski, Blagica Petreski
Mind the gaps between the budget lines and the programs of the National strategy for poverty reduction
The project aims to increase the effectiveness and usage of poverty-reduction programs by increasing the transparency of the associated budget lines and informing the citizens about them.
Short-term goals:
- Identification and mapping of the weak links between the budget lines and the poverty-reduction programs;
- Increasing citizens’ awareness of the programs for poverty reduction they can be eligible for;
- Increasing the awareness of the civil and research sector of the effectiveness of poverty-reduction programs’ implementation (budget expenditure).
Provider: USAID and Foundation Open Society Macedonia
Duration: 2013-2014 (10 months)
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Response by the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy
Booklet: Mind the gaps between the budget lines and the programs of the National Strategy for Poverty Reduction MKD version – ALB version
Thematic web site: www.siromastija.mk
Migration as social protection: Analysis of Macedonian, Albanian and Serbian remittance-receiving households
The objective of the research is to investigate if remittances sent to Macedonia, Albania and Serbia serve social protection for household members left behind.
In particular, we will analyse if and how remittances determine/influence social condition (stability or vulnerability) of the household, the latter being described through an index composition of the income level, employment status, nourishment, health and housing conditions. For the purpose of the study, we aim at defining social stability/vulnerability not in traditional terms – only as “dollar a day” – but rather in terms of household’s ability to meet their basic needs aside income: nutrition, health services, housing, leisure and the like. This touches upon Green’s (2014) recent note that “being poor and sick is very different from being poor and healthy” and defines social stability in this multidimensional framework.
The key tasks include:
- developing a literature overview linking remittances to social protection and social vulnerability;
- devising an indicator of social vulnerability;
- econometric investigation of the causal links between remittances and social vulnerability;
- deeper qualitative investigation through interviews of the linkages between and contexts of the two phenomena (remittances and social vulnerability);
- devising policy proposals;
- wide communication with the policymakers and the public.
Donor: Regional Research Promotion Program
Duration: 2 years (2014-2016)
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Project meeting, Rome 2-5 April 2015 – Agenda – Gallery
Media appearance – Ekonomski horizonti – RevolucionerMK
RRPP Annual conference presentation, Ohrid 28-29 May 2015 – Resources
Round table, 10 June 2015 – Invitation – Agenda – Gallery – Presentation
International Conference on Eurasian Economies, 9-11 September 2015, Kazan Russia – Presentation – Proceedings
Training & Project meeting, Amsterdam 16-20 March 2016 – Agenda – Gallery 1 2
Workshop “Migration and its Consequences for Albanian Households”, Elbasan, Albania, 8 September 2016 – Agenda
EBES International Conference, Vienna, Austria, 28-30 September 2016 – Picture
Economic forum, Skopje, 22 September 2016 – Agenda – Gallery
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Policy briefs – Macedonia – Albania – Serbia
International book “Migration as social protection”
Journal article in International Migration