Yuliia Pereguda

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
Climate disasters increasingly damage infrastructure financed through public-private partnerships (PPPs), yet little is known about how such shocks reshape PPP markets. This paper aims to determine how climate disasters and national adaptation readiness affect PPP activity and design in developing and emerging economies. The analysis uses a balanced panel of 129 economies (2000–2024) with 8,213 PPP financial closures from the World Bank PPI Database merged with the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative index, the EM-DAT international disaster database, and World Bank governance and development indicators, and estimates two-way fixed-effects linear and Poisson pseudo-maximum-likelihood models, with damage and GDP in current US dollars. Neither average damage nor major disasters (damage of at least 1% of GDP) show a robust association with the number of closures; post-event coefficients are negative but mostly insignificant, no pre-event decline is detected, and placebo event dates yield estimates of similar size. A positive coefficient at catastrophic levels (at least 5% of GDP) rests on a single episode and is not read as a reconstruction surge. Project composition does respond. After major disasters, the number of non-renewable closures falls by about 38% (p < 0.001), and by more where readiness is low, while renewable closures are unchanged. A one-standard-deviation improvement in regulatory quality is associated with a 12.6-percentage-point higher probability of a PPP closure (p < 0.01) and roughly 131% larger investment (p < 0.001). Case profiles of Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine reflect the same dominance of institutions. Regulatory strengthening and standby pipelines that keep conventional deals alive through disaster windows are the main levers for disaster-proofing PPP programs.

Acknowledgments
This study was conducted within the framework of the research project “Digitalization of the Public-Private Partnership System as a Driver of the State’s Economic Security in the War and Post-War Periods” (state registration No. 0126U000543), funded by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine.

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
Digital government platforms are expected to accelerate the shift to cashless payments, and banks stand between the two: they hold the accounts that digital credentials open and process the government-to-person and person-to-government flows that digital services generate. Cross-country evidence for transition economies remains scarce and largely contemporaneous. The study aims to determine whether digital government maturity is associated with the uptake of cashless payment instruments contemporaneously or with a delay, and whether the deployment model shapes that association beyond aggregate index scores. Wave panels combining the Global Findex database (2011–2024) with the UN E-Government Development Index for eleven transition economies were estimated using pooled, fixed-effects, between-country, lagged, and first-difference specifications, supplemented by an exploratory annual panel of ATM density and a structured comparison of three deployment models. A strong cross-country association between GovTech maturity and both digital payment adoption (0.551, p < 0.001) and account ownership (0.730, p < 0.001) did not survive within-country identification: fixed-effects coefficients turned negative and insignificant, so H1-H3 are not supported. With a four-to-five-year lag, the Online Service Index entered positively and significantly in the baseline specification (0.290, p < 0.05); as significance is not retained with controls, the evidence is consistent with a delayed association rather than establishing it. Adoption expanded under all three deployment models, from 47% to 85% in Kazakhstan, 48% to 83% in Ukraine, and 12% to 61% in Armenia; what distinguished the cases was the interface between the state and private bank ecosystems, which aggregate indices do not capture.

Acknowledgment
Liudmyla Zakharkina’s contribution to this article was made within the framework of the research project “GovTech for Ukraine: A Digital, Secure, Transparent, and Equitable State in Times of War and Post-War Reconstruction” (registration number: 0126U000544), funded by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine.