Tatul M. Mkrtchyan

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
Fiscal structural reforms play a decisive role in strengthening macroeconomic stability, enhancing public sector efficiency, and improving institutional resilience in transition economies. Armenia represents a particularly relevant case, where successive reform waves have been closely linked to external adjustment programs and domestic political cycles. The purpose of this study is to measure the intensity of fiscal reforms in Armenia and to evaluate their dynamics over the period 1995–2024. For this purpose, a Fiscal Structural Reform Index (FSRI) is constructed, integrating revenue, expenditure, and institutional reforms based on IMF MONA benchmark data. Reforms are coded by significance (0.25 = minor, 0.50 = medium, 1.00 = major), adjusted for persistence through a geometric decay factor (0.8), and aggregated using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The first principal component explains 71.2% of the total variance, ensuring the robustness of the composite index. The results indicate that reform intensity in Armenia exhibits a cyclical pattern, peaking during IMF-supported programs in 1999–2001, 2009–2011, and 2016–2018, and moderating during periods of political transition. Institutional reforms display the highest persistence, accounting for the largest share of the index, while revenue and expenditure reforms are more episodic. The analysis demonstrates that both external conditionality and internal political shifts strongly influence reform momentum. The FSRI provides a replicable framework for tracking fiscal reform intensity, supporting policy design, and strengthening structural diagnostics in transition and developing economies.

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
This study analyzes the impact of digitalization, green transformation, financial access, and institutional support on agricultural labor productivity in transition economies of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. Panel data for six countries (2000–2024) were examined using fixed and random effects models, with robustness checks using the Driscoll–Kraay estimator. Results show that digitalization and financial access consistently enhance productivity at the panel level (0.141; p < 0.01), while institutional factors do not show a consistent direct effect once temporal trends are removed (0.050, p > 0.05), though they may strengthen resilience indirectly. In contrast, the Green Index exerts a significant negative effect (–1.848; p < 0.01), reflecting substantial transitional costs of ecological modernization. Country fixed effects reveal heterogeneity: Moldova (+0.1106) shows the highest positive deviation, while Armenia (–0.0365), Azerbaijan (–0.0749), and Kazakhstan (–0.0382) exhibit negative deviations. Ukraine (+0.0176) and Georgia (+0.0028) remain close to the panel mean. Country specific regressions reveal both commonalities and divergences. In Moldova, institutional quality (0.265, p < 0.001), digitalization (0.033, p = 0.026), and green practices (–0.462, p < 0.001) significantly shape productivity, while finance is excluded. In Armenia, institutional quality (0.469, p = 0.001) and green practices (–0.502, p = 0.001) remain significant, but finance enters negatively (–0.855, p = 0.050), and digitalization is excluded. Digitalization and finance are immediate productivity enhancers at the regional level, but their role varies by country. Ecological modernization imposes short term costs and requires compensatory policies.

Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the financial support received for the implementation of the project “Accelerating the Digital and Green Transformation of Agri-Food SMEs in Moldova and Armenia”, funded by the National Agency for Research and Development of the Republic of Moldova (NARD) (Project No. 26.80013.0807.05ARM) and the Higher Education and Science Committee of the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports of the Republic of Armenia (Project No. 26NARD-1D007).

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
Coordinated public information campaigns became a near-universal instrument of pandemic crisis communication, while the internet penetration of their audiences ranged from under 3 percent to full coverage. The study examines whether the association between campaign intensity and the pace of vaccination uptake varies with pre-pandemic internet penetration, a contextual marker of the digital environment rather than campaign exposure. Using a global country-month panel of 168 economies over 2021–2022 (N = 3,410), it estimates two-way fixed-effects models with country-clustered standard errors, drawing campaign intensity from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker and fixing connectivity at its 2019 level. The interaction between campaigns and internet penetration is positive and robust (0.912, p < 0.001): a standard deviation of baseline penetration, 27.9 percentage points, raises the campaign–uptake slope by about 0.9 points per month. The marginal association is significantly negative at low connectivity (−1.955 at the tenth percentile, p < 0.001), indistinguishable from zero at the median (−0.289) and the ninetieth percentile (+0.501), with the confidence band excluding zero only below roughly 62 percent penetration; the firm result is the negative association under low connectivity. The pattern survives winsorizing, one-month lagging, separate estimation for 2021 and 2022, and vaccination-policy controls, yet baseline connectivity correlates with income and governance at r = 0.77–0.90, so the moderation indexes a development bundle of which connectivity is one legible marker. The illustrative cases of Moldova and Armenia, comparably connected yet facing contrasting overlapping crises, show connectivity alone does not assure uptake where parallel emergencies compete for attention.

Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the financial support received for the implementation of the project “Accelerating the Digital and Green Transformation of Agri-Food SMEs in Moldova and Armenia”, funded by the National Agency for Research and Development of the Republic of Moldova (NARD) (Project No. 26.80013.0807.05ARM) and the Higher Education and Science Committee of the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports of the Republic of Armenia (Project No. 26NARD-1D007).

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
Real GDP growth alone does not reveal whether economic expansion is productive, resilient, inclusive, institutionally grounded, or environmentally sustainable. This study develops a Directional Growth-Quality Conditions Index (DGQCI) for Armenia for 2003–2023. The composite contains 22 indicators in six dimensions: sources of economic growth, macroeconomic stability, human capital, structural transformation and innovation, institutional development, and inclusiveness and sustainability. Six context-dependent series (private and government consumption contributions, the real effective exchange rate, reserves, the current-account balance, and FDI/GDP) remain diagnostics but are excluded from aggregation. Publication requires at least 80% total indicator coverage and at least 50% of the intended indicators within every dimension; a stricter two-thirds rule is tested separately. Real GDP growth and the breadth of favorable growth-quality movements diverge substantially. Human capital has the highest average directional score, while inclusiveness and sustainability have the lowest. Results are highly stable to alternative weights, robust to a constant 16-indicator information set and to reassigning poverty to the inclusiveness dimension, but materially less concordant under magnitude-sensitive scoring. The DGQCI is therefore a directional monitoring tool, not a cardinal measure of welfare, causal policy impact, or the magnitude of socioeconomic progress.