Mykhailo Rebryk

This paper presents a comprehensive system of 38 indicators, which allows identification of possible endogenous sources and evaluation of the potential of conflicts of interest arising both at the corporate (in models of ownership, business and financial activities, corporate governance and organizational structures) and operational (analyst) levels of credit rating agencies (CRAs). Testing of proposed system of indicators was carried out based on the content analysis of the public information on the activities of five authorized credit rating agencies of Ukraine.
It is determined that at the beginning of 2017 the most sensitive to the risk of conflicts of interest were “Standard Rating” (74% of threat signals of the total number of indicators), “Expert Rating” (57%) and “Rurik” (37%). The highest potential of conflicts’ of interest escalation was identified in the models of financial activities (80% of threat signals of the total number of indicators of that group) and models of ownership of Ukrainian CRAs (63%).
The estimations of the risk level are proposed to be regarded mainly as signals of the potentially high sensitivity of the particular CRA to the risk of conflicts’ of interest escalation.
Such signals, in particular, can be used by the regulators for carrying out remote monitoring activities of CRAs, for adopting supervisory and regulatory decisions. In turn, managers and owners of rating agencies can conduct a more detailed analysis of the detected potential sources of conflict of interest with the aim of identification, localization, and elimination of shortcomings in the system of conflict of interest management.

The experience of states with limited democracy shows that populist manipulations often result in a collapse of the pension insurance system, and then – in an escalation of economic, political and social instability. Accordingly, the development of tools for identifying and preventing economic populism manifestations does not become irrelevant.
Through analyzing the changes in pension legislation, as well as studying economic indicators’ dynamics, the article shows that pension insurance issues are widely used as tools for populist policy in Ukraine. This ultimately results in the formation of an abnormally low financial stability of the pension system. In particular, during the 2004 presidential election campaign and parliamentary election in 2007, there was a sharp short-term increase in the gap between growth rates of average pension and nominal GDP; significant deviation of replacement rate from its long-term average trajectory; and with some temporary lag, there emerged a substantial increase in transfers from the state budget.
It is noted that the main tools for economic populism in Ukraine are: (1) permanent procrastination of retirement age raising; (2) “manual” pensions indexation; (3) the existence of a VIP pensions and early retirement system for certain population categories; (4) transfer of burden to lower-income social contribution payers as a result of limiting the maximum value of unified social tax base.
The paper suggests a number of measures, the implementation of which could reduce the negative impact of populist decisions on budget balance of the Pension Fund of Ukraine