Narrow Results

This paper examines the effects of a mortgage interest rate subsidy on booms and busts in the housing market by analyzing the Housing Mortgage program in Mongolia. We find that the most recent housing boom in Mongolia occurred from the second quarter (Q2) of 2012 to first quarter (Q1) of 2014, and that the subsequent housing bust lasted 4 years. Both house-specific factors and macroeconomic variables had a significant influence on housing price dynamics. Mortgage interest rate semielasticity and real household income elasticity were estimated as −3 and 1.4, respectively. Dynamic analysis of the estimated vector error correction models suggests that the country’s policy intervention in the mortgage market—introducing an interest rate subsidy on mortgage loans for residential properties of up to 80 square meters—drove the recent housing boom in Mongolia.

In recent years, the number of artisanal gold miners in Mongolia is drastically increasing. They use mercury to extract gold from ore and release it to the environment and this fact has been an issue of concern in the nation. In order to monitor the degree of exposure to mercury, artisanal miners' hairs from a typical mining site, Boroo, were analyzed by PIXE at Nishina Memorial Cyclotron Center, Japan. The result indicated that mercury content in the hairs is very low in spite of the miners' practice to work in mercury fume for smelting. However the result showed high level of arsenic, up to 3.2 ppm, although miners' do not use arsenic in the smelting process.

Bismuth (Bi) content of electrum from Mongolian artisanal/small-scale mining sites was determined by micro-PIXE at CSIRO. This is to provide artisanal/small-scale miners information on the valuable trace element in electrum which they recover from quartz veins. The analysis was done using a 3 MeV micro-beam (30 micrometer in diameter) with an aluminum filter of 125 micrometer thickness. The result showed that electrum grains from the study area contains Bi with a range from 0 to 2,530 ppm.

We have analyzed the hair of inhabitant of a district in Mongolia where the arsenic contamination is doubted. The study area includes a village where the authors noticed possible arsenic contamination in 2004 (S. Murao, B. Tumenbayar, K. Sera, S. Futatsugawa and T. Waza, Finding of high level arsenic for Mongolian villagers' hair, Int. J. PIXE 14 (2004) 125–131). The investigation team visited each family, explained the purpose of visit, obtained their consent, and cut the untreated virgin hairs. The result reaffirmed high arsenic concentration, up to 11ppm, for most of the subjects. Since the arsenic anomaly in the study area is observed regardless the occupation, it is highly probable that the area is contaminated on a regional scale.

Applications of X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometer and electron accelerator are reviewed with regard to the historical development in Mongolia. The first XRF spectrometer was installed at Nuclear Research Laboratory, National University of Mongolia (NUM) in 1975. Since that time, XRF has developed into a suitable multi-elemental analysis technique with many fields of practical applications. In 1996, electron cycle accelerator (facility called Microtron MT22) was established at the Mongolian Academy of Science (MAS). The maximum energy is set to 22 MeV, suitable for routine activation analysis. The photo and neutron induced nuclear reactions and analysis of chemical elements in various samples and structure analysis of semi-precious stones were studied using the accelerator. Nevertheless, the MT22 is not used for particle induced X-ray emission (PIXE) analysis since it is difficult to obtain calibration parameters. In case of Mongolia, collected research samples are sent to Japan and New Zealand for PIXE analysis because this analysis method has higher sensitivity compared to conventional XRF method. In order to develop the X-ray research field in Mongolia, an international conference on X-ray analysis has been held every three years since 2006. Nowadays, there are above 20 laboratories in Mongolia which use the XRF methods and techniques, among them about 80 percent of them are utilized for fields of geology, mining and their industrial control processing and others are used for environment, monitoring control and research studies.

How to make value-based care a reality?

Impactful interventions to maximise healthspan.

Viral hepatitis in Arkhangai: How Asia’s first micro-treatment program’s successes can be leveraged to treat a “silent killer”.

The long-suffering challenge of vaccination.

This study conducts cross-sectional analysis to investigate impact of climate change on livestock sector in Mongolia using data gathered from a household survey and aggregate soum (district) level data. The soum-level analysis reveals the marginal effect of precipitation has a positive effect on livestock/ha up to 26mm/mo and thereafter a harmful effect. The marginal effect of warming on livestock/ha is not significant until annual temperatures exceed 0.4${}^{\circ }$C whereupon warming is strictly harmful. The household-level analysis suggests warming will decrease earnings per animal while overall earnings per household increases with a small change in climate but declines with larger changes. However, the household data also suggests warming would increase the total value of livestock. The results of the different analyses are therefore conflicting suggesting one or more of the analyses are plagued by missing variables.

Following the gains from variety literature (Broda and Weinstein, 2006), we estimate the welfare impact of the dramatic increase in imported varieties growth in Mongolia and find it to be considerably larger than that found in previous studies of other transitional economies. Our results show that from 1988 to 2015, the gains from variety were equal to 22 percent of Mongolia’s GDP, or 0.8 percent annually. As such, this paper measures the gains of one of the most profound trade liberalizations in modern history. Also, by calculating Novy measures of trade costs, we find that the tariff-equivalent trade costs between any of its trade partners fell dramatically since the dissolution of and Mongolia’s exit from the Soviet-led CMEA (Council of Mutual Economic Association). Our calculations suggest that the costs between Mongolia and China, now its biggest trading partner, fell from 114% to 63%. For reference, this is twice the decline of the post-NAFTA US-Mexico trade costs. Other bilateral trade cost declines (e.g. with Germany) were even greater.