This paper contains the results of examination of the experience of foreign countries in legislative support of the circular economy, summarizes the chronology of its  development at the European Union level, and identifies the reasons why the transition to the model of a closed-cycle economy is gaining momentum in the world.

The article includes best practices for development of circular economy and its implementation. It is stated that each country has national peculiarities of transition to this concept, as well as various priority directions of implementation caused by set of advantages and risks. The barriers which constrain access of the circular projects to bank financing, and confine its utilization as a result, are identified. Authors put special emphasis to the innovative business models providing the circular system of production and consumption, including Circular suppliers, Resources recovery, Sharing platforms, Product life extension, Product as a service.

This policy brief summarizes the results of our study, Shershunovich and Tochitskaya (2018),  on the circular economy development in Belarus. The aim of the work was to measure the circularity of the Belarusian economy using European Commission indicators.

In this paper we focus on estimating the gender difference in wages using data from the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) conducted in Belarus in 2017. The results show that the average gender wage differential amounts to 22.6%. We use quantile regressions to look at difference in returns at various earnings deciles and then the Oaxaca-Blinder and Juhn-Murphy-Pierce decomposition techniques to define the components that form the wage gap. We find that the adjusted gender pay gap is mostly formed by the difference in rewards rather than personal characteristics. The gap increases throughout the wage distribution and accelerates at the top deciles indicating presence of a strong glass ceiling effect

In the article the categories of “money” and “monetary funds” are analyzed and the author’s interpretation of these definitions are given. Taking into account the growing popularity of cryptocurrencies, the author proposes a structure of interrelations of monetary funds, tokens, electronic and virtual money. With the purpose of giving a clearer understanding of the government positions on the issue of the virtual money market development, the article provides examples of operations’ regulations with cryptocurrencies in a number of countries.