Article
Интенсивность борьбы за ренту в модели производства и конфликта с неоднородными агентами
This paper presents the game-theoretic model of production and conflict (rent-seeking). It attempts to explain the empirically observed non monotonous relationship between, on the one hand, the rent-seeking intensity and, on the other hand, heterogeneity in asset ownership and quality of property rights protection. We show that there exists an “inverted-U” relationship between the aggregate expenditures on rent-seeking and institutional quality: gradual improvement in the quality of property rights may first lead to more intense rent-seeking, which de escalates after institutions develop beyond certain threshold level. Depending on the level of institutional quality, a movement towards more uniform distribution of assets can exercise both negative influence on economic growth and positive – on the intensity of conflict. We use the obtained results to interpret the historical cases of positive correlation between growth and rentseeking (developing countries in Asia in the second half of 20th century), and characterize the more and less favorable (in terms of rent-seeking costs) distributions of assets.
This paper puts forth a comprehensive set of measures to address the current economic crisis, prevent its further aggravation and ensure sustained and ongoing development of the Russian economy. In this study we seek to adopt the viewpoint of common sense and keep free from political and ideological bias. This is why we believe the proposed solutions should be implemented by any reasonable government irrespective of its political coloration. This text presents our vision of the Russian economy and its problems.
The annual report prepared by a large group of Russian and French researchers. The report focuses on the trends of development of Russia in the sphere of economy, domestic and foreign policy, social and regional policy.
People are the focus of the third edition of the OECD Yearbook, which looks at some of the key challenges that have resulted from over five years of global economic turmoil. OECD experts are joined by leaders from government, business, labour, academia and civil society to examine pressing questions.
Effective property rights protection plays a fundamental role in promoting economic performance. Yet measurement problems make the relationship between property rights and entrepreneurship an ambiguous issue. As an advancement on previous research in this paper we propose a new approach to the evaluation of the security of property rights based on direct measures that overcomes some limitations of previous studies. We apply this new metrics to a survey of manufacturing firms in Russia to identify the economic effects associated with the lack of property protection in a transition economy. Our analysis supports the view that there is a close relationship between institutions, property rights and economic growth. Our findings confirm that redistributive risks provide a depressing effect on investment and innovative activity of manufacturing enterprises and potentially result in a huge loss in efficiency and economic growth, which in other institutional settings could have been avoided.
Institutions affect investment decisions, including investments in human capital. Hence institutions are relevant for the allocation of talent. Good market-supporting institutions attract talent to productive value-creating activities, whereas poor ones raise the appeal of rent-seeking. We propose a theoretical model that predicts that more talented individuals are particularly sensitive in their career choices to the quality of institutions, and test these predictions on a sample of around 95 countries of the world. We find a strong positive association between the quality of institutions and graduation of college and university students in science, and an even stronger negative correlation with graduation in law. Our findings are robust to various specifications of empirical models, including smaller samples of former colonies and transition countries. The quality of human capital makes the distinction between educational choices under strong and weak institutions particularly sharp. We show that the allocation of talent is an important link between institutions and growth.
The paper examines the structure, governance, and balance sheets of state-controlled banks in Russia, which accounted for over 55 percent of the total assets in the country's banking system in early 2012. The author offers a credible estimate of the size of the country's state banking sector by including banks that are indirectly owned by public organizations. Contrary to some predictions based on the theoretical literature on economic transition, he explains the relatively high profitability and efficiency of Russian state-controlled banks by pointing to their competitive position in such functions as acquisition and disposal of assets on behalf of the government. Also suggested in the paper is a different way of looking at market concentration in Russia (by consolidating the market shares of core state-controlled banks), which produces a picture of a more concentrated market than officially reported. Lastly, one of the author's interesting conclusions is that China provides a better benchmark than the formerly centrally planned economies of Central and Eastern Europe by which to assess the viability of state ownership of banks in Russia and to evaluate the country's banking sector.
The paper examines the principles for the supervision of financial conglomerates proposed by BCBS in the consultative document published in December 2011. Moreover, the article proposes a number of suggestions worked out by the authors within the HSE research team.