Article
Факторы роста ожидаемой продолжительности жизни: кластерный анализ по странам мира
One of the declared national goals of Russia's development is to increase life expectancy at birth to 80 years by 2030. To achieve this, it is important to understand life expectancy determinants that the government can influence. This paper aims to identify main determinants of life expectancy in groups of countries that differ in the level of life expectancy and show the place of Russia in this range. We use data on 82 countries and conduct descriptive, cluster, and correlation analysis. Our analysis shows that life expectancy in Russia is much lower than in countries with a comparable level of economic development and health care expenditures. Various factors affect public health in different ways depending on the countries' belonging to different clusters on life expectancy. These factors are development of the economy, including health care, urbanization, ecology, nutrition, and unhealthy lifestyles. In conclusion, we provide recommendations for the public policy.
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.