Article
Экономическое поведение промышленных предприятий в переходной экономике
The third topic of the lecture course «Firm-Level Empirical Surveys: Tools and Practice» is presented in this issue. The topic «Qualitative information: tools for collection and analysis of data» includes two lectures and describes existing methodology and application of qualitative research to firms behavior studies: in-depth interviews, case-studies and focus groups. Special attention is paid to organization of an empirical survey as a set of in-depth interviews with top-managers of enterprises including methodology, field-work procedures and questionnaires. Limitations and advantages of top-managers interviewing as a tool of collecting qualitative information and its possible distortion are discussed.
This article sets out to describe the current situation in the social housing sector in Russia. The author presents the historical background of social housing in Russia, it’s development and current conditions in the context of the transition from planned housing sector to one governed by market relations. The article also contains the analysis of the key structural elements of the social housing sector and expert evaluation of how well the social housing works as a mechanism for improving the housing conditions of the poor and vulnerable groups of population. The important role in the article is given to the legal status of social housing tenants, rent-setting policies and the problems of social housing finance. The main development opportunities and the main challenges for housing policy are revealed in the final sections of the article.
The article examines differences between two Russian regions – Moscow and Bashkortostan – through the following socio-psychological indicators: perceived social capital, trust, civil identity, life satisfaction, and economic attitudes.
We consider comparative analysis of civic identity, socio-economic attitudes and models of economic behavior in the three regions of Russia. The features of civic identity and its interconnection with models of economic behavior in the Central Federal District, the Far East and North Caucasus are shown.
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.