Article
Что такое path dependence и как ее изучают российские экономисты
In the chapter from comparative economics textbook reality and virtuality are compared; common features and distinctions between old and new comparative science are demonstrated; the main features of comparative method are characterized. The workbook is attached.
The chapter discusses evolution and performance of Russia’s economic institutions. Outcomes and driving forces of institutional change in the country throughout its postcommunist history are analyzed and related to exogenous factors such as culture, resource abundance, and economic inequality. A failure to establish market-supporting institutions, including secure property rights, as a spontaneous outcome of economic liberalization and privatization is explained. It is argued that Russia’s natural wealth drove a wedge between institutions and economic growth. Institutions established de jure do not always function in accordance with their raison d’être and are often misused in pursuit of opportunistic gains. The 2008 global crisis did not have a healing effect on Russian economic institutions. Economic and political elites are unlikely to become champions of institutional modernization in the country, and improvement of Russian institutions could occur in response to grassroots demand articulated by civil society.
This Chapter examines the constitutional basis of the economic system of Russia, the main stages of its development are highlighted and are characterized by the constitutional-legal institutions of economic regulation; analyzed the ratio of the constitutional and economic institutions
The book addresses judicial reforms in a number of post-socialist countries, including Poland, Bulgaria, Baltic states, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia and several other former Sovier republics. The focal point is the impact of the Soviet past (Soviet attitude towards law, specifics of early Soviet criminal law, the role of Soviet courts and the phenomenon of the Soviet judicial mentality) on judicial and police reforms.
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.
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.