Book
Глобальное экономическое регулирование: учебник
Crisis as a phase of an economic cycle is of most interest. Study of crises in historical retrospective is necessary for understanding of the main mechanisms, regularities and causes of crisis phenomena. The article deals with the history of the world economic crises and classification of their causes.
This book directly confronts uncomfortable questions that many prefer to brush aside: if economists and other scholars, politicians, and business professionals understand the causes of economic crises, as they claim, then why do such damaging crises continue to occur? Can we trust business and intellectual elites who advocate the principles of Realpolitik and claim the "public good" as their priority, yet consistently favor maximization of profit over ethical issues?
Former deputy prime minister of Russia Grigory Yavlinsky, an internationally respected free-market economist, makes a powerful case that the often-cited causes of global economic instability—institutional failings, wrong decisions by regulators, insufficient or incorrect information, and the like—are only secondary to a far more significant underlying cause: the failure to understand that universal social norms are essential to thriving businesses and social and economic progress. Yavlinsky explores the widespread disregard for moral values in business decisions and calls for restoration of principled behavior in politics and economic practices. The unwelcome alternative, he warns, will be a twenty-first-century global economy in the grip of unending crises.
Grigory Yavlinsky is a Russian economist and founder and member of the Russian United Democratic Party (YABLOKO). As deputy prime minister of Russia in 1990, he wrote the first Russian economic program for transition to a free-market economy, 500 Days. He lives in Moscow.
Reviews
“Grigory Yavlinsky’s book is an important contribution to understanding the interplay between social norms and modern economy. The current global crisis makes his analysis especially relevant.”—George Soros
“Reading Grigory Yavlinsky's remarkable book, I was reminded of Adam Smith, also a moral philosopher concerned with the correlation between individual aspirations and the enlightened evolution of society. It is invaluable to have the perspective of an intellectual such as Yavlinsky writing in the shadow of swiftly moving events on the global stage. He explains how market mechanisms influence international developments ranging from instability in European markets to the recent ‘Great Recession’ in the United States.”—Vartan Gregorian, President, Carnegie Corporation of New York
“Yavlinsky provides a new and in-depth interpretation of the events leading to the current recession and broader interpretations of how to avoid future ones. Realeconomik has my enthusiastic endorsement.”—Michael D. Intriligator, University of California, Los Angeles
“With clarity and eloquence, Yavlinsky argues that the deepest cause of the global recession was the erosion of the world economy’s moral dimensions. As a professional economist who has long been a leader of the Russian opposition, he knows how to splice politics and economics. As a politician who has repeatedly declined high office on grounds of principle, he lends the book additional authority. Realeconomik is a work that will, I believe, help to spark a public debate on issues of profound importance for humankind.”—Peter Reddaway, George Washington University
For the past 37 years, the annual G8 summits have generated a wide breadth of declarations and communiqués binding the leaders to hard commitments across a diverse range of global policy issues. The extent to which the G8 members comply with their annual commitments has, in recent years, become a hotly contested topic, pitting academics, politicians, policy wonks and newsmakers against each other in an effort to understand whether commitments by the G8 do, in fact, matter. Given this era of ongoing domestic political constraints and conflicting global demands, does the G8 have the ability and, indeed, the capacity not only to make, but also to keep the commitments its members collectively generate at their annual summits?
The article analyses the EU activity in assisting developing countries to develop energy sector throughperspective of the functional approach. The author identifies the EU approach by assessing EU compliance with the G8 commitments on assisting developing countries to develop energy sector. The assessment is made on the basis of the analysis of EU implementation of its commitments made in four major spheres of international engagement for energy development, such as ensuring developing countries’ access to modern energy sources, clean energy development, raw natural energy resources, sustainable management and environmental protection. In order to ensure comprehensive and unbiased assessment the author applies the methodology of global governance delivery function approach and compares EU compliance with compliance of other traditional donors such as USA and emerging donors such as Russia. In conclusion some recommendations on how to raise effectiveness in assisting developing countries to develop energy sector are made for the Russian Federation.
The world’s financial crisis made worth an effort to rethink the existing model of global economic governance. One of the striking things among the others – is the insufficient level of global financial regulation. Experts do not share a common view on the functioning of the system. Some of them consider the system of global governance was not ready to react to the new challenges and to sustain the pressure of critical events. Others will defend the system, admitting that only some slight changes into it would make possible to cope with the current problems. The truth, as very often, is probably somewhere in between. The necessity to modify the pattern of functioning of the global financial institutions is clear. The institutions themselves should be made more viable and efficient and their competences to manage different aspects of global economy should be substantially enlarged. How useful could an EU experience be in achieving the new global governance goals?
The role of the EU as a model for global institutions
One of the popular answers to the challenges of the modern world is the concept of global governance. Does it exist really/ This is the questyion J/ Kirton answers in his book.
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.