Book
Газовый рынок ЕС: эпоха реформ
We review the transition of the Russian banking sector focusing on the interplay between ownership change and institutional change. We find that the state's withdrawal from commercial banking has been inconsistent and limited in scope. To this day, core banks have yet to be privatized and the state has made a comeback as owner of the dominant market participants. We also look at the new institutions imported into Russia to regulate banking and finance, including rule of law, competition, deposit insurance, confidentiality, bankruptcy, and corporate governance. The unfortunate combination of this new institutional overlay and traditional local norms of behavior have brought Russia to an impasse - the banking sector's ownership structure hinders further advancement of market institutions. Indeed, we may now be witnessing is a retreat from the original market-based goals of transition.
Analyzing the reasons of financial crises in the book «The Black Swan» N.N. Taleb concludes that modern economic models badly describe reality for they are not able to forecast such crises in advance. We tried to present processes on stock exchange as two random processes one of which happens rather often (regular regime) and the other one - rather rare. Our answer is that if regular processes are correctly recognized with the probability a bit higher than 1/2, this allows to get positive average gain. We believe that this very phenomenon lies in the basis of unwillingness of people to expect crises permanently and to try recognizing them.
ФИНАНСОВЫЕ КРИЗИСЫ, биржа, пуассоновский процесс, financial crises, Stock exchange, Poisson processes
Smoking is a problem, bringing signifi cant social and economic costs to Russiansociety. However, ratifi cation of the World health organization Framework conventionon tobacco control makes it possible to improve Russian legislation accordingto the international standards. So, I describe some measures that should be taken bythe Russian authorities in the nearest future, and I examine their effi ciency. By studyingthe international evidence I analyze the impact of the smoke-free areas, advertisementand sponsorship bans, tax increases, etc. on the prevalence of smoking, cigaretteconsumption and some other indicators. I also investigate the obstacles confrontingthe Russian authorities when they introduce new policy measures and the public attitudetowards these measures. I conclude that there is a number of easy-to-implementanti-smoking activities that need no fi nancial resources but only a political will.
One of the most important indicators of company's success is the increase of its value. The article investigates traditional methods of company's value assessment and the evidence that the application of these methods is incorrect in the new stage of economy. So it is necessary to create a new method of valuation based on the new main sources of company's success that is its intellectual capital.