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Индекс экономического настроения (Индекс ВШЭ) в IV квартале 2011 г.

The objective of this paper is to examine the internal and external factors of product and organizational innovations, and specifically to discuss the role of the business environment and administrative corruption as barriers of intra-firm innovations in transitional economies. The analysis was based on data from Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey of the EBRD and the World Bank conducted in 2009. Consistent correlations between product innovations and both high administrative obstacles and the growth of corruption costs were revealed. On the contrary, organizational innovations were largely not correlated with the respondents’ assessments of business climate.
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.