The modernization of Russian society and the transition to a market economy has changed the nature of the problems of social development and employment in different regions of Russia. Regional differences are generated by various factors. Some of these are the result of economic activity, including the free market and free competition. Others are tied in with a series of cultural and ethnic problems, such as some groups being drawn more towards a European culture, while others are drawn to the Asiatic culture. This may help or hinder the regions ability to cope with the modernization of Russia. This is a presentation of the results of a study on work and welfare in Russia, that began in December 1994. The study covers many topics such as poverty, employment or lack of, education, gender, and food consumption, in three areas of Russia: Moscow, St Petersburg and Voronezh.
This paper examines the influence of tobacco smoking on wages in Russia. Using data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey and regressions with individual fixed effect we examine the effect of smoking intensity on wages. After the control for unobserved heterogeneity our findings show the statistical insignificance of coefficients on tobacco consumption intensity for men. On this basis we are able to assume the absence of causal explanation of the wage gap between male smokers and non-smokers. Estimates for women dont allow us to make the same statement but show the 9.2% wage gain of heavy smokers.
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.
We address the external effects on public sector efficiency measures acquired using Data Envelopment Analysis. We use the health care system in Russian regions in 2011 to evaluate modern approaches to accounting for external effects. We propose a promising method of correcting DEA efficiency measures. Despite the multiple advantages DEA offers, the usage of this approach carries with it a number of methodological difficulties. Accounting for multiple factors of efficiency calls for more complex methods, among which the most promising are DMU clustering and calculating local production possibility frontiers. Using regression models for estimate correction requires further study due to possible systematic errors during estimation. A mixture of data correction and DMU clustering together with multi-stage DEA seems most promising at the moment. Analyzing several stages of transforming society’s resources into social welfare will allow for picking out the weak points in a state agency’s work.