Working paper
Russia’s regions: governance and Well-being, 2000-2008
The existing findings on the relationship between optimism and academic performance are rather contradictory. Two studies were undertaken to investigate thе relationship between attributional style, well-being, and academic performance. A new Russian-language measure of attributional style for positive and negative events (Gordeeva, Osin, Shevyakhova, 2009) with stability, globality, and controllability subscales was used. In the first study, optimistic attributional style for good events was associated with higher academic achievement in high school students (N=225) and mediated the effect of academic performance on self-esteem. In the second study, pessimistic attributional style for negative events predicted success in passing three difficult written entrance examinations in university entrants (N=108), and optimistic attributional style for good events predicted success with success expectations as a mediator. The results indicate that attributional styles for positive and negative events are not uniform in their relationship to performance in different academic settings and to well-being variables.
On the basis of in-depth case studies of four Russian regions, Kirov and Voronezh oblasts and Krasnoyarsk and Perm' krais, the trade-offs among social and economic policy at the regional level in Russia are examined. All four regional governments seek to develop entrepreneurship while preserving social welfare obligations and improving compensation in the public sector. Richer regions have a greater ability to reconcile social commitments with the promotion of business. Regions differ in their development strategies, some placing greater emphasis on indigenous business development and others seeking to attract federal or foreign investment. Governors have considerable discretion in choosing their strategy so long as they meet basic performance demands set by the federal government such as ensuring good results for the United Russia party. In all four regions, governments consult actively with local business associations whereas organized labor is weak. However, the absence of effective institutions to enforce commitments undertaken by government and its social partners undermines regional capacity to use social policy as a basis for long-term economic development.
In the article authors use the vital birh and death registration data on 10 regions exctracted from the Rosstat database to evaluate an input of international migrant into Russian fertility and mortality levels.
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
The economic crisis has revealed three particularly vulnerable development in Russia in the last decade: a growing resource of expertise, aging equipment and the lag in scientific and technological progress, institutional obstacles to the growth of the market economy. The article discusses the components of economic growth. How quickly evolving new economy and whether overcome monocultural specialization of the country? How to make this growth sustainable and irreversible, everything been done to enhance scientific and technological potential of the Russian Federation, that these arguments comes from the myths that Russia - the best country in the world, and that reflects the actual trends that and that helps prevent the escalation of Russia from the industrial society to a post-industrial society.
The article is dedicated to fiscal incentives for business angels. Business angel, a comparatively new phenomenon in Russia, is defined in the first part of the article. The second part is a research of fiscal incentives intended for private investors in order to encourage them to support small innovative enterprises. The research is based on European and North American experience. Finally, the third part suggests the ways of creating a system of fiscal incentives for business angels in Russia.
In this paper we study convergence among Russian regions. We find that while there was no convergence in 1990s, the situation changed dramatically in 2000s. While interregional GDP per capita gaps still persist, the differentials in incomes and wages decreased substantially. We show that fiscal redistribution did not play a major role in convergence. We therefore try to understand the phenomenon of recent convergence using panel data on the interregional reallocation of capital and labor. We find that capital market in Russian regions is integrated in a sense that local investment does not depend on local savings. We also show that economic growth and financial development has substantially decreased the barriers to labor mobility. We find that in 1990s many poor Russian regions were in a poverty trap: potential workers wanted to leave those regions but could not afford to finance the move. In 2000s (especially in late 2000s), these barriers were no longer binding. Overall economic development allowed even poorest Russian regions to grow out of the poverty traps. This resulted in convergence in Russian labor market; the interregional gaps in incomes, wages and unemployment rates are now below those in Europe. The results imply that economic growth and development of financial and real estate markets eventually result in interregional convergence.
Economic crisis started in 2008 forced companies in Russia to move from growth and expansion to reduction and restructuring. The article presents the main changes at top managers’ labor market from the beginning of crisis in Russia. The original data on top managers’ mobility in Russia from late 1999 till 2009 was used. The main result of the research is that there were no big changes in Russian top managers’ labor market during the crisis years (2008–2009). The most significant change was the increase of firm’s demand for specific human capital of top managers and the decrease of demand for general human capital.
Strong distinction between contractual claims and claims arising out of bilateral investment treaties (BIT) exists in modern investment disputes resolution. This distinction has a practical importance when the competence of international tribunal to decide the claim is in question, because investment contract and BIT contain different dispute resolution provisions. The common mechanism of dealing with this conflict is introduction of umbrella clause in the particular BIT. Umbrella clause is the clause lifting the breach of contract between investor and host state to the level of breach of BIT between this state and investor’s home country. The role of umbrella clauses in international investment law and the issue of competence conflicts arising of them are analyzed in this article.
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.