Working paper
Social Capital and Attitudes towards Money
The article examines differences between two Russian regions – Moscow and Bashkortostan – through the following socio-psychological indicators: perceived social capital, trust, civil identity, life satisfaction, and economic attitudes.
The book includes proceedings of the conference “Business. Society. Human” (October 30–31, 2013, Moscow) organized by National Research University Higher School of Economics. The purpose of the conference: interdisciplinary analysis of actual problems of studying business in the social sciences: the relationship between business and society; social capital and trust; business and corporate culture; individual, group and organization in business; problems and prospects of business education and business consulting, etc. The book present the results of researches of trust and social capital carried out in various countries in Europe, Asia and in Russia. Authors are well-known sociologists, psychologists and economists. The results of these researches were presented at the conference. The papers are published as they were submitted by the author.
The chapter is concerned with questions of civic values and civic identity as they are experienced by Russian people in the context of political-economic transformations of the last years, and especially during global economic crisis 2008-2010. Empirical findings from Russian Public Opinion Research Centre, Levada-Centre, Edelman Trust Barometer surveys are used to outline how tensions, distrust and civic irresponsibility expressed by respondents in the context of financial instability may amplify understandings of ‘citizenship’ and ‘civic identity’. There are several trends characterizing citizenship and civic identity in modern Russian society. The first is transformation of the common sense of ‘we-ness’ in case of individualism’s growth and increasing reduction of trust to economic, political and low institutions. The second is the problem of new values formation: while the ‘official’ political discourse admits more and more inclusive patriotic ideologies, ‘everyday-life’ and ‘network’ discourses develop estimative and ironical judgments of the official discourse. The third is citizens’ emigration intentions and the ‘status of citizenship’ characterizing self-perception of people as ‘citizens’ in relation to ‘non-citizens’, which is particular relevant to labour migration problem.
It is known that charity, as with any social institution that depends on both external and internal factors. In this article the author analyzes the relationship of charity and the level of development of such internal factors as trust. The analysis was conducted on a global level and at regional level in Russia. The resulting lack of relationship to regional level and its presence in the world say that in Russia at the moment there is no required number of relevant data, based on which one could draw a conclusion about the level of philanthropy.
The book’s stated objective is to uncover context, “how social capital interacts with social institutions.” It is part of a new wave of research on social capital that, dissatisfied with both macro analyses limited to societal patterns and micro analyses limited to actors’ conditions, seeks to understand the operation of networks at the meso-level: how institutions and organizations structure the transfer of resources across networks. It purports to make both theoretical and methodological contributions, the first by developing the concept of “institutional logics,” the latter by “casting diverse contextual settings as ‘generators’ of social relations”, and studying these contexts from multiple methodological perspectives. (from a review by M. Small)
Тhе article is devoted to the analysis of science, education and business as key institutional agents of civil identity in contemporary society. The civil identity is specified as a subject-object interaction between an individual and a state. Also preconditions for diversification of state power in the field of civic identity forming are determined.
In 2006, Russia amended its competition law and added the concepts of ‘collective dominance’ and its abuse. This was seen as an attempt to address the common problem of ‘conscious parallelism’ among firms in concentrated industries. Critics feared that the enforcement of this provision would become tantamount to government regulation of prices. In this paper we examine the enforcement experience to date, looking especially closely at sanctions imposed on firms in the oil industry. Some difficulties and complications experienced in enforcement are analysed, and some alternative strategies for addressing anticompetitive behaviour in concentrated industries discussed.
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.