This book is an anthology of essays penned by distinguished experts from around the world to commemorate life time contribution of Sanjaya Baru to the discipline of Geo-economics in India and globally. Curated and published by CUTS International, the book contains 20 essays from 21 distinguished authors,who amongst others include, noted economist Jagdish Bhagwati, two former foreign Secretaries Shyam Saran and S Jaishankar, former US Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill, Secretary General CUTS International Pradeep Mehta, Director NMML Shakti Sinha and former DG, WTO Pascal Lamy. In the current times when the world order is being rapidly reconfigured, this book is a useful resource for the government, think tanks, academia, civil society and all those interested in strategic affairs.

Is it possible for Russian energy companies to develop an effective business strategy based on the restrictions and rules of strategic documents of national scale? Today Russian Energy Strategy sets the benchmarks for business. The set of methods allows for the analysis of open sources and materials for the development of national and corporate strategies. Scenario conditions of development are one of the areas of analysis. The CGE model is used by the World Bank, IMF, OECD and the European Commission for studying economic scenarios, but it has not found applicaton in the Russian energy strategy. Other management technologies in demand by Russian companies are not used in the energy strategy either (e.g.balanced scorecard).

World experience confirms the possibility of adjusting corporate strategies for the benefit of society. Danish Energy Strategy prescribes a smooth transition to alternative energy sources and active implementation of smart energy resources. Experience of Norway in this area is also important. The third energy package of the EU defines the rules of the game in the European market influencing the business models, strategies and long-term deliveries of external counterparties.

Taking into account not only the world trends: slower growth in demand, diversifying energy structure, increasing competitiveness of renewable energy sources, increasing supply from developing countries, tightening climate norms, but also other factors (e.g. Russia being under sanctions, etc.) will allow the company to act as a partner of the state in some issues, and at the same time as an independent entity: its strategy is determined by the board of directors. Modern management technologies allow us to specify and quantify the characteristics of the national energy strategy, and to reflect the priorities in the development strategies of companies. The conditions of the state policy and the parameters of the companies' strategies will have more points of contact and reduce the risk of deviation from the declared goals. The adjustment of the restrictions and rules of the national energy strategy will reduce the risks of imbalance in the actions of society and business. Revision of the program document is possible due to organizational design and methodological support.

This edited volume examines the relationship between economic ideas, economic policies and development institutions, analysing the cases of 11 peripheral countries in Europe, Latin America and Asia across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

It sheds light on the obstacles that have prevented the sustained economic growth of these countries and examines the origins of national and regional approaches to development. The chapters present a fascinating insight into the ideas and visions in the different locations, with the overarching categories of economic nationalism and economic liberalism and how they have influenced development outcomes.

This book will be valuable reading for advanced students and researchers of development economics, the history of economic thought and economic history.

Urban population is growing worldwide. Our societies are facing grand challenges like climate change and growing inequalities between people. There is an increasing need to develop cities that are environmentally and socially sustainable, functional and supporting well-being of their inhabitants. When striving towards these goals, transportation and mobility play a crucial role. Easy and environmentally sustainable mobility options are called for in most cities. For these to attract users, they need to be safe and pleasant, providing positive experiences and well-being in addition to efficiency in time or cost.

NECTAR conference is organized with a title “Towards Human Scale Cities – Open and Happy” to reflect the new requirements of urban transportation. This 15th NECTAR conference, organized in Helsinki 5th - 7th June 2019, provides presentations by world-class keynotes Mikael Colville-Andersen and Professor Tim Schwanen, who approach human scale mobility from the viewpoints of a designer and a researcher. More than 140 scientific presentations explore advancements in the field of transport, communication and mobility, with a particular focus on good quality mobility options for people. The focus of the conference is urban transportation and the new possibilities that open data and digital technologies provide for mobility solutions and their research. Presentations provide food for thought concerning mobility choices and quality, new mobility solutions like MaaS, and policies that are implemented to support them.

Helsinki offers an interesting environment for the 2019 NECTAR conference. It is the home of the busiest passenger harbor in Europe with a twin-city development with Tallinn across the bay, and a major air transportation hub between Europe and Asia. It is one of the fastest growing capital regions in Europe, with large densification developments taking place in old logistic centers: harbor areas of Jätkäsaari and Kalasatama and a train depot in Pasila. Public transportation is valued high by citizens, as well as politicians and planners making investment decisions for the future. First robotized buses are in operation and MaaS solutions are emerging. New bike sharing system is one of the most used in the world and has expanded to cover most of the city region. As everywhere in Europe, new forms of micromobility from electronic scooters to electric longboards are appearing on the streets making planners and police puzzled. The city has profiled itself as an open city: large amounts of open data about the region have been made available and the region of Helsinki is committed to open and transparent decision 

and policy making. This supports also research in the major universities: University of Helsinki and Aalto University, the local organizers of the conference.

We anticipate that the conference days will forward our thinking on how to make cities more sustainable, functional and pleasant for people, and how to study them scientifically in a meaningful and transparent manner.

This book gathers the outcomes of several scientific events that were organized and conducted by the Institute of Scientific Communications (Volgograd, Russia) and the leading universities of the Volgograd region. The contributing authors include more than 700 scholars from various cities and regions of Russia. 124 works were selected out of 3,000 papers on the preconditions of formation, transformation, and legal provision of social institutes, topics that are in high demand in connection with a core aspect of digital modernization – the Internet of Things. The book is intended for a broad target audience, including scholars of various generations and various disciplines. These include young researchers (undergraduates and postgraduates) and recognized scholars (professors and lecturers) who study the socioeconomic and legal consequences of the emergence and dissemination of digital technologies, including the Internet of Things. In addition, the book will benefit all those who are interested in the development of the information society, information and telecommunication, and digital technologies. The content is divided into three logical parts, the first of which is devoted to the essence of the process of institutionalization and legal regulation of the information society.

The pocket data book contains main indicators characterizing S&T and innovation potential of the Russian Federation. There are the information about intellectual property, S&T output, data of international comparisons given.

The data book includes information of the Federal State Statistics Service, Federal Service for Intellectual Property, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Eurostat, UNESCO, World Intellectual Property Organisation, national statistical services of foreign countries, and results of own methodological and analytical studies of the HSE Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge.

On 15 March 2019, the first “Connecting Eurasia Dialogue: From the Atlantic to the Pacific” was held in Brussels, at Europe’s political heart. The event was organized by the Roscongress Foundation and the Conoscere Eurasia Association with the support of the Association of European Businesses and the Belgian-Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce. Amid the current political cooldown, this was a unique gathering, enabling a high-level dialogue on trade, economic, and integration issues among stakeholders from the wider Eurasian space, including the European Union (EU), the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and China. The focus of high-level policy makers and top business executives attended the Dialogue was on challenges and opportunities of the EU’s engagement with the EAEU, harmonization of soft infrastructure to enhance trans-Eurasian connectivity, and the EAEU’s single pharmaceutical market. This IIASA discussion paper provides a summary of the deliberations, supported by research from inside and outside the Institute.

The Handbook of Research on International Collaboration, Economic Development, and Sustainability in the Arctic discusses the perspectives and major challenges of the investment collaboration and development and commercial use of trade routes in the Arctic. Featuring research on topics such as agricultural production, environmental resources, and investment collaboration, this book is ideally designed for policymakers, business leaders, and environmental researchers seeking coverage on new practices and solutions in the sphere of achieving sustainability in economic exploration of the Artic region

This book contains a selection of papers accepted for the presentation and discussion at the 2018 International Conference on Digital Science (DSIC’18). This Conference had the support of the Institute of Certified Specialists, Russia, AISTI (Iberian Association for Information Systems and Technologies), and Springer. It will take place Convention Centre, Budva, Montenegro, October 19-21, 2018.

DSIC’18 is an international forum for researches and practitioners to present and discuss the most recent innovations, trends, results, experiences, and concerns in the several perspectives of Digital Science. The main idea of this Conference is that the world of science is united allowing all scientists/practitioners to be able to think, analyze, and generalize their thoughts.

DSIC aims efficiently to disseminate original research results in natural, social, art, and humanities sciences. An important characteristic feature of the Conference should be the short publication time and worldwide distribution. This Conference enables fast dissemination, so conference participants can publish their papers in print and electronic format, which is then made available worldwide and accessible by numerous researchers.

The Scientific Committee of DSIC’18 was composed of multidisciplinary group of 26 experts. One hundred and seven invited reviewers who are intimately conceded with Digital Science have had the responsibility for evaluating, in a “double-blind review” process, the papers received for each of the main themes proposed for the Conference: Digital Art and Humanities; Digital Economics; Digital Education; Digital Engineering, Digital Environmental Sciences; Digital Finance; Business and Banking; Digital Media; Digital Medicine; Pharma and Public Health; Digital Public Administration; Digital Technology and Applied Sciences.

DSIC’18 received 88 contributions from 16 countries around the world. The papers accepted for the presentation and discussion at the Conference are published by Springer (this book) and will be submitted for indexing by ISI, SCOPUS, among others.

Working Title: From Corporate Social Responsibility to Corporate Social Liability

Subtitle: A Socio-Legal Study of Corporate Liability in Global Value Chains

Series: N/A 

 

This book provides an impressive overview of emerging technologies, especially nanotechnologies and biotechnologies, and their prospective applications. It identifies and describes existing and potential markets for emerging technologiy-based applications, and projects scenarios for macroeconomic development based on these technologies. Integrated roadmaps for the development of a nano- and bioindustry are shown and policy measures and corporate strategies developed to advance these technologies. These measures are illustrated using roadmaps and policy case studies.The book combines a practical, comprehensive overview of the technical side of emerging technologies and their applications in various fields with an analysis of market developments and characteristics.

The student's book is based on the CLIL approach to teaching and teaches case study solving skills via English language learning. Such an approach creates positive environment for students to master new knowledges and skills. 

This volume focuses on the analysis and measurement of business cycles in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS). Divided into five parts, it begins with an overview of the main concepts and problems involved in monitoring and forecasting business cycles. Then it highlights the role of BRICS in the global economy and explores the interrelatedness of business cycles within BRICS. In turn, part two provides studies on the historical development of business cycles in the individual BRICS countries and describes the driving forces behind those cycles. Parts three and four present national business tendency surveys and composite cyclical indices for real-time monitoring and forecasting of various BRICS economies, while the final part discusses how the lessons learned in the BRICS countries can be used for the analysis of business cycles and their socio-political consequences in other emerging countries.

I argue that the rather unfavorable conclusions of the three papers in the session on "Coordination and Tradeoffs" might not be as bad as they seem. In particular, I dwell on challenges facing the central bank using an interest rate that is different from the risk-free rate in its Taylor rule, and show that proper redefinition of the intercept and the slope of the rule allows avoidance of inflationary bias and preserves the stability of equilibrium.

Due to the need to reindustrialize the domestic industry at the post-industrial stage of development, it has become necessary to implement megaprojects aiming at the qualitative makeover of the national economy. The purpose of this paper is to develop an industrial megaproject risk management model and methodological support based on a comparative analysis of existing approaches and using Russian and international experience. The research has resulted in two megaproject risk management models: a fragmentary model and a comprehensive one. A risk mitigation potential analysis for ongoing megaprojects has been performed confirming the efficiency of use of the comprehensive megaproject risk management model. The suggested comprehensive risk management model allows taking into consideration the main distinctive feature of modern megaprojects, i.e. multiplicity of management entities operating on the basis of the partnership principle.

Whether professional or amateur, sports businesses must develop their brand and image to meet the expectations of a diverse environment, consisting of fans, sponsors, and other stakeholders. The value and instruments of market research can provide the required resources for sports businesses to realize their plans. In Market Research in the Sports Industry, Jasenko Ljubica and Neven Seric provide a comprehensive elaboration of market research methods to be used by sports businesses. The book identifies and explains the most effective uses of market research, drawing upon real-life case studies. The application of the methods presented in this book, ranging from the simplest - monitoring the environment to the most complex sampling methods, can significantly contribute to the development of sports businesses by increasing the number of members, sponsors, followers and fans. The book will be invaluable for researchers, educators and students of Sports Management and Marketing, and it will also prove useful to sporting professionals seeking to gain a competitive edge in the market.

The system of food production is facing grand challenges, such as a rising population, climate change, degrading bio-productivity of agricultural land and over-fishing. Agriculture and food production are becoming more innovative and implement new infrastructure, IT-platforms or biotechnologies, like gene editing or synthetic food production. A more advanced knowledge base about food innovations helps customers to build informed opinions of new technologies and provides policy makers and industry actors with better information for strategic decision-making. As the amount of available information exceeds expert knowledge or manual filtering of data outputs, this paper presents a text mining study on science and technology in food production based on more than 30 million documents. The proposed methodology which we demonstrate on the example of the future of food production can be applied each time new data becomes available and can serve as an early warning system for a changing technology landscape. 

National economic development is subject to a number of restrictions. One of the main constraints is the threat of complete exhaustion of non-renewable resources and environmental pollution exceeding the capacity of the planet. However, the rapid spread of resource-saving technologies is reducing the environmental intensity of economic activities. In this study, I aim to examine the ecological-economic dynamics of the environmental effects of economic development in the regions of Russia’s North-Western Federal District (NWFD). I employ an extended version of Peter A. Victor’s model to produce a comprehensive evaluation of changes in economic indicators and correlate them with the total and specific environmental impact. I conduct a factor analysis to identify the main effects influencing the ecological-economic dynamics. The use of water resources in the NWFD demonstrates green growth, whereas electricity consumption and wastewater treatment fall into the brown zone and industrial and municipal waste treatment into the black one. The factor analysis has shown that population change has a very weak effect on the situation. Much more influential factors are the income effect (higher incomes translate into greater consumption and thus more significant pollution levels) and the technology effect produced by a decrease in the environmental intensity of production. To promote green development, it is advisable to increase the influence of the technology effect by stimulating resource efficiency and switching to the circular economy model.

This paper presents the wide analysis of the profitability factors of dividend capture strategy on public pharmaceutical companies within a five-year period after the global financial crisis 2008. We investigate the abnormal return and trading volumes with event study, and the effect of price changes around the ex-dividend date under the influence of various factors. Our findings suggest that there are no abnormal trading volumes on both the −1−1 day of the event window and the day of the event on a subsample of companies that do not declare a dividend before the register close date. We confirm the negative stock yield on the ex-dividend day in most markets. We further confirm the tax hypothesis explaining the behavior of the share price and note the specific behavior of stock prices in the ex-dividend date for companies that do not disclose information on future payments (Japan and South Korea) and on emerging markets. The positive average cumulative abnormal return is statistically significant only for companies with a share of R&D/Total revenue <<3%. For companies with a value of more than 3%, the return is negative. An anomaly in the pharmaceutical stock market behavior in the ex-dividend date for 2016 is documented in our paper. A statistically significant price increase is registered both without taking into account the general market behavior, and taking into account market and individual expected return for each share of the sample. The cumulative abnormal returns are greater for pharma companies with a total enterprise value more than $ 1 billion, except for 2016.

Growing importance of human resources places the role of managers at the core of company efficiency. However, there are studies that demonstrate the efficiency of teams without a manager, so-called self-managed teams, is higher comparing with managed teams. Thus, despite the focus on managerial efficiency in the economic literature, the issue of whether a team needs amanager is far from settled. In this paper, we use a quasiexperimental setting from e-Sports (competitive video gaming) to understand whether the hiring a manager is of benefit to team performance. The empirical part of the study is based on endogenous switching regression model. This method allows investigating what performance of self-managed team would be if it will have a manager and vice versa. The dataset includes the information of prize money and features of top e-Sports teams in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (e-Sports discipline) from 2013 to 2017. The main finding of this study is that managed teams perform better than self-managed ones but this is not due to the manager.

We analyse the determinants of football fans’ happiness in the Russian Premier League using facial emotion recognition. We propose a new way of measuring subjective well-being and provide its empirical validation using sports data. Our sample consists of about 10,000 photos from football matches uploaded on the most popular social network in Russia during the seasons 2014/15–2017/18. The dataset of photos is analysed with the Emotion Recognition software, which takes a facial expression in an image as an input and returns the confidence across a set of emotions for each face in the image. Next we use multinomial logistic regression to identify the determinants of happiness. The results show that uncertainty and expectations are important drivers of football fans’ happiness. A win decreases the probability of being unhappy, and the effect becomes stronger for late rounds of a national championship. The change in happiness because of a home team win is stronger for males.

The article traces trends in Soviet economic discourse from the 1920s until perestroika. We examine the works of leading political economists of this period through the lens of debates on market exchanges under socialism—the central theoretical issue of the political economy of socialism. The discursive structure underlying the debates can be traced back to the writing of the first Soviet textbook on political economy, personally supervised by Joseph Stalin. Our purpose is to assess the impact of this textbook on subsequent discussions of the role of commodity production and market exchanges in a socialist economy. The story suggests that Soviet economic discourse was neither homogeneous nor stable. Rather, it consisted of several subdiscourses of different levels of authoritativeness allowing for a certain stable core as an attribute of any authoritative discourse, as well as for more flexible elements that adjusted the structure to new political and ideological challenges.

The assumption that the telecommunications industry has natural monopoly characteristics dominated industrial policy during the twentieth century, supporting the monopolistic structure of telecommunications markets all across the world, and still prevails in many views on the economy of this field. The high level of concentration of telecommunications markets is often considered as a natural way of its development and some claim that this is a necessary condition for innovations in the industry. Meanwhile, the evolution of telecommunications in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union has shown quite the opposite. The industry in the country was able to demonstrate a relatively low level of market concentration, at least in some of the areas, to provide a high quality and a large variety of telecommunications services at significantly lower prices, in comparison with western countries, and shows one of the best indicators of network development in the world. While the Russian case poses quandaries for mainstream theories, the phenomenon fits the view of the Austrian school at the market process and exposes the benefits that the competitive order can bring to society.

Purpose – The liberalization of European telecommunications has been expressed in highly concentrated markets with several major players at the pan-European level. Instead of fostering competitive marketplaces, the reform has created an oligopolistic landscape with powerful private corporations. This induces reasonable questions about the real objectives and the chosen ways of the reform.

Methodology/approach/design – The deregulatory movement in the telecommunications sector is analyzed through contrasting perspectives of the public interest approach and public choice theory.

Findings – The chance to change the landscape of the industry has been missed, and the current trend towards the global oligopolistic marketplace yields an unprecedented amount of economic power to narrow groups at the global scale. The liberalization movement introduced market mechanisms in the industry, but the real free and open market has never been formed, and it is possible to assert that it has never been among the real objectives and intentions of the policymakers.

Originality/value – The recent surge of “liberalization” in the telecommunications industry speaks rather in favor of the hypothesis of vested private interests in the policy and that they have always been greatly covered by the sauce of public interest justifications. The case of telecommunications shows that ideas and understanding of economic phenomena played an important role in adoption of regulatory regimes, and it is apparent that people on the top of the social pyramid have opportunities to pick up and foster those ideas that better fit their private needs.

This article discusses the current efforts of policymakers to spur development of telecommunications infrastructure. It argues that the policy of ‘ordered competition’, widely implemented in this sector, has formed a highly beneficial environment for major players, who have the ability to influence the regulatory machine. The system protects the status quo, impedes the efficiency of the market process and allows unnecessary public subsidy of the industry's development. The main alternative to this regulatory regime is structural reform of the industry and the formation of a genuinely competitive marketplace which could function without ex ante regulation.

This paper studies how the influence of the fundamental factors on the Russian stock market changes retrospectively. We empirically test the impact of daily values of fundamental factors (indexes of foreign stock markets, oil price, exchange rate and interest rates in Russia and the USA) on the MOEX Russia Index over long time interval from 2003 to 2018. The analysis of the ARIMA-GARCH (1,1) model with a rolling window reveals the changes in the power and direction of the influence of the fundamental factors which are probably caused by the structural instability revealed earlier in Russia and other stock markets. The Quandt-Andrews breakpoint test and Bai-Perron test identify the number and likely location of the structural breaks. We find multiple breaks probably associated with dramatic falls in the stock market index, for example with the significant falls of the then MICEX index in the spring of 2006 and the global financial crisis of 2008-2009. The results of the regression models over the different regimes, defined by the structural breaks, can vary markedly over time.

We consider an economic geography setting in which firms are free to choose one of the following organizational types: (i) integrated firms, which perform all their activities at the same location, (ii) horizontal firms, which operate several plants producing the same good at different locations, and (iii) vertical firms, which perform distinct activities at separated locations. We show that there exists a unique organizational equilibrium, which typically involves the coexistence of various organizational forms. We also give necessary and sufficient conditions for the three types of firms to coexist within the same region and show that transportation and communication costs have opposite effects on firms' organizational choices. This suggests that, depending on its nature, the supply of a new transportation infrastructure may lead to contrasted locational patterns.

The article explores the effectiveness of public policies to encourage innovation by industry, and in particular to develop industry-science interactions. The demand and impact of innovation policy measures on enterprises’ behaviour is investigated based on the results from a specialized survey of high-tech and medium high-tech manufacturing enterprises in Russia, conducted in 2018. The empirical approach is based on the concept of additionality allowing to determine the net effects of policy interventions. Particular attention is paid to the comparison of changes in the behaviour of enterprises (behavioral additionality) depending on their innovation strategies, including the decision to cooperate with universities and R&D organizations. The results indicate that while there is a strong demand for policy instruments used to promote innovation, they do not provide significant additional impacts to the business’ innovation activity. State efforts to promote industry-science cooperation seem to be ineffective. Public support contributes to reinforcing already established links, but does not lead to the emergence of new research partnerships.

We consider fair allocation of indivisible items under additive utilities. When the utilities can be negative, the existence and complexity of an allocation that satisfies Pareto optimality and proportionality up to one item (PROP1) is an open problem. We show that there exists a strongly polynomial-time algorithm that always computes an allocation satisfying Pareto optimality and proportionality up to one item even if the utilities are mixed and the agents have asymmetric weights. We point out that the result does not hold if either of Pareto optimality or PROP1 is replaced with slightly stronger concepts.

A set of objects, some goods and some bads, is to be divided fairly among agents with different tastes, modeled by additive utility-functions. If the objects cannot be shared, so that each of them must be entirely allocated to a single agent, then fair division may not exist. What is the smallest number of objects that must be shared between two or more agents in order to attain a fair division? We focus on Pareto-optimal, envy-free and/or proportional allocations. We show that, for a generic instance of the problem --- all instances except of a zero-measure set of degenerate problems --- a fair and Pareto-optimal division with the smallest possible number of shared objects can be found in polynomial time, assuming that the number of agents is fixed. The problem becomes computationally hard for degenerate instances, where the agents' valuations are aligned for many objects.

We study the problem of allocating divisible bads (chores) among multiple agents with additive utilities, when money transfers are not allowed. The competitive rule is known to be the best mechanism for goods with additive utilities and was recently extended to chores by Bogomolnaia et al (2017). For both goods and chores, the rule produces Pareto optimal and envy-free allocations. In the case of goods, the outcome of the competitive rule can be easily computed. Competitive allocations solve the Eisenberg-Gale convex program; hence the outcome is unique and can be approximately found by standard gradient methods. An exact algorithm that runs in polynomial time in the number of agents and goods was given by Orlin. In the case of chores, the competitive rule does not solve any convex optimization problem; instead, competitive allocations correspond to local minima, local maxima, and saddle points of the Nash Social Welfare on the Pareto frontier of the set of feasible utilities. The rule becomes multivalued and none of the standard methods can be applied to compute its outcome. In this paper, we show that all the outcomes of the competitive rule for chores can be computed in strongly polynomial time if either the number of agents or the number of chores is fixed. The approach is based on a combination of three ideas: all consumption graphs of Pareto optimal allocations can be listed in polynomial time; for a given consumption graph, a candidate for a competitive allocation can be constructed via explicit formula; and a given allocation can be checked for being competitive using a maximum flow computation as in Devanur et al (2002). Our algorithm immediately gives an approximately-fair allocation of indivisible chores by the rounding technique of Barman and Krishnamurthy (2018).

Theoretical literature states that intra-industry trade (IIT) should be divided into horizontal and vertical flows (or trade in products with homogeneous and heterogeneous quality) that are influenced by different factors. Yet, the economists are still not sure about the proportion between horizontal and vertical IIT. Traditional approach relies on unit value as an indicator of product quality. However, it is associated with a number of problems such as arbitrariness of the threshold used to separate the types of trade. We propose the two alternative approaches to dissecting IIT: first, applying another product quality indicator (PRODY – per capita GDP associated with exporting a product) and, second, relying on countries’ product-level differences in the revealed comparative advantage (RCA). We also argue in favor of the new continuous treatment of the index-based unit value approach (in the spirit of the overlap calculation of the IIT itself) that finally helps to get rid of the arbitrary thresholds problem. However, then we reject the PRODY- and RCA-based approaches due to an undesirable behavior (low correlation with the share of exports to other EU countries, low shares of horizontal IIT for homogeneous products and other features), while the performance of the continuous form of the index-based unit value approach is found to be in line with the traditional unit value approach. We also argue that the two index-based modifications are preferable to the traditional unit value approach due to the higher shares of horizontal IIT for homogeneous products. We conclude that the median share of horizontal IIT for EU countries is still unknown due to fundamental uncertainty about the dissecting approach. At the same time, relative positions of countries for all forms of the unit value approach are quite stable, so there is much less uncertainty concerning the cross-country differences.

We propose a decomposition of weighted Theil index of export concentration into the quantity- and quality-driven terms and calculate the proposed components for 5038 product groups and 120 countries. We link our findings to the debate on the role of quality upgrading in structural transformation. The results do not support the idea that climbing quality ladders (or quality upgrading within the actually exported products) is the best way to proceed with structural transformation: for most countries, the share of the quality-driven component of weighted Theil index doesn’t exceed 20 per cent.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce applications of RUSMOD—a microsimulation model for fiscal incidence analysis in the Russian Federation. RUSMOD combines household survey micro-data and fiscal policy rules to simulate the Russian tax-benefit system: the size and distribution of taxes collected and benefits paid, and the impact of the system on different population groups. Microsimulation models, such as RUSMOD, are habitually used in developed countries, and can be versatile budgetary policy tools. Using this model, the current tax-benefit system in Russia is examined. The impact of the system is measured across the income distribution, age groups, family types, localities, as well as across time. One of the applications of RUSMOD this paper aims to assess is the role of the tax-benefit system in explaining the incidence of informal employment in Russia. The paper investigates whether the existing system creates disincentives for formalization in terms of reducing disposable incomes and increasing poverty and inequality, and whether a hypothetical tax reform would be able to reduce the opportunity costs of formalization for informal workers, improve distributional outcomes, and increase fiscal revenues.

We analyze multisector models with endogenous product variety and derive general results on the magnitude of welfare changes due to sector-specific price shocks. Intersectoral linkages magnify or dampen these shocks, depending on complementarity or substitutability in consumers’ preferences. Under the widely used combination of Cobb-Douglas-CES utilities and monopolistic competition, intersectoral linkages disappear. This does not hold with more general preferences or market structures, where sector-specific price shocks that are a priori welfare improving can turn out to be welfare worsening economy-wide. We illustrate this result with several examples, in particular where one sector is ‘granular’ and the other is monopolistically competitive.

The paper presents the Business Climate Indicator (BCI) in the Russian manufacturing including the medium and high-tech (MHT) manufacturing industries. The authors explain the feasibility of a new alternative measure that summarizes common information of business tendency surveys cleared up of specific fluctuations in individual variables, and give arguments to prove its effectiveness. The resulting BCI reflects the quantitative changes in manufacturing growth more accurately and with a lead compared to the traditional confidence indicator. Identification of the BCI cyclic profile and its visualization through a tracer demonstrate all significant waves of manufacturers’ optimism and pessimism for the period from January 2005 to January 2019. To construct BCI-MHT, the units of observation and the input information are divided into three groups according to the technological level of industries. The dynamics of BCI-MHT is close to those of BCI; however, during the protracted recession in 2016-2018, the sentiments of manufacturers of medium- and high-tech products were less pessimistic compared with the sentiments of all manufacturers.

This paper examines the impact of the 34% increase in pensions in Russia at the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 on the labor market participation of pensioners. Several particular features of the pension system in Russia allow us to estimate the net effect of income from such a reform. For evaluation, we used a method combining difference-in-difference and regression discontinuity methods. The results showed that real pension growth by a third reduced labor force participation rate by 6–7.1% for men and by 6–6.4% for women. The heterogeneity of the impact of this reform was also investigated. Estimates showed that the effect was lower for more educated people or those living in villages and was completely absent among those who rated their health as poor or very bad.

The spread of digital technologies changes production processes and business models, which has important effects for diversification of the economy. The fourth industrial revolution and the Industrial Internet of Things open up new opportunities for the introduction of technologies, having a significant impact on the production cycle, starting with highly automated production lines and ending with the large-scale implementation of technological solutions designed to improve productivity, optimize costs, quality and reliability. Defining digital transformations, primarily in the manufacturing industry as a strategic imperative for the entire economy, for the first time, based on opinions and intentions of entrepreneurs (short and medium-term), key aspects of the digitalization process in Russian medium, high-tech and low-tech manufacturing industries are revealed. A set of tendencies in the development of digital technologies by their main types is presented, the level of industry participation in digital transformation is shown, as well as many other important digital transformation processes in enterprises that are not measured by quantitative statistics. For all the studied industries, factors hindering digital transformation are identified and ranked.

This paper considers three hypotheses about the strategic origin of price dispersion in homogeneous product online sales. The first two are the $\varepsilon$-equilibrium and the quantal-response equilibrium (QRE) in a pure Bertrand setting involving the boundedly rational behavior of sellers. The third introduces the share of loyal consumers into the model of competition. These hypotheses were supported by estimations on experimental lab data. We test the hypotheses on a set of real prices for 30 models of household appliances collected from the largest Russian online marketplace Market.Yandex.ru. In contrast to the previously reported experimental data, we found very limited support for any of these explanations. QRE showed the best performance on the data. For most of the products it accurately predicts central tendency, i.e. the mean and the median. However, the shape of the observed price distributions is not explained well by any of the models. These results pose new challenges for theoretical explanations of observed Internet prices.

Larger cities typically give rise to two opposite effects: tougher competition among firms and higher production costs. Using an urban model with substitutability of production factors and pro-competitive effects, I study the response of the market outcome to city size, land-use regulations, and commuting costs. For industries with low input shares of land, larger cities host more firms setting lower prices whereas for sectors with intermediate land shares larger cities accommodate more firms charging higher prices. Softer land-use regulations and/or lower commuting costs reinforce pro-competitive effects, making larger cities more attractive for residents via lower prices and broader product diversity.

We analyse betting behaviour patterns of the visitors of the specialized betting website dedicated to the popular eSports game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The reverse favourite-longshot bias is found both in the in-sample and out-of-sample datasets. This phenomenon is rather unusual for parimutuel betting markets because favourite-longshot bias is more common. We define simple betting strategies based on the bets on underdogs and show that these strategies make a sufficiently large positive profit, which is a sign of market inefficiency. Next, we investigate determinants of the reverse favourite-longshot bias. We hypothesize that popular teams attract more unsophisticated gamblers which adds to the stronger reverse favourite-longshot bias in matches with such teams. Geographical proximity is found to be a significant factor that increases the bias, whereas the effect of internet popularity measured by the number of team players' followers on Twitter surprisingly follows the U-shape curve.

This paper describes the results of research project on optimal pricing for LLC "Perm Local Rail Company". In this study we propose a regression tree based approach for estimation of demand function for local rail tickets considering high degree of demand heterogeneity by various trip directions and the goals of travel. Employing detailed data on ticket sales for 5 years we estimate the parameters of demand function and reveal the significant variation in price elasticity of demand. While in average the demand is elastic by price, near a quarter of trips is characterized by weakly elastic demand. Lower elasticity of demand is correlated with lower degree of competition with other transport and inflexible frequency of travel.

The paper explores the public-private wage gap in the Russian economy over time and along the whole wage distribution. Using the RLMS-HSE panel data set, we examine how gaps at various points of wage distribution changed from 2005 to 2015 and present decompositions of the gaps into components explained by differences in characteristics and differences in returns. The results suggest that the gap persists over time and varies along the wage distribution. During the 2000’s, low-skilled public sector workers had smaller pay gaps than higher-skilled workers had. Multiple governmental policy interventions and the economic crisis of 2008-2009 contributed to the narrowing of the gap and its partial equalization along the distribution. A new set of policy changes associated with the May 2012 Presidential Decrees strengthened these tendencies but failed to eliminate the gaps.