This book addresses the challenges and opportunities of contemporary and future development of Eurasia. The main theme of the first part of the book is examining the reaction evoked in different countries by the Chinese “Belt and Road Initiative.” The second part analyses other national and international integration and infrastructure projects in Eurasia. This unique publication brings together in one volume works by leading researchers from different countries, all united by their common interest in the political and economic processes unfolding in the Eurasian continent. By offering various points of view from experts from all over the world, this book provides a multi-dimensional analysis of the Eurasian future and will be of value to a wide range of readers, including scholars, publicists, the international business community and decision-makers.

This book discusses important topics for engineering and managing software startups, such as how technical and business aspects are related, which complications may arise and how they can be dealt with. It also addresses the use of scientific, engineering, and managerial approaches to successfully develop software products in startup companies. The book covers a wide range of software startup phenomena, and includes the knowledge, skills, and capabilities required for startup product development; team capacity and team roles; technical debt; minimal viable products; startup metrics; common pitfalls and patterns observed; as well as lessons learned from startups in Finland, Norway, Brazil, Russia and USA. All results are based on empirical findings, and the claims are backed by evidence and concrete observations, measurements and experiments from qualitative and quantitative research, as is common in empirical software engineering. The book helps entrepreneurs and practitioners to become aware of various phenomena, challenges, and practices that occur in real-world startups, and provides insights based on sound research methodologies presented in a simple and easy-to-read manner. It also allows students in business and engineering programs to learn about the important engineering concepts and technical building blocks of a software startup. It is also suitable for researchers at different levels in areas such as software and systems engineering, or information systems who are studying advanced topics related to software business.

This book presents the main findings of a study on school learning environments and student outcomes, which the World Bank conducted in 2019 in three regions of the Russian Federation. Using data collected through the OECD School User Survey and the pilot “Trends in Mathematics and Science Study” (TIMSS), the book analyzes how a school’s infrastructure and learning environment may affect the progress and success of students in math and science. It also delves into teaching practices, analyzing their impact on learning and highlighting the important nexus between learning environments and teaching methods. The book concludes by recommending areas in which focused attention by educational authorities could improve educational policy and help maintain high-quality learning environments. The book will be useful for educators, school principals, architects, and policy makers who are involved in school infrastructure projects and are interested in increasing their knowledge of school design planning.

This book discusses the role of regional design and visioning in the formation of regional territorial governance to offer a better understanding of (1) how a recognition of spatial dynamics and the visualization of spatial futures informs, and is informed by, planning frameworks and (2) how such design processes inform co-operation and collaboration on planning in metropolitan regions. It gathers theoretical reflections on these topics, and illustrates them by means of practical experiences in several European countries. Innovatively associating ideas with knowledge, it appeals to anyone with an interest in planning experiments in a post-regulative era. It aims at an increased understanding of how practices, engaged with the imagination of possible futures, support the creation of institutional capacity for strategic spatial planning at regional scales.

 

Water Conservation and Wastewater Treatment in BRICS Nations: Technologies, Challenges, Strategies, and Policies addresses issues of water resources—including combined sewer system overflows—assessing effects on water quality standards and protecting surface and sub-surface potable water from the intrusion of saline water due to sea level rise. The book's chapters incorporate both policies and practical aspects and serve as baseline information for future adaption plans in BRICS nations. Users will find detailed important information that is ideal for policymakers, water management specialists, BRICS nation undergraduate or university students, teachers and researchers.

The industrial development of emerging markets has been a powerful driver for mergers and acquisitions. The contributions collected in this book assess major M&A deals in the largest emerging capital markets (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and their role in shareholder value creation in the markets’ specific business environments. In addition, the book explores various dimensions of M&A deals in order to summarize the main trends in corporate control markets in the largest emerging countries, and how they differ from those in developed countries; to identify deal-performance relationships and the determinants of success or failure; to reveal the drivers for the premium in M&A deals; and to capture market responses to different M&A strategies. By doing so, the book makes a significant contribution to the literature, which has to date largely focused on developed markets.

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 

 

The title of the book refers to the sociological survey, conducted by the "Public opinion" Fund in 2000. It is focused on the representation of Internet as a complex phenomenon in modern Russia. First, the Internet is considered as part of the media system that not only rapidly developing, but also significantly transforming the system as a whole. Second, it contains the analysis of main online markets in Russia. Thirdly, the Internet is analyzed in political, social and cultural contexts.

Sports economics is a relatively new field of research that is experiencing rapid growth in the economics literature. The importance of the sports industry to economies, coupled with the availability of financial and productivity data, have made the study of sports economics a useful avenue for exploring research questions that have eluded mainstream economics fields. The main goal of this Special Issue, “Topics in Sports Finance”, is to encourage theoretical and applied research in sports economics that is of interest to both academics and practitioners. This Special Issue is a collection representing the 10 research papers published in the International Journal of Financial Studies under the issue “Sports Finance 2018”.

The Special Issue “Topics in Sports Finance” begins with four articles that examine the financial health of European football in recent decades. The UEFA Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations were developed in response to the deteriorating financial situation of football clubs in Europe. Many clubs have operated with annual operating losses and been in negative equity positions. The fear of long-established football clubs entering into receivership was becoming a looming reality. The FFP regulations were adopted for the 2011–12 European football league season. At the broadest level, the regulations require the submission of independently audited annual financial statements to UEFA, the banning of overdue payments on player transfers and owed taxes, a break-even requirement over the sum of three consecutive reporting years, and the disallowing of a negative equity position that worsens over two consecutive years. Failure to meet these regulations can result in penalties of warnings, fines, withholding of prize money and transfer bans, as well as additional penalties that can be imposed by the national associations. The goals of the FFP regulations were two-fold: 1) to promote financial stability of UEFA clubs and to improve the overall level of profitability by limiting expenses, and 2) to reduce the competitive gap between the financially large and small clubs.

Dimitropoulos and Koronios (DK) focus on the stability of reportable revenues (as defined in the FFP regulations) and whether the FFP regulations have improved revenue stability. Stability is defined as the ability to predict next season’s revenue from the current season’s revenue. Using a large sample of 109 European clubs, DK find favorable results that support the FFP objectives, more so for financially smaller clubs. This is an important result since increased financially stability can reduce borrowing costs for capital (lower risk premiums) and make the clubs more attractive to shareholders (if they are held by shareholders).

The focus on club revenues in response to the FFP regulations is continued by Frank. Using summary financial data garnered from UEFA reports, Frank notes that reportable club revenues have improved since 2011–12, and attributes this growth to more responsible financial decisions by club management, knowing that the FFP regulations prohibit moral hazard type behavior that relies on ex post “bailouts” by club sponsors or owners. Financial parity has become more elusive under the FFP regulations, and Frank attributes this to the greater ability of larger clubs to finance higher payrolls by generating higher revenues, while the smaller revenue-generating ability of smaller clubs limits their payroll growth. The FFP regulations do not directly address this issue, and Frank suggests some possible solutions. The FFP regulations could result in unexpected increases in the expenses of football clubs that are not associated with payrolls and player acquisitions.

Mareque, Barajas, and Lopez-Corrales (MBLC) examine the effects on auditing fees for clubs in the Spanish First Division. It could be the case that audit fees increased post-FFP due to the increased scrutiny the financial statements would receive from UEFA. MBLC found significantly higher audit fees using a regression model that uses a number of independent variables to explain audit fees. This could put clubs at a financial disadvantage post-FFP, however, MBLC note that the higher expected future revenues—that seem to be result from the FFP regulations—could more than offset the higher fees.

Despite the intentions of the FFP regulations to improve club profitability, Andreff notes that the majority of clubs in French League 1 still operate with annual losses, largely due to high payroll costs that have not translated into Champions League or Europa League prize monies. Clubs may have the ability to absorb these losses by securing lucrative sponsorship deals or by having owners who can subsidize losses through other business ventures. Andreff uses this logic to formalize a “soft budget constraint” that encourages profit-maximizing clubs to overspend on payrolls and player transfers.

The next four papers in this Special Issue focus on North American sports leagues and ask a great diversity of questions. Revenue sharing is an accepted business practice in the four major North American sports Leagues (NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL). Contributing a share of club revenues into a central fund and then distributing the fund back to the clubs (equally in the NFL and MLB, and not equally in the NBA and NHL) is argued to support small-market clubs and improve parity.

Recent theoretical and empirical research suggests that parity worsens with revenue sharing. Rockerbie and Easton (RE) suggest an alternative, but complementary, argument for revenue sharing: that revenue sharing reduces the variance of revenues and provides a welfare gain to club owners by diversifying their revenues. After developing a measure of welfare gain, RE estimate significant welfare gains for MLB clubs over the last two decades. Ice hockey is a fast, physical game with frequent contact and minor confrontations.

The professional NHL and the semi-pro Canadian Hockey League (CHL) do not condone fighting but recognize that fighting is allowable by imposing lighter penalties than other sports leagues. Paul, Weinbach, and Riccardi (PWR) estimate the effect of fighting on game attendance in the CHL using a regression model that controls for other factors that could affect attendance. They also contribute to the mounting evidence that suggests that the uncertainty of outcome is not a factor in attendance demand, an important result for theoretical models that incorporate outcome uncertainty in demand functions.

 Although not formally a sports league, the NCAA is certainly moving in that direction by adopting similar business practices (revenue sharing, a playoff system, and a centralized business model). American football is the most lucrative revenue source for NCAA schools that does not arise from tuition, donors, or governments. Baumer and Zimbalist (BZ) note that most of the athletic departments in a large sample of NCAA schools incur operating deficits, although determining what costs should be included in the calculation is not without controversy. BZ test the assertion that a successful athletic program confers other benefits that might justify running the program in a deficit, such as more applications, better quality students, and more donations and government funding. Their regression model is robust, and the results convincingly support the previous literature. The upshot is that without any significant benefits, college athletic departments are simply win-maximizers. European and Russian players comprised only 43 out of 210 players (20.5%) in the ten-round NHL draft in 1990. This figure increased to 79 out of 184 players (42.9%) in the seven-round 2018 NHL draft. European and Russian players are much more prevalent in the NHL than in the past, but they are still a minority in comparison to Canadian and American players. These foreign players might come at a higher price than in the past due to the increased competition for players from the Continental Hockey League (KHL) in Russia and the Swedish Hockey League (SHL). Fenn, Gerdes, and Rothstein (FGR) test this assertion by estimating a salary regression model that holds constant player performance variables and contract status. The results suggest that Russian and European players are paid a premium, perhaps suggesting that Canadian and American NHL players have fewer alternative employment possibilities.

The two papers that round out the Special Issue provide glimpses into rather underappreciated, yet growing, sports in the sports economics literature: English cricket and mixed martial arts (MMA) fighting. In recent years, cricket has become a lucrative sport with the advent of the Twenty20 format. This format limits the length of test matches to three hours or so, making for much better viewing for spectators, television, and internet audiences. Financial success has largely been limited to the Indian Premier League, Australia’s Big Bash, and international test matches.

Plumley, Wilson, Millar, and Shibli (PWMS) examine the extent to which this success has filtered through the English Cricket Board (ECB) to the UK County Championship. They ask the question of whether the clubs in the Championship can survive due to ongoing concerns regarding the absence of monies granted to them, by the ECB, from international matches. PWMS provide convincing evidence using data gleaned from club financial statements.

MMA has garnered large television and internet audiences since its organization in 2001 as the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Fighters have always received financial compensation for showing up for fights and winning fights, however, 2006 saw the introduction of bonus awards for the best knockout of the night, best submission, best overall match, and others. These bonus awards are a substantial portion of the possible earnings a fighter can take home for the night. Gift tests, statistically, whether the sizes of these bonus monies affect the performance of the contestants using an extensive dataset reaching back to 2001. Though economics suggests that the incentive effects could be strong, Gift finds no significant effect based on fight metrics.

The paper provides findings of the research work and scientific discussions under the “Global Sustainability Strategy Forum” (GSSF) that aims to develop evidence-informed judgments on challenges and solutions. It views attaining sustainability as a set of closely-coupled societal and environmental challenges and opportunities that require integration of multiple disciplines, new research methods, and new knowledge sources with sensitivity to regional and cultural diversities. The project is designed to produce innovative insights and strategies to support effective governance of transitions to sustainability of our complex global social-ecological system within its inherent resource limitations, and to develop sustainable lifestyles that are practical and appealing in the different regions and cultures of the world. 

We propose a novel machine-learning-based approach to detect bid leakage in first-price sealed-bid auctions. We extract and analyze the data on more than 1.4 million Russian procurement auctions between 2014 and 2018. As bid leakage in each particular auction is tacit, the direct classification is impossible. Instead, we reduce the problem of bid leakage detection to Positive-Unlabeled Classification. The key idea is to regard the losing participants as fair and the winners as possibly corrupted. This allows us to estimate the prior probability of bid leakage in the sample, as well as the posterior probability of bid leakage for each specific auction. We find that at least 16% of auctions are exposed to bid leakage. Bid leakage is more likely in auctions with a higher reserve price, lower number of bidders and lower price fall, and where the winning bid is received in the last hour before the deadline.

The pocket data book contains main digital economy indicators for the Russian Federation. Contains information on the use of ICT by individuals and enterprises, e-government development, personnel for digital economy, telecommunications and ICT sector development. International comparisons are provided for a number of indicators. The data book includes information of the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat), the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, Bank of Russia, OECD, Eurostat, ITU, World Intellectual Property Organisation, and results of own methodological and analytical studies of the HSE Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge.

In the twenty-first century, universities worldwide have found themselves thrust into a great "brain race" as nations, both developed and developing, seek to enhance their place in the global knowledge economy. As the concept of the de-localized university—one that has radically expanded, perhaps even beyond national borders—grows, competing nations have begun reshaping aspects of their national systems to accommodate global standards and metrics.

In Professorial Pathways, Martin J. Finkelstein and Glen A. Jones consider how academic careers vary in countries that are fundamentally different in their organization and dynamics. Building on 25 years of scholarship, the book confronts major questions: What can we learn from the experience of other nations as they seek to balance the seemingly contradictory imperatives of expanding access and ensuring global competitiveness? What are the implications of this rapidly changing policy environment for the health of the academic professions on which university teaching and scholarship depends? And how can we advance the comparative study of higher education and, in particular, of the academic profession?

The volume brings together detailed case studies of the latest—and ever-changing—educational developments in ten countries across Europe (France, Germany, United Kingdom, Russia), Asia (China, India, Japan), North America (United States, Canada), and South America (Brazil). Essays written by respected scholars in the field identify the major structural features of national higher education systems and academic markets that directly shape academic work and careers. Professorial Pathways will be of interest to anyone who toils in the vineyards of comparative and international higher education.

Workshop concentrates on an interdisciplinary approach to modelling human behavior incorporating data mining and expert knowledge from behavioral sciences. Data analysis results extracted from clean data of laboratory experiments will be compared with noisy industrial datasets from the web e.g. Insights from behavioral sciences will help data scientists. Behavior scientists will see new inspirations to research from industrial data science. Market leaders in Big Data, as Microsoft, Facebook, and Google, have already realized the importance of experimental economics know-how for their business. 

In Experimental Economics, although financial rewards restrict subjects preferences in experiments, exclusive application of analytical game theory is not enough to explain the collected data. It calls for the development and evaluation of more sophisticated models. The more data is used for evaluation, the more statistical significance can be achieved. Since large amounts of behavioral data are required to scan for regularities, along with automated agents needed to simulate and intervene in human interactions, Machine Learning is the tool of choice for research in Experimental Economics. This workshop is aimed at bringing together researchers from both Data Analysis and Economics in order to achieve mutually beneficial results.

In our research, we study what macroeconomic factors drive and influence the credit cycle. Also, our study contains four sections with theoretical and empirical parts, in which we describe how to measure credit cycles for developed  and developing countries, and then we introduce an important indicator credit gap. Our results show the comparative analysis of credit cycles between different countries with various economic growth, and we built up an econometric model, which shows us the impact of macroeconomic factors according to credit cycles  for developing and developed economies.

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.

Over the past thirty years, optimization modeling techniques have begun to be actively used in supply chain planning and management. Given the specifics of planning tasks in supply chains, linear programming and its methods such as dynamic programming, stochastic programming and scenario planning have become the most popular. These methods make it possible to optimize the supply chain across numerous databases, each of which corresponds to a scenario describing different options for development in an uncertain future. Despite quite intensive research in this area, dynamic and stochastic programming is still underused by managers to solve application tasks in various fields, including supply chain management. Hence, there is a need for development of new planning models in logistics and supply chain management in the context of incomplete information and methods that are used to investigate situations of risk and uncertainty.

Non-profit organizations deliver a wide range of meaningful resources to communities in such diverse areas as education, arts, culture, medicine, social service and others. However, as compared to the private sector, their funding potential is much more limited. Increasing social and economic impact of the non-profit sector is a reason why there is a need in persistent efforts to enhance these opportunities. State contracts have a good potential to be regarded as one of the most essential sources of funding for non-profit organizations in the social sphere. Recently passed laws ensure substantial benefits for socially oriented non-profit organizations when participating in public procurement. Nevertheless, despite existence of norms allowing socially oriented NPOs to get preferences in tenders, presence of the non-profit sector in Russian public procurement market is still insignificant. The study seeks to analyze peculiarities of Russian public procurement legislation. Another purpose of the study is to investigate barriers to   functioning of Russian NPOs in the public procurement market.  The major question of the study to be asked is the following: why did the state order fail to become one of the drivers for the development of the non-profit sector in Russia? First, we consider the functioning mechanisms of socially oriented NPOs in the public procurement market. Then, we analyze the results of the expert interview, which let us identify the following barriers limiting participation of NPOs in public procurement: economic, financial, social and organizational barrier. Finally, we make a conclusion that for the majority of non-profit organizations state order is an optional source of funding in view of the identified barriers, and make recommendations on attracting socially oriented NPOs in the field of public procurement. The study is relevant for the government and public authorities, since it can serve as a starting point for improving the mechanisms of attracting the non-profit sector in the sphere of public procurement.

This paper analyses a particular managerial problem that sports clubs face from time to time. The aim is to identify the effects that alternative stadiums and stadiums' features have in ticket prices and demand. Simultaneous equations models by three‐stage least square estimator using instrumental variables is the method employed. The findings evidence that alternative stadiums negatively impact attendances, but clubs can offset this effect playing at high‐quality alternative stadiums. Results also evidence that fans care about security levels. Some policies for football leagues are discussed as limits in the use of alternative stadiums, league fixtures and hard requirements concerning security.

We use household panel data from Tajikistan to explore the change in living arrangements as a response to income shifts related to international labour migration. In addition, we analyse the interaction between the effect of idiosyncratic income increase resulting from a completed migration episode, and the effect of an aggregate shock – the global financial crisis – and show how different households adjust their household size during times of financial hardship. The empirical evidence indicates that while current migration is associated with an increase in household size, a completed migration episode two years before the interview was followed by family members moving out. At the same time, our empirical analysis demonstrates that migrant families doubled up in response to a financial crisis to the same extent as non‐migrant families, which suggests that labour migration in Tajikistan does not insure against economic shocks in the long run.

In this article, we employ a panel household survey from Tajikistan to study labor migrants’ location choices in Russia. We find that labor migrants from Tajikistan consider a wide variety of economic, demographic, and geographical characteristics of Russian regions when making location choices. We also find that experienced migrants are less responsive to current regional characteristics that might suggest path dependence in destination choices by experienced migrants.

The authors aim to offer a probability approach for measuring media contribution to online conversions in e-commerce. The authors reviewed literature on attribution modelling with application of heuristics (Google Analytics) and probability (Markov chains) models. The survey used the data of customer journeys from 134132 users to build up the attribution model. As a result, Markov chains model minimizes the value of Direct online channel, and redistributes the value in favor of other traffic channels and gives a significant weight to the paid traffic. Markov chains model increases the importance of Display and Paid Search channels, which is not so noticeable in heuristic models. Findings of this study help marketers to apply Markov chains modeling in online advertising evaluation and budgeting. The authors proposed application of Markov chains attribution modelling in the e-commerce website. Other e-commerce companies might apply Markov chains attribution modeling in a similar way.

This paper offers a new theory that describes the influence of uncertainty on economic fundamentals. This theory posits that uncertainty can improve social welfare. We argue that in an economy, where spending of the customers for the differentiated good correlates with larger substitutability of its varieties, the equilibrium output decreases and the prices increase when uncertainty appears. Alternatively, if such spending and substitutability anti-correlate, the predictions for the price and output changes are reversed. The arguments are based on general equilibrium modeling with the monopolistic competition of firms which produce varieties of the differentiated good under limited information regarding the consumer demand. The impact of uncertainty on the equilibrium is assessed by using the relationship between the weighted elasticity of substitution between varieties, the elasticity of the consumer utility, and the income share spent on the differentiated good.

This paper presents a model of strategic competition between universities that accounts for the existence of positive spillover effect from -education (peer effect). It was demonstrated that in the presence of peer effect strategic competition results in inefficient student allocation between the two universities (biased to the high-quality university) and excessive quality differentiation. The model is used to analyze the implications of government funding policies as well as admission and quality regulation. It was demonstrated that traditional schemes of institutional funding and students’ financial aid programs like tuition fee subsidy, quality investment subsidy, or total cost subsidy reduce social welfare. At the same time, an introduction of provision of tuition-free education for the best students combined with a per-student grant provided to the university improves both students’ and social welfare. It was also demonstrated that tight admission regulation is not socially desirable while the introduction of minimum quality standards makes society better off.

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explain relations between socioeconomic factors and gender longevity gap and to test a number of contradicting theories.

Design/methodology/approach

Fixed effects models are used for cross-country panel data analysis.

Findings

The authors show that in developed countries (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and European Union) a lower gender longevity gap is associated with a higher real GDP per capita, a higher level of urbanization, lower income inequality, lower per capita alcohol consumption and a better ecological environment. An increase in women’s aggregate unemployment rate and a decline in men’s unemployment are associated with a higher gap in life expectancies. There is also some evidence that the effect of the share of women in parliaments has a U-shape; it has a better descriptive efficiency if taken with a four-year lag, which approximately corresponds to the length of political cycles.

Research limitations/implications

Findings are valid only for developed countries.

Practical implications

The findings are important for policy discussions, such as designs of pension schemes, gender-based taxation, ecological, urban, health and labor policy.

Social implications

The factors that increase male and female longevities also reduce the gender longevity gap.

Originality/value

The results contradict to a number of studies for developing countries, which show that lower economic development and greater women discrimination result in a lower gender longevity gap.

In this paper, we study convergence in per capita gross regional products across Russian regions in the period from 1996 to 2017. To this purpose, we estimate growth equations, which are directly derived from a neoclassical growth model, augmented with human capital and migration. To our knowledge, this is the first paper that explicitly applies a neoclassical model to analyze regional convergence process in the Russian case. We also take into account possible spatial effects and do a series of other robustness checks. Our main estimates establish a convergence rate of around 2% per year. While we fail to find any role of human capital for regional economic growth, we find that interregional migration and interdependencies of the growth experience of Russian regions contribute to economic convergence between them.

Set aside procedures in public procurement are those reserved for a sub-class of bidders, such as small and medium enterprises (SMEs) only, as a tool of the preferential treatment of SMEs by many governments. Prior studies and our results indicate these setasides reduce costs of government contracting. If they are cheaper, why should regulations enforce them, and why do so on a limited scale? Using the public database of procurement procedures in the Russian Federation, we first show that SME-focused set-aside procedures indeed attract a larger number of participants and result in a larger rebate for contracting authorities (CA), however the vast majority of CAs strictly prefer non set-aside procedures: the share of set-asides is significantly below the threshold dictated by the Russian regulation. We then turn to factors that make CAs avoid set-asides – these are regional, CA-specific and contract-specific – and relate them to uncertainty and asymmetric information problems, which may be elevated in set-asides and thus counteract the cost-reduction argument. Our findings suggest results on economic benefits of set-aside procedures should be taken with a pinch of salt, and more attention should be paid to perceived risks of procurement from SMEs.    

People differently rank factors they see as important when making decisions with potential environmental impact. Both in a survey and theoretically, we investigate the relative importance of monetary and non-monetary factors and how and whether attitudes to uncertainty affect this ranking. Risk and ambiguity aversion explains the ranking of decision factors that involve uncertainty about future outcomes but often uncertainty is neglected: e.g. possible changes to standards and regulations are seen as a factor of uncertainty, while data manipulation by car manufacturers, as manifested in the recent Dieselgate scandal, is not seen as such. Responses in our sample overwhelmingly reject consumers’ indifference with respect to environmental issues, however when it comes to individual consumption choices, these are strongly dominated by monetary factors. Our data highlight an important role of institutions as collective commitment devices to help promote proenvironmental behaviour.  

Artificial intelligence is having a transformative effect on business world. Among others, legal services industry is susceptible to these transformations, but being a part of the legal system, it adopts novelties more slowly than other service-based industries. The issue of AI acceptance for legal services is widely discussed in Russia. Opportunities and threats of AI implementation are the subjects of academic research, business enquires, experts' assessments, and professional community discussions. Still, all those pieces of evidence are biased by the objectives of specific research and methodology used, mostly have no or little empirical data to ground conclusions on. The absence of empirical evidence on the state-of-theart of AI in legal services and users’ expectations on AI implementation hinders further research in various topics – from legal firms’ management and legal innovations to the lawyering process and access to justice. This paper confirms expert opinions regarding AI technologies and their implementations for legal services, suggesting the cooperation of lawyer and AI in legal service rendering rather than competition. Russian lawyers appear to have the experience of using very advanced AI solutions, including those that are unavailable directly on the Russian market. The expectations of lawyers as users of AI technologies could be described as uncertain, which means that further extension of AI implementation is still a disputable issue.

This article describes major quantitative characteristics of digit ratios and the indicators of subjective well-being based using the RLMS-HSE data set. The index of average satisfaction is constructed and analyzed. Furthermore, the quantitative characteristics of subjective well-being indicators are also covered. These indicators include satisfaction with life, work, wage and economic conditions, and with opportunity for professional growth. The results of regression analysis, graphical presentations, and the specifics of fingers measurements are given in the text. This data article supports our main research article (Nye et al. 2019), published in Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 142, May 1.  

Vocational schools are involved in partnerships with employers to generate extra resources and in the implementation of high-stake accountability reforms in Russia. We examine school capacity in the top-down implementation of performance-related pay (PRP) in Russia. We consider two cases of collaboration between schools and local employers that are either highly or loosely integrated with different companies. We elaborate the understanding of the resource and productivity dimensions of school capacity embedded within the broader context of schools’ formal and informal ties. The findings indicate tensions that emerge in the implementation of a system of rewards with regard to the within schools’ trust and the trust developed with their partners and funders, educational goals, work arrangements, and the distribution of school finances generated in partnerships. These issues can be negotiated with local industrial partners at multiple levels.

This paper investigates the underlying nature of the demand for state support in Russia in the labor market and employment, social investments, and material support. Based on recent findings from social policy studies, the authors tested four different mechanisms: (a) the demographic features of the population, (b) household incomes and disposable assets including human and social capital, (c) interests, and (d) locus of control and cultural attitudes. Drawing on an all-Russian representative monitoring survey conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the Federal Center of Theoretical and Applied Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2018, the authors argue that the popula- tion’s demand for state support has a very complex nature. The relative effect of income has a para- doxical nature. On the one hand, the Russian data confirm the hypothesis of ‘the altruistic rich’, de- veloped in recent studies, which predicts that, in societies with high inequalities, higher incomes boost the likelihood of demand for redistributive policies. On the other hand, higher incomes foster state escapism among those Russians who do not consider the state as a reliable agent capable of solving their problems.

This paper discusses an example of an early childhood development facility intervention in the Khanty-Mansyisk region of the Russian Federation and its potential to produce efficiency gains in the region and the country overall. The government of the region is introducing changes to the built environment of its early childhood development centers. The proposed new design is based on the concept of the learning environment as a third teacher. The smaller footprint of the new buildings will increase the amount of active space per child, and the new design will include energy efficiency measures. The economic impact of these measures will reduce operating costs throughout the lifecycle of the building and provide strong evidence to education policy makers in the rest of the region and the country as a whole in favor of child-centered, healthy, and energy efficient early childhood development infrastructure.

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.

China’s initiative about “One Belt, One Road” could be treated ambiguously. On the one hand, it is intended to transform the newly acquired economic potential of that country into her higher status in the world. China invites a lot of nations to build up gigantic transit corridors by joint efforts, and doing so she applies productively her capital and technologies. International transactions in RMB are also being expanded. But, on the other hand, “One Belt, One Road” is also a necessity for China to cope with some evident problems of her current stage of development, such as industrial overcapacity, overdependence on imports of raw materials from a narrow circle of countries, and a subordinate status in global value chains. For Russia a participation in “One Belt, One Road” may be fruitful, since the very character of that project provides us with a space to manoeuvre. By now, Russian exports to China consist primarily of fuels and other commodities. More active industrial policy is needed to correct this situation. A flexible framework of “One Belt, One Road” is more suitable for this objective to be achieved, rather than traditional forms of regional integration, such as a free trade area.

The article discusses the relationship between dividend policy and the quality of corporate governance. On the one hand, decisions on payout policy can be viewed as a mechanism for resolving agency conflict or substitutes for best corporate governance practices, on the other hand, the quality of corporate governance itself is a determining factor in corporate financial decisions. Empirical literature fids proof for both types of the relationship. This paper aims to analyze different explanations of mixed results. We find a set of factors that can affect the link between corporate governance quality and dividend payouts. We show that in some cases substitution effect can dominate the payout policy, but the more often indicators tend to increase Outcome effect with the increase in their values. Positive addition of operational margin and beta as well as negative effects of ROA and firm size do not contradict to the shareholder’s interests and support the idea that dividends work in combination with corporate governance practices to meet the needs. 

Geographical distance has become less relevant in co-authorship for monodisciplinary research fields such as economics, mathematics, physics. Multidisciplinary fields are influenced by the norms and traditions of other fields. Higher education is a multidisciplinary field of research in which multiple communities operate under different norms and paradigms. We study collaboration patterns in higher education research across different world regions using the Scopus database with the application of the gravity model. Our results show that international collaboration has intensified and increased rapidly in the last two decades. We confirm that the intensity of collaboration is dependent on geographical distance and linguistic commonality. The importance of geographical proximity differs significantly between various world regions. EU scholars appear to give preference to linguistic proximate partners over geographical neighbors. Despite the fact that English is the lingua franca in science, language is not a significant factor for the formation of collaboration for North American researchers. This study contributes to the current discussion on the importance of international collaboration in science, paying special attention to the growing public interest in multidisciplinary research.

Manufacturing today is undergoing fast and fundamental changes due to the introduction of Industry 4.0 technologies. Still, the effects of their applications on the global economic and social structure (in terms of risks and benefits) are highly uncertain. This paper is aimed to suggest a special methodology for conducting industry foresight based on timelines construction, which reflects future vision of technological development, and wild cards detection, which represents an advanced technique for technological trends risk management. In this way, we analyze the existing practices of timelines building and wild cards analysis for industry purposes in the academic literature, and suggest own methodology for conducting industry foresight by using these tools. To demonstrate its application, we choose a particular industry with great potential for technological innovation and high degree of uncertainty – the textile and apparel industry. Finally, we discuss future development of this industry at a national level in the context of global technological trends.

This paper studies the influence of parental involvement in the educational process on the educational achievements of Russian students and their educational strategies, such as studying in high school and successful admission to university. We argue that the patterns of parental involvement represent a link between the formal (school) and informal (family) educational institutions and can have a beneficial effect on academic performance and contribute to the choice of the educational pathway to higher education. Based on data from the longitudinal study ‘Trajectories in Education and Careers’, it was shown that the results of school state examinations are positively associated with the active participation of parents in school meetings, the employment of tutors (except for the Unified State Exam score in mathematics), and the provision of additional literature for the child. A negative relationship was found between homework control and student success. In general, the factor of ‘rational’ (not excessive) involvement is positively associated with educational achievement and educational choice, which may indicate the non-linear nature of the relationship. Parental involvement itself depends on the family characteristics, such as mother’s education, family income and the number of books at home. In addition, family has a positive impact on educational success and educational strategies, and high school characteristics are especially important for the results of the Unified State Exam and the university choice.

This paper uses the parsimonious method of embedding skewness in asset allocation based on the Taylor expansion of the investor utility function up to the third term and maximizing it by portfolio weights. This approach also enables us to consider investor risk aversion. Time-dependent multivariate asset moments are obtained via the GOGARCH volatility model with a normal-inverse Gaussian distribution for the error term. We explore the performance of the usual 2 moment utility and its 3 moment counterpart for a portfolio consisted of twenty assets traded on the Russian stock market. The results demonstrate that the 3 moment utility significantly outperforms the 2 moment utility by SD, MAD and CVaR for low levels of absolute risk aversion and by portfolio returns and investor utility level during the whole forecast period.

Mobility of highly qualified personnel between countries and regions is closely related to the issue of the effective distribution of human resources and the prospects for the innovative development of the state. The focus of this study is the interregional mobility of Russian researchers: the geographical movements of scientists between different regions (subjects of the Russian Federation). The empirical base of the study is the data obtained in 2016-2017 during the questionnaire survey of 1880 Russian researchers. Two main aspects are analyzed: already accomplished movements of researchers (moving for the educational or working purposes) and the “attitude to mobility” - readiness to move in the future. The features of researchers depending on their mobility pattern are analyzed. Among the most researchers who had the experience of moving in the past (both for education and work purposes) develops the “attitude to mobility”. In the future, they are more willing to consider various options for moving both “for interest” (to participate in an important large-scale project), and “for money” (to get the job with acceptable level of remuneration). There exists a category of Russian researchers who are ready to move “anywhere”: both abroad and within Russia, to large and to small cities. Researchers who are not ready to move to the place that they consider as a small town in a remote region, are concerned about the prospects for professional growth, difficulties for the family, a different lifestyle, change of professional and personal social circle. These aspects should be taken into account in the development of various programs and measures aimed to stimulate internal academic mobility in Russia.