Recent Applications of Financial Risk Modelling and Portfolio Management is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research on the use of modern data analysis as well as quantitative methods for developing successful portfolio and risk management techniques. While highlighting topics such as credit scoring, investment strategies, and budgeting, this publication explores diverse models for achieving investment goals as well as improving upon traditional financial modelling methods. This book is ideally designed for researchers, financial analysts, executives, practitioners, policymakers, academicians, and students seeking current research on contemporary risk management strategies in the financial sector.

This book explores Russia’s efforts towards both adapting to and shaping a world in transformation. Russia has been largely marginalized in the post-Cold War era and has struggled to find its place in the world, which means that the chaotic changes in the world present Russia with both threats and opportunities. The rapid shift in the international distribution of power and emergence of a multipolar world disrupts the existing order, although it also enables Russia to diversify it partnerships and restore balance. Adapting to these changes involves restructuring its economy and evolving the foreign policy. The crises in liberalism, environmental degradation, and challenge to state sovereignty undermine political and economic stability while also widening Russia’s room for diplomatic maneuvering. This book analyzes how Russia interprets these developments and its ability to implement the appropriate responses. 

Forest ecosystems, their products and services play an important role in achieving ambitious climate change mitigation objectives at the same time requiring profound adaptation to climate change. Forest management schemes to support climate action have to be developed within their regional context but also have to be aligned with national or EU-level climate, forest and sustainability policies. The conference on “Managing forests in the 21st century” is the final conference of the FORMASAM, REFORCE and FOREXCLIM research projects. The conference bringstogether scientific experts on forest management from all over Europe facing very specific management challenges. The aim isto discuss and improve the understanding the role of forests and forest management in the context of climate change. The conference addresses climate change impacts, as well as needs for mitigation and adaptation especially with regard to the following scientific questions: 1. What are the impacts of climate extremes and disturbances? 2. What are the management challenges (and options) for resilient forests? 3. What can we do to increase the contribution of forest management to climate change mitigation?

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 Guide contains the main indicators of the digital economy for the Russian Federation. Provides information on the use of ICT by individuals and enterprises, the development of e-government, personnel for the digital economy, telecommunications and the development of the ICT sector. International comparisons are shown on  a number of indicators. The handbook includes information from the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat), the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, the Bank of Russia, OECD, Eurostat, ITU, the World Intellectual Property Organisation, and the results of its 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.

Companies have increasingly used the promotion of their products through event marketing. However, empirical evidence on whether the events lead to higher sales is mixed. This study investigates the spillover effects of promotion in sales directly and through increasing popularity for global multiproduct firms. The research is carried out on data of the video game industry and eSports tournaments as events for the period of 1997–2015. The data is collected over 20 years, for product-by-product on game sales, events, genre, and location for all companies of the industry. The method of analysis is panel regression with fixed effects. The results support the positive impact of marketing through events in the videogame industry. A threshold number of about 80 eSports tournaments per year was found. Moreover, the existence of positive cross-product, cross-region, and cross-firm spillover effects was confirmed both for game popularity and sales. Videogames publishers should consider this when designing their promotion strategy.

    Theatrical productions are supposed to be perishable good, since the tickets for a particular play cannot be inventoried and sold after a time of play. In the revenue management of a perishable good price discrimination is widely used. Since the theatre audience is heterogeneous in terms of visit purpose, ability to perceive quality, willingness-to-pay, the strategy of price discrimination is developed in the context of theatre segments. In this paper, we segment consumers of Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre and propose marketing and pricing instruments to manage theatre revenue. Since development of detailed price discrimination strategy requires data on consumer’s purchase history, her behavioral and socio-demographic characteristics, we collect and combine two data sources: data on ticket purchases and data obtained from discrete choice experiment. We modify latent class logit model for joint revealed and stated preferences data where data on consumer characteristics is only partially observed and employ the model to segment the audience. We identify four segments of the theater's audience. The study reveals theatregoers segments with different willingness-to-pay for performance and seat location characteristics. Segmenting allows to develop detailed recommendations on the pricing strategy for various theater audiences.

Next Generation Collections: Insights and Treatment

This paper analyzes the process of renegotiation of the informal contract between the regional and federal elites of Russia after the economic crisis. We use the database of Center of Public Procedures’ “Business against Corruption” to show that, after 2011, regional elites in Russia lost the preexisting opportunity to extract rents from businesses in return for favorable election results for Vladimir Putin and United Russia. We also analyze the connection between the level of corporate raiding in various Russian regions and the political competition, tenure, and ties of their governors. We show that there are two distinct models for fighting raiding in a region: an authoritarian model for suppressing negative signals and a competitive model with the creation of a new consensus among the elites. Although both models are similar in terms of the absence of negative signals, they have very different consequences in the business context of an area.

Purpose. What is the effect of an increase of migration inflows on the R&D and innovative performance of developing countries? The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of migration inflows on the R&D and innovation activity (measured as expenditures on R&D and technological innovations) in Russian regions.

Design/methodology/approach. To this end, the authors use data on 85 Russian regions for the period 2010-2016 through a multi-region economic geography model. In particular, the authors test the hypothesis about the importance of migration inflows on R&D and technological innovation activity (H1) and the hypothesis about the importance of immigrants’ (incoming migrants) human capital (measured by the education level of incoming migrants) on R&D and innovation activity (H2).

Findings. Empirical findings support the evidence in favour of a positive causal link between innovation and migration inflows. Results of our investigation are important because they suggest useful insights for formulating science and innovation policies in Russia, which is a developing country where the recent policies favouring the technological innovation as the transition period have not yet achieved a satisfying outcome.

Originality/value. This paper increases the knowledge in the field with respect to the existing literature, shedding further light on the migration inflows effects, which is a political topic to manage very relevant in all countries.

Trends in the digitalization of business open up opportunities for the use of fundamental approaches to the development of enterprise architecture in the creation of appropriate methodologies. The article discusses the approach to the use of adapted Zachman framework for enterprise architecture as a basis for the systematization and structuring of the industry methodology of integrated supply chain planning based on SCOR model. A practical example of using the proposed approach for description of one of the target processes - tactical supply chain planning is considered.

It is concluded that taking into account the ongoing trend in the digitalization of business, including in the field of integrated supply chain planning, the use of an adapted Zachman framework for enterprise architecture allows solving an important scientific and economic problem of systematization and structuring of industry methodologies.

This study introduces a new international longitudinal database of governmental rental market regulations. The regulations are measured using binary variables based on a thorough analysis of real-time country-specific legislation. Three major restrictive policies are considered: rent control, protection from restriction, and housing rationing. The database covers 101 countries and states between 1910 and 2020. This allows comparisons of regulation intensity across both time and space. The analysis reveals a surge in restrictive policies in the first half of the 20th century. However, following World War II, the evolution of policies diverged: while rent control became more flexible or was phased out, tenure security stabilized at a high level or even increased, while housing rationing became used less frequently.

The Basel III regulation raised the minimum capital requirements for banks. However, its implementation may not have reduced systemic risks. Academicians investigating optimal banking regulations do not have a consensus on whether to increase or decrease capital requirements. Here, we use the agent-based approach to study capital regulation and its implications on the evolution of the banking system. We chose the Russian banking system to proxy key model parameters. We find that lower capital requirements imply higher financial stability than the Basel III regime, where the regulator requires banks to have capital over 10% of its risk-weighted assets’ amount. However, the regulatory rule to merely have a non-negative capital is the simplest solution that best fits heterogeneous economies. It produces the highest ratio of capital to assets, the least number of bank bankruptcies, and the lowest demand of banks to enter the interbank market to cover liquidity problems for all systems.

One of the most dynamically changing parts of the labor market relates to information technologies. Skillsets demanded by employers in this sphere vary across different industries, organizations and even certain vacancies. The educational system in the most cases lags behind such changes, so that obsolete skillsets are being taught. This article proposes an algorithm of skillsets identification that allows us to extract skills that are needed by companies from different occupational groups in the information technologies sector. Using the unstructured online-vacancies database for the Russian regional labor market, skills are extracted and unified with the use of TF-IDF and n-grams approaches. As a result, key specific skillsets for various occupations are found. The proposed algorithm allows us to identify and standardize key skills which might be applicable to create a system of Russian classification for occupations and skills. In addition, the algorithm allows us to provide lists of the key combinations of skills that are in high demand among companies inside each particular occupation.

Using the experience and results of our eight-year-long study of the strategic actions of Russian manufacturing subsidiaries of multinational enterprises (MNEs), we argue that the existing definitions of phenomenon-based research (PBR), offered by Von Krogh et al. (2012, 278), Doh (2015, 609), and Schwarz and Stensaker (2016, 245), are incomplete as such definitions omit the key aim of ―capturing, documenting, and conceptualizing an observed phenomenon of interest in order to facilitate knowledge creation and advancement‖—the discovery of missing or omitted element(s)/properties in the existing studies of real-word phenomena. These elements or properties may not always be important, however, in some cases, their discovery may lead to theory advancement theory by incorporating the missing elements into existing theories and models.

We introduce a class of new centrality indices in networks which take into account a para meter of a node, direct and indirect (with fixed length of the path) connections of nodes, and a group influence of nodes to a node. Total influence is evaluated as a linear combination of its components, however, other rules can be used as well.

The article proposes a methodology for using macro-level stress testing based on the results of business tendency surveys to study possible scenarios for the development of crisis dynamics triggered by external unforeseen supply and demand shocks, as in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as a review of existing approaches in the field of stress testing and building stress indices with an emphasis on methods based on vector autoregressive models and their various modifications. The basis for empirical calculations is data from business tendency surveys of the leaders of Russian manufacturing enterprises, reflecting their combined estimates of the current state of business activity. Based on the results of business tendency surveys, four composite indices were formed reflecting various aspects of business activity of enterprises: demand index, production index, finance index and employment index. Index values calculated monthly from 2008 to March 2020 were used to build the Bayesian vector autoregressive model (BVAR). This model was used to predict the dynamics of indices under the condition of four possible shock scenarios: short-term shock, V-shaped shock, W-shaped shock and U-shaped shock. Moreover, for each of the scenarios, cases of a shock of demand, a shock of production, and a simultaneous shock of demand and production were separately considered. The results indicated the key role of demand in the dynamics of all the indices under consideration, the W-shaped shock, as the worst of the considered scenarios, as well as the relatively greater sensitivity of the employment index to the demand index and the finance index to the production index.

This paper investigates the influence of individual mobility on consumer choice in the mobile phone market. The aim is to understand whether consumer mobility influences the switching of an individual to another tariff within one mobile operator. Data were obtained from 1,154 mobile phone users of one of the largest mobile operators in Russia for the period from November 2011 to November 2012. Customers had limited choices in fast and low-cost switching from one operator to another. Hence, we use data of users switching between tariffs within one operator. The data were analyzed by a mixed logit model which is applied to a discrete choice from a variety of disordered alternatives. This solves the restriction of the standard logit model by allowing for random taste variation. We developed three mobility metrics limiting the drawbacks of established metrics. The results show that mobility does influence consumer choices. Tariff plans differ from each other according to the categories of people that use them. Subscriber mobility is one of the features that separate these categories. There are tariffs preferred by highly mobile people, and those that are preferred by people with low mobility. When the individual’s mobility changes, it is highly likely that she will switch to another tariff plan. Mobile operators should take consumer mobility into account when analyzing consumer behavior to increase retention rates.

The article provides an overview of the Islamic finance market in Russia. It accumulated data on 30+ Islamic finance institutions and products launched between 2010 and 2019, including discontinued ones. The range includes banks, non-banking microfinance institutions, mutual investment funds, housing cooperatives, investment companies and others. The article provides the author’s assessment of the market size and its dynamics between 2011 and 2019. It analyzes the range of Islamic finance products rendered by the market players, including the industry break down of certain Islamic finance companies. The article summarizes the results of the survey, conducted among the owners and managers of the Islamic finance institutions. It shows the range of opinions regarding the lack of market special regulation and elicits factors influencing the market and impeding its development. The main legal and tax hurdles for the Islamic finance market, in Russia, are analyzed. The results show that the market is still not mature and lacks internal competition. The geographical reach of Islamic financial services is limited. Despite the lack of Islamic banking law, the market size is comparable to that of Kazakhstan. The lack of market regulation is a negative side that holds back the potential newcomers and clients, and, on the contrary, the relative market freedom allows the existing companies to experiment and make use of the emerging niche segment. There is an acute necessity of a tax-friendly regime for murabaha financing and mudaraba-based investment accounts, and a level playing field concerning the mechanisms of state subsidies. Among potential solutions that could contribute to the market development is the creation of a self-regulatory organization that could establish internal standards, develop liquidity management tools and create a proper mediation of arbitrage system, as well as organize takaful funds. Based on the analysis, the author makes a forecast for further market development.

This study determines the effectiveness of using assessments and expectations of economic agents in the analysis of macroeconomic development. The paper tests the hypothesis of the cyclical interaction between economic growth and entrepreneurial behaviour. The authors used the composite economic sentiment indicator (ESI), which combined the confidence indicators of all sectoral business and consumer surveys by the Federal State Statistic Service and the Higher School of Economics reflecting the aggregate sentiment and expectations of approximately 24 thousand entrepreneurs and 5 thousand consumers. The empirical relationship and joint cyclical sensitivity of ESI and GDP growth time series are revealed based on cross-correlations, statistical filtering, a long-term linear regression, and through a two-dimensional vector autoregression model. This model is used further for GDP growth until the end of 2021. Forecasting considers the expected impact of new corona crisis shocks for the Russian economy, which have been growing since March 2020, on the aggregate economic sentiment. The forecasting results show the expected sharp decline in the GDP dynamics in mid-2020 after coronavirus containment measures and a tremendous drop in oil prices, then a slow and unstable recovery in GDP growth by the end of 2021 only to the level of Q4 2019.

There is an established tradition in soccer society, for both soccer fans and club managers to value forwards more than defensive players. However, the soccer rules imply an equally important role of goals scored and goals conceded in a team win. This paper employs these facts to formulate the research hypothesis of undervalued defensive, compared to offensive actions, by professional soccer clubs, known as Moneyball phenomenon in sports economics literature. To test our hypothesis, we use two separate data sets at team and player level (1,224 and 776 observations correspondingly) from two seasons (2017-2019) of the German Bundesliga. We estimate the two groups of models with a dependent variable being, correspondingly, an indicator of win and a market value. We keep the set of controls as similar as possible to make the results of the two groups of models comparable with each other, in terms of a relative contribution of offensive and defensive actions. Offensive actions are measured by shots and key passes, while tackles, interceptions and clearances stay for defensive actions variables. All the key variables are normalized, and the resulting estimates demonstrate both “absolute” and “relative” Moneyball in offense vs defense in different model specifications. This is the first introduction of a term and method of a “relative” Moneyball, to our knowledge. In addition, our results show that there is room for improvement for Bundesliga clubs’ cost of win efficiency, in redistributing funds from offense to defense, at least to some extent.

Experimental studies rarely consider the shape and nature of the education production function, which is useful for deriving optimal levels of input substitution in increasingly resource constrained environments. Because of the rapid expansion of EdTech as a substitute for traditional learning around the world and against the backdrop of full-scale temporary substitution due to the coronavirus pandemic, we explore the educational production function by using a large randomized controlled trial that varies dosage of computer-assisted learning (CAL) as a substitute for traditional learning. Results show production is concave in CAL. Moving from zero to a low level of CAL, the marginal rate of technical substitution (MRTS) of CAL for traditional learning is greater than one. Moving from a lower to a higher level of CAL, production remains on the same or a lower isoquant and the MRTS is equal to or less than one. The estimates are consistent with the general form of a Cobb-Douglas production function and imply that a blended approach of CAL and traditional learning is optimal. The findings have direct implications for the rapidly expanding use of educational technology worldwide and its continued substitution for traditional learning.

This paper investigates the drivers, barriers, and benefits that can be associated with management decisions regarding the implementation of digital technologies in Russian manufacturing enterprises. The empirical basis of the study is the results of the business tendencies surveys for 2018 and 2019. Potential factors for the introduction of digital technologies were divided into three groups: drivers of business activity (production and economic parameters), drivers of digital activity (parameters characterizing the level of enterprise involvement in digital processes) and barriers, preventing the enterprise from transitioning to digital transformation. In the first part, regression analysis is used to identify the relevant factors among the drivers and barriers. In the second part, the benefits expected by enterprise managers from the implementation of individual digital technologies are revealed. Significant drivers are the number of specialists working in the enterprise in the field of information and communication technology (ICT), the presence of a developed strategy in the field of digital technologies, involvement in the government’s digital agenda, and a positive perception of the economic situation at the enterprise by its management. Among the expected benefits, the most important are the optimization of production and logistics operations, increasing the level of customer service and expanding the customer base.

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.  

Multilevel modeling (MLM, also known as hierarchical linear modeling, HLM) is a methodological frameworkwidely usedin the social sciences to analyze data with a hierarchical structure,where lower units of aggregation are ‘nested’ in higher units, including longitudinal data.In economics, however, MLM is usedvery rarely.Instead, economists use separate econometric techniques including cluster-robust standard errors and fixedeffects models. In this paper, we reviewthe methodological literature and contrast the econometrictechniques typically used in economics with the analysis ofhierarchical data using MLM. Ourreview suggests that economic techniques are generally lessconvenient, flexible, and efficientcompared to MLM. Theimportant limitation of MLM, however, isits inability to deal with the omitted variable problem at the lowest level of data, while standard economic techniques may be complemented by quasi-experimental methods mitigatingthis problem.It is unlikely, though, that this limitation can explain and justify the rare use of MLM in economics.Overall, we conclude that MLM has been unreasonably ignored in economics,and we encourage economists to apply this frameworkbyproviding ‘when and how’ guidelines.

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.