The publication was carried out within the framework of a joint project of HSE University and the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences for the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the USSR / Russia and the Republic of Indonesia. The project heads are Dr. Evgeny Kanaev (HSE University) and Dr. Dmitry Mosyakov (IOS RAS).

The 10-Point Action Plan to catalyse a Circular Bioeconomy of Wellbeing is a call for collective and integrated action to global leaders, investors, companies, scientists, governments, nongovernmental and intergovernmental organisations, funding agencies and society at large to put the world on a sustainable path. The Plan is guided by new scientific insights and breakthrough technologies from a number of disciplines and sectors. It is articulated around six transformative action points (1–6) and four enabling action points (7–10), which mutually reinforce each other and need to be implemented in an integrated manner.

Contents Authors................................................................................................................................ 7 Acknowledgements............................................................................................................9 Executive summary ........................................................................................................... 11 1. Introduction....................................................................................................................13 Riccardo Valentini, Pekka Leskinen, Pieter Johannes Verkerk, Gert-Jan Nabuurs, George Safonov and Elena Kulikova 2. State of Russian forests and forestry............................................................................17 Dmitry Zamolodchikov, Anatoly Shvidenko, Sergey Bartalev, Elena Kulikova, Alexander Held, Riccardo Valentini and Marcus Lindner 2.1 Major characteristics of Russian forests..........................................................17 2.2 Natural forest disturbances.............................................................................. 21 2.3 Forest governance and use..............................................................................26 2.4 Ecosystem functions and services of Russia’s forests....................................28 2.5 Key challenges in forest resource management..............................................35 2.6 Key messages.................................................................................................... 38 3. Climate change in Russia – past, present and future................................................. 45 Riccardo Valentini, Dmitry Zamolodchikov, Christopher Reyer, Sergio Noce, Monia Santini and Marcus Lindner 3.1 Observed changes of Russian climate in recent decades.............................. 45 3.2 Climate change scenarios................................................................................48 3.3 Key messages.....................................................................................................51 4. Climate change and Russian forests: impacts, vulnerability and adaptation needs... 53 Christopher Reyer, Marcus Lindner, Dmitry Zamolodchikov, Anatoly Shvidenko, Martin Gutsch and Sergey Bartalev 4.1 Observed impacts of climate change...............................................................53 4.2 Projected impacts.............................................................................................56 4.3 Vulnerability assessment................................................................................. 61 4.4 Adaptation needs............................................................................................. 64 4.5 Key messages....................................................................................................67

5. Climate-Smart Forestry in Russia and potential climate change mitigation benefits.............................................................................................................................. 73 Bas Lerink, Mariana Hassegawa, Alexander Kryshen, Anton Kovalev, Eldar Kurbanov, Gert-Jan Nabuurs, Sergei Moshnikov and Pieter Johannes Verkerk 5.1 Introduction...................................................................................................... 73 5.2 Approach and general scenario assumptions.................................................74 5.3 Case study: Republic of Karelia.......................................................................78 5.4 Case study: Republic of Mari El.......................................................................84 5.5 Case study: Angara macro-district (Krasnoyarsk kray).................................. 91 5.6 Concluding remarks, discussion and implications....................................... 98 5.7 Key messages...................................................................................................101 6. The role of the bioeconomy in climate change mitigation in Russia..................... 105 Pekka Leskinen, Jo Van Brusselen, Mariana Hassegawa, Alexander Alekseev, Natalia Lukina, Olga Rakitova, George Safonov, Elena Kulikova and Mikhail Safonov 6.1 Introduction.................................................................................................... 105 6.2 The bioeconomy concept in Russia...............................................................106 6.3 The link between bioeconomy and climate change mitigation.................. 107 6.4 State of Russian forest industry and potential for bioeconomy................... 111 6.5 Sectoral development and outlook................................................................. 113 6.6 Summary and conclusions: Opportunities and challenges for a bioeconomy in Russia.....................................................................................123 6.7 Key messages...................................................................................................125 7. Conclusions.................................................................................................................. 131 Pekka Leskinen, Jo Van Brusselen, Marcus Lindner, Gert-Jan Nabuurs, Pieter Johannes Verkerk, Natalia Lukina, Sergey Bartalev and Elena Kulikova 7.1 Forest resources............................................................................................... 131 7.2 Climate change impacts, adaptation and mitigation....................................132 7.3 Forest management........................................................................................ 133 7.4 Enabling environment for a bioeconomy......................................................134 7.5 Holistic view.................................................................................................... 135 7.6 Key messages and next steps ........................................................................ 136

The Law and Policy of New Eurasian Regionalization: Economic Integration, Trade, and Investment in the Post-Soviet and Greater Eurasian Space makes several unique contributions to the literature. First and foremost, most of the current literature is in either economics or politics, with only a secondary focus on legal and institutional matters. Secondly, and consequently, the book is accessible and relevant to readers both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the boundaries of the Eurasian area: not only geographical boundaries, but also legal, geopolitical, geoeconomic, cultural, and, indeed, disciplinary boundaries. Drawing on international, transnational, and comparative legal scholarship, this rich volume offers the insights by a plethora of leading international scholars in economics, institutional theory, area studies, international relations, global political economy, political science, and sociology. The contributors come from four corners of the globe, including Asia, Europe, and North America.

The article focuses on the differences of medium-sized companies’ management methods: on the one hand, from companies in small (micro) business, and on the other hand, from large companies. The application of the method was tested at a medium-sized poultry farm. The analysis of projects of the real program was made, the network model of the program was built, and the probability of projects’ and the program at all success was estimated. The evaluation of the program indicators allowed the authors to make conclusions about priorities of separate projects. The proposed approach can be used in various companies, regardless of industry affiliation

The economies of Central and Eastern Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia (CEECCA) grew at a varying pace in 2000–2019, with an average rate of 6.5 percent per annum (GDP, PPP). This economic progress was accompanied by some positive changes in environmental performance, but not in all areas and not in all countries in the region.

This book, a philosophical consideration of Soviet socialism, is not meant simply to revisit the communist past; its aim, rather, is to witness certain zones where capitalism’s domination is resisted—the zones of countercapitalist critique, civil society agencies, and theoretical provisions of emancipation or progress—and to inquire to what extent those zones are in fact permeated by unconscious capitalism and thus unwittingly affirm the capitalist condition.

By means of the philosophical and politico-economical consideration of Soviet socialism of the 1960 and 1970s, this book manages to reveal the hidden desire for capitalism in contemporaneous anticapitalist discourse and theory. The research is marked by a broad cross-disciplinary approach based on political economy, philosophy, art theory, and cultural theory that redefines old Cold War and Slavic studies’ views of the post-Stalinist years, as well as challenges the interpretations of this period of historical socialism in Western Marxist thought.

The bond market is a key securities market and emerging economies present exciting, new investment opportunities. This timely book provides insights into these emerging bond markets through empirical models and analytical databases, i.e. Bloomberg, Eikon Refinitiv and the Russian Cbonds.

The book looks at the dynamics of the development of emerging bond markets, their competitiveness, features and patterns using macro and micro level data. It also takes into consideration various securities type i.e. government, corporate, sub-federal and municipal bonds, to identify respective challenges and risks. The book also analyses factors that may inhibit or stimulate a well-balanced financial market. It includes case studies of Asian, Latin American and Russian bond markets, as also as cross-country comparisons.

It will be a useful reference for anyone who is interested to learn more of the bond market and the modelling techniques for critical data analysis.

The international scientific and practical conference “DIGITAL FINANCE 2020” is the successor of the annual international round table “Financial technologies in the digital economy: problems and prospects of development in the world and Russia”, which was held at the faculty of Economics for two consecutive years (2018, 2019). Traditionally, the event was organized by the Department “Finance and credit” Faculty of Economics, RUDN. The event was co-organized by the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, the Faculty of Business and information technology of the University “Turan-Astana” and National University of Science and Technology MISIS. This book addresses the processes of digitalization in various areas of Finance. We presented selected papers from the conference where we discussed a lot of important questions and points of three main sections issues: - “Institutions and markets in the digital environment”, - “Corporate and public finance and control in the digital environment”, - “Financial innovations, engineering, monetary systems and financial regulatory policies”.

This publication is the culmination of the 16th International Scientific Conference entitled “Human Potential Development” (HPD). The conference was held in Łódź between May the 28th–30th, 2019, and was patronized by the Associate Professor Tomasz Czapla, the Dean of the Faculty of Management at the University of Łódź, and also by the International Academic Network HPD CEEUS. The international nature of the conference resulted in ten articles in this publication being written in five languages, with English being the leading language of the conference. The aim of the conference was the international exchange of knowledge in the field of HPD in the context of the latest, theoretical and practical solutions, with particular emphasis on the need to create, motivate and develop the driving force of organizational changes – employees and managers. It was assumed that this goal would be implemented within three conference working areas: 1) using and developing human potential, 2) new challenges within the mentioned area, and 3) developing models and practices related to human potential and human resource management. The concept of HPD is common in the international human resource management literature, which emphasises its strategic dimension, and combines organizational and social goals with the promotion of a competitive advantage based on the human capital concept. At the same time, this strategic dimension is inseparably accompanied by the focus on the needs, aspirations, growth and development of people. As a consequence of the implementation of both dimensions, the creation of a learning and development culture has been observed as an inherent feature of training planning and implementation, as well as the creation of personal, employee and citizen development programs. Each of the authors presents different viewpoints within their HPD research, but the common theme of all findings and considerations were the expectations, decisions and behaviors of people in specific contexts of economic reality. The publication opens with an article by the British author William Chambers, a retired professor at Hope University in Liverpool, a longtime charity 12 • Introduction community activist in the UK. He presents examples and types of difficult working conditions, which sometimes lead to dysfunctional behaviors of volunteers, employees and managers of these organizations. The author describes the associated human resource (HR) management practices as well as the context in which they are used. It is worth noting the summary of the article, which is an attempt to answer questions about the specificity of charitable organizations, actors performing their roles, the essence of managing these organizations and the importance of estimating personnel risk. A team of Lithuanian researchers, including Irena Bakanauskiene, Rita Bendaravićiene and Inesa Daugintaite, refers to the important issue of happiness in the workplace and its multidimensionality. This topic is presented using the example of research results from teachers. Although all dimensions and attributes of employee happiness are important for the surveyed employees, reality does not meet employee expectations – especially in the area of motivation and remuneration systems. The importance of employee communication competences for the quality of services in the public and non-profit sectors is presented by Barbara Batko, who indicates some features of socially useful information, the development of which requires specific and universal competences for the purposes of handling the communication process. It is worth noting that these are well known and important components of human capital, that is, adequate knowledge, the ability to think critically or search for cause and effect relationships. Martina Grófová allows the audience to consider the possibility of implementing the principles of a circular economy in Slovakia. This is one of the possibilities of transition from serial production to production based on customer value, but with a more rational use of resources and reduction of the negative impact on the environment of manufactured products. However, it is worth paying attention to the need to build consumer awareness in this new reality and the responsibility of companies in this matter. Shaping customer relationships in e-commerce is a key corporate responsibility. Justyna Majchrzak-Lepczyk is able to highlight the purchasing process of e-customers and presents the results of her own research in this area. It is worth paying attention to the essence of employee competences and their ability to read the needs of e-buyers. A research team consisting of Zdenko Stacho, Katarína Stachová and Martina Grófová draws attention to the importance and openness of communication as an instrument of engaging human resources in order to maintain organizational competitiveness in the context of the speed of market changes and Introduction • 13 their nature. What is interesting is the informal communication and information technology (IT) support highlighted by the authors. Vladimir Šulc and Petr Jedinák take up the subject of the requirement to increase IT security of the information flow in the context of its integration with the legislative environment of the European Union, exemplified by the Czech Republic. The authors emphasize the increased vulnerability of IT systems to dangers in the network and the role of programmers in securing it. Based on two surveys and a series of interviews in the business service sector, Robert Marciniak presents Hungarian experience in the field of the impact of technological progress on the automation of service processes. The author discusses the resistance and expectations of employees towards the described trend. Evgeniy Borisovich Morgunov and Igor Borisovich Gurkov present the results of research on the production plants of foreign corporations operating in Russia. They show the features and processes of human resource management. The context of the described solutions and the indicated tensions between East and West are presented. We conclude with the consideration of Jiří Stýblo, who draws attention to the impact of digitization and automation on HR processes and the work environment which are changing the skill requirements of HR specialists and managers. This publication is intended for readers who want to expand their knowledge of the essence of building the capacity of individuals, teams and societies in a comprehensive and non-trivial way. At the same time, it encourages reflection and a holistic view of the phenomenon of human potential. I encourage you to read the aforementioned conference papers.

This book studies complex systems with elements represented by random variables. Its main goal is to study and compare uncertainty of algorithms of network structure identification with applications to market network analysis. For this, a mathematical model of random variable network is introduced, uncertainty of identification procedure is defined through a risk function, random variables networks with different measures of similarity (dependence) are discussed, and general statistical properties of identification algorithms are studied. The volume also introduces a new class of identification algorithms based on a new measure of similarity and prove its robustness in a large class of distributions, and presents applications to social networks, power transmission grids, telecommunication networks, stock market networks, and brain networks through a theoretical analysis that identifies network structures. Both researchers and graduate students in computer science, mathematics, and optimization will find the applications and techniques presented useful.

 

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.

After its post-independence economic and social transformation, the healthcare system of Tajikistan has been shifting from a centrally planned, hospital, and specialist-focused model to a primary oriented care delivery system. Since 2010 the government of the Republic of Tajikistan has been implementing the National Health Strategy aimed at improving the population’s health. Significantly reformed medical education is a major prerequisite for changing and defining a new landscape of Tajik medicine that could provide the local population with high-quality health care services. The ongoing medical education state reform involves the restructuring of undergraduate, postgraduate education, and continuing professional development programs in compliance with the recommendations of the World Medical Education Federation. This article gives a brief overview of the history and heritage of Persian-Tajik medicine and helps to retrace its evolution throughout the centuries until modern times. The authors describe the current state of the Tajik medical education system as well as the complexities and controversies, milestones, and the primary outcomes of the medical education reform implemented as part of the National Health Strategy.

 

As an exogenous antecedent of national innovation performance, culture has been receiving significant attention in cross-cultural research. However, relying primarily on Hofstede’s framework of national culture, this research has so far been predominantly inclined to treating culture as a collection of independent dimensions, thereby ignoring the complex notion of culture profiles that refer to distinctive patterns of interrelated dimensions, which cannot be considered in isolation, but only in combination. Employing the lens of neo-configurational theory and with the support of the fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), the present study aims to fill this gap by exploring how multiple Hofstede’s dimensions interact and combine to influence national innovation performance. In this way, this study goes beyond the existing theory and empirical evidence about the relationship between distinctive culture profiles and innovation performance at national level, while broadening our understanding more generally about how to conceptualize and operationalize culture in business research.

The modern world economy is characterized by such factors as capital mobility, intensification of production processes and cash flows. In such circumstances, it is particularly important for economic entities to understand all possible legal consequences of their operations. Financial policy should be formed by public legal entities, taking into account the guarantees of avoiding unjustified financial, economic and other barriers to the development of the world economy and international trade. The BRICS countries, which have a huge potential for building and developing close economic ties, have different and sometimes contradictory law enforcement and legislative approaches. Such contradictions are most acute in the tax sphere, currency, administrative and customs relations. The current international legal framework seeks to bring legal regulation closer to comparable or uniform rules.

This article studies the dynamic properties of the reinvestment risk premium in the UK and RF government bond markets. In a new interest rate environment when sovereign debt trades at a low and even negative yields and bond funds are struggling to earn sufficient returns, bond investors have become increasingly wary of reinvestment risk largely neglected previously. The reinvestment risk premium is quantified on the basis of replicating portfolios and further analyzed with respect to exposure to exogenous influence with the help of cointegration techniques. The findings are that in both markets investors recognize the significance of reinvestment risk. However, there are differences in the sensitivity of the reinvestment risk premium to exogenous indicators. In the UK government bond market investors tend to be guided by more conservative indicators but are ready to forecast in the medium-run; in the RF government bond market investors tend to be guided by less conservative indicators but are ready to forecast only in the short-run.

This article considers the Function Point Analysis (APF) as a tool to justify prices and specify liabilities for the development of a digital project, since each new project in the company is analyzed. The information acquired during the analysis forms the basis for the adoption of critical decisions regarding complexity, resources, frames, deadlines, expenses, etc. Even strictly defined designs can fall into later stages without an accurate analytical method. Reducing the risks of software projects is the most important issue. In general, this starts with the definition of exact measures in relation to the scale, productivity, duration, quality and other important performance of the project efficiency. Advanced methods of analysis, such as FPA, provide clear presentation of each these metrics related mainly with the amount of project, personnel, expenses and time, which supports management, control, adjustment of software development at early stages of planning.

Objective: The objective of the article is to prove the empirical and predictive value of the aggregate opinions of businesses and households for expanding cyclical macroeconomic data in Russia, especially during the coronavirus shocks.

Research Design & Methods: We use qualitative information from surveys that cover about 24,000 organizations and 5,100 households in all Russian regions. The total economic sentiment indicator (TESI) combines information on 18 survey-based indicators. Cross-correlation analysis, Hodrick-Prescott filtering, and a vector autoregressive (VAR) model with dummy variables are used as the research methods.

Findings: The study confirms an almost synchronous cyclic conformity of the gross domestic product (GDP) growth and TESI dynamics for the period of 1998-2020. Probable GDP growth until the end of 2021 is estimated based on the expected impulses in the TESI dynamics, including those due to the sudden impact of the coronavirus.

Implications & Recommendations: Assessments of business and household of their activity are reliable and available much earlier than quantitative statistics on GDP growth. Therefore, it is advisable to use them as an early warning system about economic growth and take them into account in policymaking.

Contribution & Value Added: We are the first to confirm the effectiveness and reliability of TESI as a leading indicator of GDP growth in Russia, using data from large-scale business surveys and with a focus on crisis shocks.

This paper evaluates the design of current contractual incentive mechanisms in Russian universities after recent significant contractual reforms in the national academic sector. We employ the theoretical framework of incentive contracts in order to identify and assess performance measures of university faculty determining the total income received from teaching, research and administrative duties. We show that for the entire sample, faculty salary is positively associated with publication activity. Teaching is significant only for the entire sample, but not significant for research-oriented universities and HEIs with no special status. Administrative duties (expressed in the position held) are positively related to faculty pay: the largest effect is for rectors and vice-rectors, but for deans and heads of departments or laboratories the effect is also strong. Heads of universities and structural units receive a significant bonus for their administrative position. For research-oriented universities the largest effect in publication activity is for the number of papers in high ranking journals. In universities with no research status we discovered a significant gender gap: the male faculty earn more than their female colleagues. There is a positive linear relationship between salary and seniority for the entire sample and in universities with no special status.

Editorial to the journal special issue devoted to professor Sergei Artemievich Aivazian.

The relationship between internationalization and performance has attracted researchers’ attention for more than 40 years, producing contradictory results. Research on emerging-market (EM) multinationals’ performance has not added much clarity to the issue. Although contingency theory is widely applied in management research to explain superior organizational performance as a direct result of a “fit” between structure, strategy and environment, there has been little effort in extending the notion of strategy-structure-environment fit to include internationalization. We address this limitation by offering a comprehensive analysis of Russian internationalized firms’ performance that reflects the complexity of strategic and structural changes Russian firms make during internationalization. We use survey data on 213 predominantly private and mature firms to examine whether the alignment of a multitude of strategic and structural choices in a specific context matters for subsequent performance. We apply a fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) and find several distinct types of “fit” that positively affect Russian internationalized firms’ performance.

Economic and sociological research that touches upon the determinants of alcohol consumption is mostly centered on the traditional factors of human capital (e.g., education). While much attention is given to education as a valid instrument to reduce alcohol misuse, less is given to the impact of non-cognitive skills. Data are collected from a nationally representative Russian panel survey, 2016–2018. We estimate a random-effects probit model for the probability of abstinence and a random-effects tobit model with a Heckman correction for the volume of alcohol consumption. Non-cognitive skills are consistent predictors of drinking in Russia. In both genders, conscientiousness and extraversion have strong connections to the probability and the volume of alcohol consumption, while openness to experience and neuroticism only affect the volume. The estimates for education differ substantially when the Big Five variables are excluded from the model, which suggests that a major part of the effect of education on alcohol consumption patterns may be mediated through non-cognitive skills. Although educational interventions are often seen as a method of solving excessive drinking problems, introducing personality traits into the analysis raises the question of the effectiveness of such interventions.

A genuine measure of an ex-ante credit risk links borrowers’ financial position with the odds of default. Comprehension of borrower’s financial position is proxied by the derivatives of its filled financial statements, i.e. financial ratios. To measure an ex-ante credit risk, one needs a forward-looking estimate. We identify statistically significant relationships between the shortlisted financial ratios and the subsequent default events. To estimate the odds of the borrower to default on its obligations, we simulate its probability of default at a horizon of one year. We horse run the constructed PD model against the alternative measures of ex-ante credit risk that the related literature on bank risk-taking widely uses: credit quality groups and credit spreads in interest rates. We compare the results obtained with the PD model, and with the alternative approaches. We find that the PD model predicts the default event more accurately at a horizon of one year. We conclude that the developed measure of ex-ante credit risk is feasible for estimating the risk-taking behaviour by banks and analysing the shifts in portfolio composition with the sufficient degree of granularity. The model could be used in applied research as the tool for measuring ex-ante credit risk based on micro level data (credit registry).

This paper represents the empirical analysis of existing gender differentiation in labour income in the Republic of Kazakhstan. Research is performed on micro data of annual tests of households conducted by the Committee on Statistics of the Ministry of the National Economy of the Republic Kazakhstan. On the whole, scales of gender differences in wages in the Kazakhstan labour market are comparable with similar evaluations in other countries. In Kazakhstan, the proportion of wages of women to men is 69%. For the last 15 years, the reduction of difference in the salary, by gender, was caused by changes in the gender structure of employment. The results of the evaluation of the segregation indexes testify about the recess of the situation connected with segregation of the labour market in Kazakhstan.  A decomposition of the distinction in annual average labour incomes between men and women, carried out by the method of Oaxaka-Blinder, showed that gender segregation explains that more than thirds of observable differences in wages between men and women. This is not offset by the higher level of accumulated human capital of women. However, 80% of gender distinctions in wages remain unexplained, apart from being related to the existing discrimination against women in the labour market in Kazakhstan.

This paper explores the black box behind efficiency measurements in higher education and define the determinants of university efficiency. Particularly, it investigates how the efficiency of universities is affected by the characteristics of the territory in which they operate. We propose an analysis that combines two perspectives: 1) the resource dependence theory, suggesting that the location of university can determine the amount of resources available to it; 2) institutional isomorphism, according to which the characteristics of other higher education institutions located in the same area may shape the university production function and the efficiency of its operations. In order to test this framework we use the data on Russian universities and non-parametric conditional order-m efficiency estimator with two categories of exogenous variables. The first group includes the social, economic and cultural characteristics of the region where the university is located. The second set includes the characteristics of other higher education institutions located in the same region. Our findings highlight that the managerial efficiency of universities is strongly associated with the characteristics of the environment in which they operate

Using data from official manufacturing censuses, we compare labour productivity in Great Britain and the Russian Empire around 1908. We find that Russia’s labour productivity was at 81.9 per cent of the U.K. level. Russia’s productivity was on a par with France’s and significantly superior to Italy’s. We also find that the majority of Russian industries underperformed British ones. However, the industries that had been established or modernised during the state-induced industrialisation policies of the 1890s, such as the Southern metallurgy, performed on a par with their British counterparts. Russia’s alcohol, tobacco, and petrochemical sectors outperformed their British equivalents. Our findings suggest a revision of the view that, at the turn of the 20th century, Russian manufacturing was economically underdeveloped.

Since the beginning of 2020, the entire world is fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. At the end of November 2020 this is an unfinished story and nobody knows when and how exactly this very dramatic threat to human health and life will be defeated. Meanwhile the pandemic has also had serious economic and social consequences. Below we discuss key dilemmas faced by economic policies in all countries affected by the pandemic.

In this paper we present evidence for the influence of religion on demand for the government intervention in Russia. We use a 2011 representative survey of Russian regions which includes about 33,200 respondents. We show that declared religiosity is positively related to the fact that respondent will not choose the “Western way” of economic development. Additionally, active participation in the life of the religious community is negatively connected to support the of redundant product safety audits. We validate our findings by using the density of different religious denominations in Russian regions in 1897 as an instrument. Overall, our results confirm that in Russia, declared religiosity affects political preferences. Moreover, the religious community acts as a club good, where adherence to attitudes and rituals leads to a substitution of government intervention

This paper describes an approach to measuring the gross domestic expenditures on the development of the digital economy. International attempts to define the digital economy and research expenditures on it are considered. As part of the methodology’s development, key definitions were presented: digital economy, digital technologies, and digital economy costs. Based on international experience, as well as on the specifics of Russian statistics, a methodology of measurement for the expenditures on the digital economy was proposed. The structure of the obtained indicator is multidimensional, which makes it possible to evaluate both the indicator as a whole and its sections. The proposed methodology involved making modifications to existing questionnaires and the first estimates based on them were made in 2020. The results of the study made it possible to estimate the domestic expenditures on the development the digital economy in comparison with the set goals approved by the national program «Digital Economy of the Russian Federation». In addition, the multidimensionality of the indicator revealed those areas of the digital economy that represented the «growth points» of the digital economy as a whole.

In existing models of endogenous innovation cycles, market size alters the amplitude of fluctuations without changing the nature of fluctuations. This is due to the ubiquitous assumption of CES homothetic demand system, implying that monopolistically competitive firms sell their products at an exogenous markup rate in spite of the empirical evidence for the procompetitive effect of entry and market size. We extend a model of endogenous innovation cycles to allow for the procompetitive effect, using a more general homothetic demand system, which contains both CES and translog as special cases. We show that a larger market size and/or a smaller innovation cost, which causes the markup rate to decline through the procompetitive effect, has destabilizing effects on the dynamics of innovation.

The Dixit-Stiglitz model of monopolistic competition with symmetric CES demand system with gross substitutes is widely used as a building block across many applied general equilibrium fields. Two of its remarkable features are the invariance of the markup rate and the optimality of the freeentry equilibrium. Of course, neither of these two features is robust. Departure from CES makes entry either procompetitive or anticompetitive (i.e., the markup rate either goes down or goes up as more firms enter). Departure from CES also makes entry either excessive or insufficient. But how is the condition for procompetitive vs. anticompetitive entry related to that for excessive vs. insufficient entry? To investigate this question, we extend the Dixit-Stiglitz monopolistic competition model to three classes of homothetic demand systems, which are mutually exclusive except that each of them contains CES as a knife-edge case. In all three classes, we show, among others, that entry is excessive (insufficient) when it is globally procompetitive (anticompetitive) and that, in the presence of the choke price, entry is procompetitive and excessive at least for a sufficiently large market size.

We use the Russian banks’ 2015-2019 data to evaluate the effectiveness of the macro- prudential measures in curbing the booming consumer lending segment. We find that the measures are successful in reducing the overall loan portfolio riskiness and in capital cushion accumulation by banks. In the short-run of up to 1-2 quarters after the measure announcement date banks tend to reduce both the new loan volumes and the average con- sumer loan portfolio growth rate. Such reduction is more typical with the smallest market players. However, in the longer time horizon up to a year from the measure application date we observe the increase in the average credit growth rates. Such findings correspond to the experience of the emerging markets of Argentine, Colombia, Thailand. In general, we consider that the observed credit growth after the measure implementation is smaller than it could have been without the measures in place. We also expect that the observed lending growth rate brings less financial instability risks and it reflects the potential for the natural loan extension in Russia.

This paper provides evidence for the effects of health shocks measured by any negative change in self-assessed health (SAH) status on employment, personal income, and wages in the Russian population. We employ the average treatment effect on the treated (ATET) estimator combined with propensity score and nearest neighbour matching and data from Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey-HSE (RLMS-HSE) for 2000–2018. We find that adverse health shocks are associated with a reduction in the probability of remaining employed by 2%, and losses of income and wages of 17% and 11%, respectively. For men, the consequences of health shocks are more drastic. Severe health shocks that are measured as a drop in SAH by two or more levels are associated with greater losses: respondents aged 30–45 years old lose approximately 60% of their monthly income for severe shocks, and those aged 46–72 lose 35–45% of their wages and 9–10% in the probability of remaining employed.

The ‘new enlargement methodology’ may help overcome the impasse triggered by the inability of the European Council to open accession negotiations with North Macedonia and Albania

Over the past five years conflict has led to a deterioration of Russo-Ukrainian economic relations while ties with the EU have been deepened. This shift is evident in trade flows: the European Union has become Ukraine’s biggest trading partner, while China is poised to overtake Russia as its second. Natural gas imports from Russia, Ukraine’s prior Achilles heel, have been partially replaced by reverse deliveries from the EU and reduced as result of reform of the gas sector.

A seller chooses a reserve price in a second-price auction to maximize worst-case expected revenue when she knows only the mean of value distribution and an upper bound on either values themselves or variance. Values are private and iid. Using an indirect technique, we prove that it is always optimal to set the reserve price to the seller's own valuation. However, the maxmin reserve price may not be unique. If the number of bidders is sufficiently high, all prices below the seller's valuation, including zero, are also optimal. A second-price auction with the reserve equal to seller's value (or zero) is an asymptotically optimal mechanism (among all ex post individually rational mechanisms) as the number of bidders grows without bound.

An indivisible object may be sold to one of n agents who know their valuations of the object. The seller would like to use a revenue-maximizing mechanism but her knowledge of the valuations' distribution is scarce: she knows only the means (which may be different) and an upper bound for valuations. Valuations may be correlated. Using a constructive approach based on duality, we prove that a mechanism that maximizes the worst-case expected revenue among all deterministic dominant-strategy incentive compatible, ex post individually rational mechanisms is such that the object should be awarded to the agent with the highest linear score provided it is nonnegative. Linear scores are bidder-specific linear functions of bids. The set of optimal mechanisms includes other mechanisms but all those have to be close to the optimal linear score auction in a certain sense. When means are high, all optimal mechanisms share the linearity property. Second-price auction without a reserve is an optimal mechanism when the number of symmetric bidders is sufficiently high.

Emerging economies have received little attention in the economic debate regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, yet the performance of their primary market indicators, chiefly sovereign debt, foreign exchange and equities, indicate a deep deterioration is taking place. Times of crisis often lead to capital flight from emerging markets as investors seek safe haven assets, while the localised effects of the disease and the collapse in the price of certain key commodities have also been damaging. More worryingly, this appears to be the beginning of the storm, and emerging economies have far less room for fiscal and monetary manoeuvring.

Central banks in emerging markets with weak currencies should not resort to unorthodox monetary tools such as quantitative easing as a response to the crisis triggered by COVID-19. Preferable alternatives include shifting public spending away from less pressing needs, moderately increasing public debt and falling back on official development assistance.