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.

The book is the result of an extensive research conducted by professors of five academic institutions from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - the BRICS countries. The purpose of this work is to analyze the anti-corruption and anti-money laundering legislation in each of these countries, showing the similarities and differencies in terms of domestic legal frames and the international guidelines.

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 introduces a 'Big History' perspective to understand the acceleration of social, technological and economic trends towards a near-term singularity, marking a radical turning point in the evolution of our planet. It traces the emergence of accelerating innovation rates through global history and highlights major historical transformations throughout the evolution of life, humans, and civilization. The authors pursue an interdisciplinary approach, also drawing on concepts from physics and evolutionary biology, to offer potential models of the underlying mechanisms driving this acceleration, along with potential clues on how it might progress.  The contributions gathered here are divided into five parts, the first of which studies historical mega-trends in relation to a variety of aspects including technology, population, energy, and information. The second part is dedicated to a variety of models that can help understand the potential mechanisms, and support extrapolation. In turn, the third part explores various potential future scenarios, along with the paths and decisions that are required. The fourth part presents philosophical perspectives on the potential deeper meaning and implications of the trend towards singularity, while the fifth and last part discusses the implications of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Given its scope, the book will appeal to scholars from various disciplines interested in historical trends, technological change and evolutionary processes. 

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.

The book focuses most of all on women's and partly on men's agency, to discuss variant ways in which women and men actively use their scopes of action - through political activism, protest, movements, in the military. The book is aiming to dicuss variant perspectives on these issues in different contexts witin Eastern Europe.  How do these in change affect conservative societies and the concepts of masculinity?

The volume is structured in four parts:

I) Floating concepts of Femininities and Masculinities

    (essentially this is a discussion on the role of feminism in the transformation period in Eastern Europe)

II) Political Activism

    (this part deals with political participation of women - also within conservative parties - and of variant forms of protest)

III) Nationalism and Militarization of societies

 (also papers on violence)

IV) Social Roles and Concepts of Women and Men

This book covers the challenges posed by digitalisation of labour markets in different countries of the world (a number of EU counties, Russia, Belarus, India, Arab countries and China). The authors address such aspects of digitalisation as: (1) the impact of new technologies in the labour market; (2) the impact of new technologies in the employees’ private life; and (3) the impact of new technologies on the labour process. 

The pocket data book contains main indicators characterizing trends in the development of general, secondary vocational, higher education as well as vocational training and additional education in the Russian Federation. It also covers key education indicators for the OECD countries. The data book includes information of the Federal State Statistics Service, the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, the Federal Treasury, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), as well as results of own methodological and analytical studies of the HSE Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge.

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.

 

Provides an overview of the developments and advances in the field of network clustering and blockmodeling over the last 10 years

This book offers an integrated treatment of network clustering and blockmodeling, covering all of the newest approaches and methods that have been developed over the last decade. Presented in a comprehensive manner, it offers the foundations for understanding network structures and processes, and features a wide variety of new techniques addressing issues that occur during the partitioning of networks across multiple disciplines such as community detection, blockmodeling of valued networks, role assignment, and stochastic blockmodeling.

Written by a team of international experts in the field, Advances in Network Clustering and Blockmodeling offers a plethora of diverse perspectives covering topics such as: bibliometric analyses of the network clustering literature; clustering approaches to networks; label propagation for clustering; and treating missing network data before partitioning. It also examines the partitioning of signed networks, multimode networks, and linked networks. A chapter on structured networks and coarsegrained descriptions is presented, along with another on scientific coauthorship networks. The book finishes with a section covering conclusions and directions for future work. In addition, the editors provide numerous tables, figures, case studies, examples, datasets, and more.

Offers a clear and insightful look at the state of the art in network clustering and blockmodeling Provides an excellent mix of mathematical rigor and practical application in a comprehensive manner Presents a suite of new methods, procedures, algorithms for partitioning networks, as well as new techniques for visualizing matrix arrays Features numerous examples throughout, enabling readers to gain a better understanding of research methods and to conduct their own research effectively Written by leading contributors in the field of spatial networks analysis

Advances in Network Clustering and Blockmodeling is an ideal book for graduate and undergraduate students taking courses on network analysis or working with networks using real data. It will also benefit researchers and practitioners interested in network analysis.

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.

The book contains 19 national reports and a comparative legal analysis of the legal regulations on the procedure of genome editing on the human germline. It is worked out which shared values ​​the different legal systems connect and which differences exist. On this basis, it is examined whether an international regulation of the topic is possible and how it could be designed. In addition, it will be examined to what extent the regulations of other countries can serve as a model for German legislation.

Working Title: From Corporate Social Responsibility to Corporate Social Liability

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

Series: N/A 

 

This book discusses international migration in the newly independent states after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which involved millions of people. Written by authors from 15 countries, it summarizes the population movement over the post-Soviet territories, both within the newly independent states and in other countries over the past 25 years. It focuses on the volume of migration flows, the number and socio-demographic characteristics of migrants, migration factors and the situation of migrants in receiving countries. The authors, who include demographers, economists, geographers, anthropologists, sociologists and political scientists, used various methods and sources of information, such as censuses, administrative statistics, the results of mass sample surveys and in-depth interviews. This heterogeneity highlights the multifaceted nature of the topic of migration movements.

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 article is devoted to the consideration of the concept of commorientes in French and Russian inheritance law. The commorientes are individuals, entitled to inherit, reciprocally, to each other and considered to have died at the same moment, from the inheritance’s point of view. The commorientes do not inherit reciprocally. The work focuses on how French and Russian law determine the notion of commorientes. Inheritance rules, regarding the commorientes in France and Russian Federation from the beginning of the 19th century are analysed; subsequently, their current versions in force in the French Civil Code and the Russian Federation Civil Code are compared. Particular attention is paid to the issue of the time of the inheritance opening. In the Russian legislation this issue has not been unambiguously resolved for a long time. The article presents the evolution of the Russian and French rules on inheritance after the commorientes. In French law, presumptions of survival have been in effect for many years, allowing to determine the sequence of deaths of people who died as a result of the same event. The article contains the rules of the current legislation in France and in the Russian Federation, as well as suggestions for their improvement.

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

Concept mapping is a popular tool for knowledge structure assessment. In recent years, both the amount of research about concept maps and their measurement ability have grown. It has been shown that concept maps with different types of tasks, for instance, links between concepts given or selected by a respondent, provide information about the different aspects of students’ knowledge structure. This study explores features of concept mapping with and without a list of concepts. At first, eleven masters students constructed concept maps with a topic on statistical data analysis and, after three weeks, repeated the task with the same topic and a predefined list of concepts. Both types of concept maps were evaluated using traditional scoring indicators and indicators from the network analysis. All indicators were tested for significant differences, and then the content of these maps was analysed. Results show that the list of concepts forced respondents to construct more connective maps, which is related to a more developed knowledge structure. Moreover, it is easier for them, when including even abstract concepts, to define their role in the domain. However, respondents use concepts and group them in different ways depending on the instruction. It seems that respondents feel a “list stress”, which leads to differences in the content. These findings demonstrate the possibilities of using different concept mapping tasks for learning and assessment.

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

A meeting in Berlin in January 2020 dedicated to a settlement in Libya — unlike the failed international conference held in Palermo in 2018 — leaves a slight hope for the implementation of conditions laid out in its final document. The essence of the proposals is to fix the state of things established in Libya at the end of last year. The meeting in Istanbul between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan that preceded the negotiations in Berlin implied the same thing. Their joint statement after the talks on January 8, 2020, stressed the impossibility of a unilateral solution to the Libyan problem: “Seeking a military solution to the ongoing conflict in Libya only causes further suffering and deepens the divisions among Libyans.”

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

Background

The study aims at identifying long-term trends and patterns of current smoking by age, gender, and education in Russia, including the most recent period from 2008 during which tobacco control policies were implemented, and to estimate the impact on mortality of any reductions in prevalence. We present an in-depth analysis based on an unprecedentedly large array of survey data.

Methods

We examined pooled micro-data on smoking from 17 rounds of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Study of 1996–2016, 11 other surveys conducted in Russia in 1975–2017, and two comparator surveys from England and the USA. Standardization by age and education, regression and meta-analysis were used to estimate trends in the prevalence of current smoking by gender, age, and educational patterns.

Results

From the mid-1970s to the mid-2000s smoking prevalence among men was relatively stable at around 60%, after which time prevalence declined in every age and educational group. Among women, trends in smoking were more heterogeneous. Prevalence more than doubled above the age of 55 years from very low levels (< 5%). At younger ages, there were steep increases until the mid-2000s after which prevalence has declined. Trends differed by educational level, with women in the lowest educational category accounting for most of the long-term increase. We estimate that the decline in male smoking may have contributed 6.2% of the observed reduction in cardiovascular deaths among men in the period 2008–16.

Conclusions

The implementation of an effective tobacco control strategy in Russia starting in 2008 coincided with a decline in smoking prevalence among men from what had been stable, high levels over many decades regardless of age and education. Among women, the declines have been more uneven, with young women showing recent downturns, while the smoking prevalence in middle age has increased, particularly among those with minimal education. Among men, these positive changes will have made a small contribution to the reduction in mortality seen in Russia since 2005.

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

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

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.

The cross-national comparability of testing results is one of the main concerns associated with international assessment. One way to approach this concern is the theoretical framework of cross-national comparability. One such framework, proposed by Van de Vijver and Tanzer [1997], describes the bias in item meaning across countries and the bias in terms of test administration procedures and respondent behavior across countries. To study how items function in terms of respondent behavior and in terms of their psychological meaning, we introduce the concept of time-related differential item functioning (DIF). This concept is similar to traditional DIF but describes the incomparable time parameters of items across countries rather than item difficulty parameters. We discuss time-related DIF, referencing dual processing cognitive theory and illustrate how it limits the interpretability of a certain type of time-related DIF. We also demonstrate the analysis with real data, and discuss the difference introduced by response time information in parameter interpretation and modelling results.

This research studies the role of culture in reproducing inequality through educational decision-making (VE) students in Russia. We show how the way they meaningfully map their options affects their decisions and outcomes. We built upon the conceptual approach of Hodkinson, specifically “horizons of action” in studying how young people are restricted by the “horizon of action” in their opportunities to see all the options available to them. We expand Hodkinson’s approach by suggesting that the “horizon of action” is a symbolic structure that renders reality as a meaningful frame of reference which is the result of meanings shaping young people’s outlook. Using this approach, we extract four complexes of meanings which we call “symbolic logics”. We investigate further how “serendipity” and “agency” are woven into young people's symbolic logics of choice. We show that students rely on a meaningful frame that allows them to be agents enacting a narrative of “bringing adulthood closer”, but they are also highly uncertain about their future and are open to serendipity which plays a large role in their trajectories.

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.  

Three studies conducted in the U.S. and Russia examine a novel pathway by which the perseverance component of the personality trait grit might predict college students’ behavioral persistence when solving challenging math problems. Specifically, we focus on the intervening role of what we refer to as math determination, which captures students’ perceived tendency to persevere on challenging math problems. Across studies, we found that math determination was correlated with behavioral math persistence, whereas grit was not. Despite there being no correlation between grit and math persistence, we found statistically significant indirect effects of grit on persistence through math determination in all three studies: the grittier students were, the more they viewed themselves as capable of persevering on challenging math problems, which ultimately predicted their math persistence at a later time point.

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.

Unlike in the 1990s and early 2000s, nowadays scholars rarely address the issue of international activity of Russian regions (phenomenon known as paradiplomacy). Due to the successful centralization efforts, Russian governors almost lost their domestic as well as external agency. However, there is still a considerable variation in the levels of their international activity which remains unexplained. Employing an original dataset on the international activity of Russian governors from 2005 to 2015 I investigate the effect local political regime, ethnicity and other factors have on the level of gubernatorial participation in paradiplomacy. Contrary to other studies I find that ethnicity has a positive effect on the external activity. I argue that paradiplomacy of republics serves as a tool of their ethnic policy. I also find that more democratic local political regimes bolster the willingness of the governors to participate in paradiplomacy. Varyag governors with no prior connections to the region are also more active internationally.

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

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

The paper is focused on the interrelations between citizens’ everyday mobilities and the ways they cope with urban fears. It describes situations when people expect and experience security threats that trigger their fears, while moving in the city. To deal with fears urban citizens develop coping strategies - a set of actions that helps them to manage their emotional experiences. Coping strategies transform various elements of everyday urban mobility and, thus, rearrange and redefine it. The paper is based on semi-structured interviews with Moscow residents and digital diaries of emotions.

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

In the recent years facial emotion recognition algorithms have evolved and in some cases top commercial algorithms detect emotions like happiness better than humans do. To evaluate the performance of these algorithms, the common practice is to compare them with human-labeled ground truth. This article covers monitoring of the advancements in automatic emotion recognition solutions, and here we suggest an additional criteria for their evaluation, that is the agreement between algorithms’ predictions. In this work, we compare the performance of four commercial algorithms: Affectiva Affdex, Microsoft Cognitive Services Face module Emotion Recognition, Amazon Rekognition Face Analysis, and Neurodata Lab Emotion Recognition on three datasets AFEW, RAVDESS, and SAVEE, that differ in terms of control over conditions of data acquisition. We assume that the consistency among algorithms’ predictions indicates the reliability of the predicted emotion. Overall results show that the algorithms with higher accuracy and f1-scores that were obtained for human-labeled ground truth (Microsoft’s, Neurodata Lab’s, and Amazon’s), showed higher agreement between their predictions. Agreement among algorithms’ predictions is a promising criteria in terms of further exploring the option to replace human data labeling with automatic annotation.

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

The paper examines collective memory of British and Russian youth. The authors use the results of surveys conducted among Russian and British students. They focus primarily on the structure of pride in the collective memory of young people. They propose to analyze the category of pride among young people across several dimensions. First, they look at the qualitative content of national pride: pride in the realization of tasks relating to “soft power” (for example, culture, education, sports), and pride in manifestations of “hard power” (for example, pride in military victories or power politics). Second, they analyze the temporal localization of national pride: were are the main events, personalities, and phenomena study participants take pride in, both in the past and in the present. Third, an important element of understanding pride in a country is the relationship of pride to shame. In this paper, two types of national cultures are identified: a culture where pride prevails over shape (we call this “culture of pride”), and cultures where shame prevails (“culture of shame”).