Few aspects of today’s world system demand such urgent response as our ability to produce sustainable food. Yet at the same time as malnutrition plagues the world, overuse of land, water, and energy in the agricultural and livestock sectors exacerbates environmental degradation and climate change. This important book, in its focus on the interrelated topics of food, nutrition, animals, health, and environment, critically analyses whether the current food production chain – as regulated by domestic, European, and international food law – is sufficient to guarantee a sustainable food supply, respectful of the right of future generations to adequate nutrition and a healthy environment. The book’s chapters, written by eminent scholars from a variety of countries and legal backgrounds – including leading experts at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) – explore such issues and topics linked to food production as the following: – concentrated animal feeding operations; – relation of human well-being and animal welfare; – manufacturing, trade, and distribution of food products; – human rights concepts of right to food and right to health; – the COVID-19 Pandemic and the One Health Approach; – genetically modified organisms; – deforestation, habitat destruction and zoonoses; – food naming and labelling; and – food risk management. Throughout there is reference to an abundance of legislation, treaties, conventions, and case law at domestic, regional, and international levels, with particular attention to European, US, and World Trade Organization law and the work of the FAO. The book clearly demonstrates the necessity for reform of the global system of food production in the direction of a more sustainable and environment-friendly model. In its authoritative discussion of the relations among fields of law that are rarely discussed together – food law and the environment, food law and human rights, food law and animal welfare – this collection of chapters will prove a valuable resource both for officials working in food governance and security and for lawyers and scholars concerned with environmental management, sustainable development, and human rights around the world.

This book examines the development of bilateral energy relations between China and the two oil-rich countries, Kazakhstan and Russia.

Challenging conventional assumptions about energy politics and China’s global quest for oil, this book examines the interplay of politics and sociocultural contexts. It shows how energy resources become ideas and how these ideas are mobilized in the realm of international relations. China’s relations with Kazakhstan and Russia are simultaneously enabled and constrained by the discursive politics of oil. It is argued that to build collaborative and constructive energy relations with China, its partners in Kazakhstan, Russia, and elsewhere must consider not only the material realities of China’s energy industry and the institutional settings of China’s energy policy but also the multiple symbolic meanings that energy resources and, particularly, oil acquire in China.

China’s Energy Security and Relations with Petrostates offers a nuanced understanding of China’s bilateral energy relations with Kazakhstan and Russia, raising essential questions about the social logic of international energy politics. It will appeal to students and scholars of international relations, energy security, Chinese and post-Soviet studies, along with researchers working in the fields of energy policy and environmental sustainability.

asks whether the Caspian functions as a conceptual framework for various forms of exchange in commerce, diplomacy, political culture, forces of dissent and revolutionary movements, movement of peoples, material culture, art, and literature as well as ecology, disease, navigation and maritime culture. Are there tangible historical ties in the early modern and modern periods between regions of the Caspian littoral – Iran, the South Caucasus, Dagestan, Russia, and Central Asia? In what ways do exchanges in this region connect to neighboring, more established cultural and political spheres and with broader trends of global history? Can these ties create a viable field of study beyond Middle Eastern, Eurasian, and Russian studies to underscore interregional connections? Can the Caspian be conceptualized as an alternative or as a compliment to more established frames, such as the Persianate World or Central Eurasia and the steppe? To what extent can the links within this region be separated from state-centered histories of Iran and the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union?

As the EU’s relations with Russia remain at an all-time low and continue to be in a state of paralysis, marked by de-institutionalisation, inertia and estrangement, the EU’s policy towards Russia seems up for review. By taking stock of the implementation of the EU’s Global Strategy and the five principles that are guiding EU-Russia relations, this volume provides a forward-looking angle and contributes to a better understanding of the current EU-Russia relationship and the prospects for overcoming the existing deadlock. By bringing together European and Russian scholars and adopting an interdisciplinary perspective that combines insights from EU studies, international relations, and European and international law, the book provides a comprehensive and holistic view on the state of affairs in EU-Russia relations.

Given Australia’s lack of energy security strategy, it is not surprising that the country is void of institutional knowledge and know-how of Russian foreign energy strategy. The ‘lucky country’ as it were, relies entirely on sea-lines of communication to the north to supply fuel and to export Australian coal and natural gas. Australia has entered the 2020s as the world’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter; however, maintaining complacency in Canberra’s current export activities will ultimately lead to a long-term security crisis. This book critically examines Russian energy strategy in the Asia-Pacific, with a view to determining the security implications for Australia. Russia is important for global energy security chains because of its vast resource wealth and its geographical position – a pivotal position to supply both the European and Asian markets. Australia has no such luxury, geographically constrained as an island continent; it relies on the nearby Asia-Pacific import market to demand our energy and to facilitate the delivery of our national oil supplies. Understanding Russian foreign energy strategy in the region is crucial given the growing energy requirements in Australia’s emerging Asia-Pacific arena.

The 50th volume in the book series ‘Global Perspectives on Higher Education' offers a stimulating and thoughtful assessment of higher education from a global perspective which addresses the challenges and prospects for the next decade. The challenges now faced by higher education and its likely future prospects and patterns are examined in terms of policy papers and case studies. Five broad topics are considered: the situation of academic faculty, the demand for access, the role of the university in society and its governance, funding trends, and higher education’s international dimensions.

The book aims to trace and explain the historical evolution of Moscow, the capital of the Tsardom of Russia, Soviet Union and Russian Federation, as a political entity and political community, and to understand what place Moscow occupied within the Russian political space and what role it played in Russian political life for centuries until 2018. The authors consistently examine the dramatic political history of the contemporary Russian capital in the Moscow (13th – 17th centuries) and St. Petersburg (18th – 19th centuries) epochs, in the Soviet period, in the post-Soviet era, and identify its key points and the most pivotal events.

This book consists of seven chapters, each providing a different point of view on the topic of critical thinking, which is defined as the analysis of facts to form a judgment. Chapter One aims to develop a method for improving students’ critical thinking skills using cooperative learning. Chapter Two focuses on an education program designed to develop students’ creativity and critical thinking skills and the impact this program had on teachers in Portuguese public schools. Chapter Three discusses the methods of teaching critical thinking that are most suitable for the Russian educational community. Chapter Four analyzes the importance of critical thinking skills for fighting misinformation in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, around which many unscientific rumors and conspiracy theories are propagated alongside truthful information. Chapter Five also concerns the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically in connection with the natural human bias towards optimism and how this bias distorts risk assessment in health-related decisions but also provides a sense of control and hope. Chapter Six discusses how teachers can leverage Donald Trump’s proclivity towards manipulative rhetoric, glaring fallacies, and conspiracy theories for teaching critical thinking skills, as well as the potential pitfalls of doing so. Finally, Chapter Seven aims to rethink Essential Learning Outcomes by examining what skills are valued by employers and proposes a strategy of cross-listing courses to facilitate skill acquisition across disciplines.

Challenges of the 21st Century: Democracy, Environment, Inequalities, Intersectionality  

This IV ISA Forum of Sociology will be our first virtual Forum, with over 800 sessions, more than 3,000 papers and the participation of sociologists from 125 countries.

This Forum will be a unique opportunity to gather our research results and analyses of the extraordinary time we live and study, of its impact on individuals and societies and on four global challenges it has intensified: democracy, environment, inequalities and intersectionality.

During six days, hundreds of panels will explore the world in the pandemic and the world that may come out of it based on research grounded in the field and topics of the ISA Research Committees, Working and Thematic groups. Young researchers and experienced scholars from different regions of the world will expose their analyses of societies and sociology in the pandemic. Leading scholars from different continents will share their perspectives in the Forum’s Opening and Closing Plenaries: Michael Burawoy, Isabel Casimiro, Manuel Castells, Ashish Kothari, Rita Segato, Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Maristella Svampa. This Forum will also be an opportunity for our global community to pay tribute to three of our most distinguished colleagues to which special panels are dedicated: Immanuel Wallerstein, Erik Olin Wright and Marielle Franco.

The pandemic has stressed how deeply interdependent we have become and accentuated the need of a more global sociology. Epistemologies of the South and intersectional perspectives on democracy, ecology and social justice are more than alternative options for sociology in the 21st century. There are at its core and have deeply transformed it. Opening more spaces for our colleagues from the Global South has been a central goal in this Forum. We are particularly pleased to host semi-plenary sessions set up by the Brazilian Sociological Society with the Porto Alegre Local Organizing Committee, by the Latin American Sociological Association and by the Latin American Council of Social Sciences, and that the president of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa will join us in the closing session.

Sari Hanafi, President of the ISA Geoffrey Pleyers, President of the IV ISA Forum of Sociology

Coherently organised into seven parts, the book provides a structure through which EU-Russia relations can be studied in a comprehensive yet manageable fashion. It provides readers with the tools to deliver critical analysis of this sometimes volatile and polarising relationship, so new events and facts can be conceptualised in an objective and critical manner. Informed by high-quality academic research and key bilateral data/statistics, it further brings scope, balance and depth, with chapters contributed by a range of experts from the EU, Russia and beyond. Chapters deal with a wide range of policy areas and issues that are highly topical and fundamental to understanding the continuing development of EU-Russia relations, such as political and security relations, economic relations, social relations and regional and global governance.

This textbook on political geography is devoted to a discipline concerned with the spatial dimensions of politics. This course is an introduction to the study of political science, international relations and area studies, providing a systemic approach to the spatial dimension of political processes at all levels. It covers their basic elements, including states, supranational unions, geopolitical systems, regions, borders, capitals, dependent, and internationally administered territories. Political geography develops fundamental theoretical approaches that give insight into the peculiarities of foreign and domestic policies. The ability to use spatial analysis techniques allows determining patterns and regularities of political phenomena both at the global and the regional and local levels.

The book addresses one of the most relevant issues on the current social agenda – the building of an inclusive society. It covers income, gender and age equality, disability rights, immigrant and language minority rights, inclusive education, body positivity and animal rights. The book is based on up-to-date authentic texts (official documents, newspaper and magazine articles, public speeches) and contains a system of exercises aimed at enhancing communication skills, expanding vocabulary and developing analytical and critical thinking skills.

The book is targeted at graduate students of the foreign language faculties.

This book explores the contradictory development of gender roles in Central and Eastern Europe including Russia. In light of the social changes that followed the collapse of communism and the rise of new conservatism in Eastern Europe, it studies new forms of gender relationships and reassesses the status quo of female empowerment. Moreover, leading scholars in gender studies discuss how right-wing populism and conservative movements have affected sociopolitical discourses and concepts related to gender roles, rights, and attitudes, and how Western feminism in the 1990s may have contributed to this conservative turn.

Mainly focusing on power constellations and gender, the book is divided into four parts: the first explores the history of and recent trends in feminist movements in Eastern Europe, while the second highlights the dynamics and conflicts that gained momentum after neoconservative parties gained political power in post-socialist countries. In turn, the third part discusses new empowerment strategies and changes in gender relationships. The final part illustrates the identities, roles, and concepts of masculinity created in the sociocultural and political context of Eastern Europe. 

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 authors introduce ongoing child welfare reform in Russia, consider the international and national context, as well as the main drivers of these reforms and their current results. In addition, a literature review of field is also provided. Child welfare reform in Russia builds on the idea of every child’s right to grow up in a family. The main aim is to deinstitutionalize the child welfare system by promoting adoptions and fostering, restructuring the remaining residential institutions into home-like environments and creating community-based family support services. The chapter introduces the main concepts and terminology used to describe the child welfare system, the research questions of the volume, and employs a neo-institutionalist framework as the theoretical framework of the book. The volume analyses how reform is implemented, which echoes a fundamental change in the ideological premises of child welfare policy. Thus, the reform has shifted the course of the child welfare policy in Russia. The volume examines how the reforms are affecting the institutions and practices of child welfare in Russia, what kind of institutional change has followed the shift in the ideals, and what are the intended and unintended consequences of these reform processes. Finally, the chapter gives a brief overview of the chapters in the volume.

This handbook presents an international state-of-the-art book on love in research and practice. It is anchored in classical, contemporary and postmodern perspectives and various disciplines. The book expands previous theoretical, empirical and applied research by presenting new transcultural and transdisciplinary approaches. The authors describe concepts and theories of love from cultural viewpoints with regard to manifestations of love in digital, social, cultural and political contexts. They also focus on love in the context of religion, belief systems, family and intergenerational relations, in the context of counselling, therapy and psychiatry. Additionally, authors explore love in the context of globalisation, in the literature, in workplace and business contexts and with regard to its dark side.

This volume is a must for scientists, researchers and practitioners interested in positive emotions, love, as well as cultural and international perspectives.

How does peripherality challenge methodology and theory-making? This book examines how the peripheral can be incorporated into ethnographic research, and reflects on what it means to be on the periphery—ontologically and epistemologically. Starting from the premise that clarity and fixity as ideals of modernity prevent us from approaching that which cannot be easily captured and framed into scientific boundaries, the book argues for remaining on the boundary between the known and the unknown in order to surpass this ethnographic limit. Its ethnographic case studies engage with a series of empirical and theoretical issues, including: What is at the centre and what is at the periphery of what we do? How can we represent what lies beneath the threshold of verbal reasoning, or does not respond to the criteria for widely recognised forms of knowledge? Does learning entail unlearning? Peripheral Methodologies shows that peripherality is not only to be seen as a marginal condition, but rather as a form of theory-making and practice that incorporates reflexivity and experimentation.

This book presents the very first, interdisciplinarily grounded, comprehensive appraisal of a future “Common European Law on Investment Screening”. Thereby, it provides a foundation for a European administrative law framework for investment screening by setting out viable solutions and evaluating their pros and cons.

Daimler, the harbour terminal in Zeebrugge, or Saxo Bank are only three recent examples of controversially discussed company takeovers in Europe. The “elephant in the room” is China and its “Belt and Road Initiative”. The political will in Europe is growing to more actively control investments flowing into the EU. The current regulatory initiatives raise several fundamental, constitutional and regulatory issues. Surprisingly, they have not been addressed in any depth so far. The book takes stock of the current rather fragmented regulatory approaches and combines contributions from leading international academics, practitioners, and policy makers in their respective fields. Due to the volume’s comprehensive approach, it is expected to influence the broader debate on the EU’s upcoming regulation of this matter.

The book is addressed to participants from academia as well as to representatives from government, business, and civil society.

The current pilot study investigated the psychological mechanisms behind ethnic outgroup aggression, a significant outcome of intergroup conflicts. While previous research suggested several impactful predictors of ethnic outgroup aggression, such as intergroup contact and nationalism, no attempt has been made to synthesize all these constructs into a single cross-cultural study. Building on existing research, this pilot study is the first to assess a refined framework where we tested a proposed mediation model according to nationalism and emotion regulation mediate the relationship between intergroup contact, susceptibility to persuasion, and intergroup anxiety on the one hand and ethnic outgroup aggression on the other hand within a cross-cultural sample. An online questionnaire was distributed using convenience sampling among 2482 students with an ethnic majority background living and studying in ten (European) countries. Multigroup path analysis supported the larger part of the hypothesized model where we found that emotion regulation partially mediated the relationship between susceptibility to persuasion as a predictor and aggression as an outcome. As expected, we found that the higher the susceptibility to persuasion, the higher the emotion regulation, and the higher the regulation, the lower the aggression in all countries. Our pilot study provided preliminary evidence that emotion regulation, nationalism and susceptibility to persuasion are critical for the understanding of ethnic outgroup aggression in ethnically diverse societies. Future research needs to be carried out focusing on the development of an intergroup anxiety assessment in which possible gender differences in assessed constructs are considered.

This study measured the impact of using TED Talks in a pre-service Business English course on university students’ listening, reading, writing, and speaking skills. The pretest-posttest comparative method with experimental-control groups was used. For the experimental group TED talks were integrated into the course, while for the control group listening and reading texts on the same topic were used. The findings revealed a statistically significant improvement in the experimental group for listening, reading, writing and speaking scores over the control group. In addition, we observed that integrating TED talks in the ESP course improved the students’ spontaneous self-reported learning experience.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion regulation strategy which modifies how one thinks about a situation. Participants from 87 countries/regions (N = 21,644) were randomly assigned to one of two brief reappraisal interventions (reconstrual or repurposing) or one of two control conditions (active or passive). Results revealed that both reappraisal interventions (vs. both control conditions) consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions across different measures. Reconstrual and repurposing had similar effects. Importantly, planned exploratory analyses indicated that reappraisal interventions did not reduce intentions to practice preventive health behaviours. The findings demonstrate the viability of creating scalable, low-cost interventions for use around the world. 

A high level of corruption usually constrains economic development in emerging countries. However, anti-corruption campaigns often fail because the relevant policies need to be implemented by existing corrupt governments. This article studies the extent of bureaucrats’ heterogeneity in attitude to the problem of corruption. Due to the sensitivity of direct questions on corruption, we conduct the list experiment among public procurement officials in Russia. We show that female bureaucrats consider corruption an obstacle to public procurement development, and find no such evidence for male bureaucrats. This heterogeneity holds even at the high-level occupied positions. Although the negative attitude to corruption does not necessarily imply the anti-corruption activity by women, recognition of the problem seems to be a prerequisite for supporting an anti-corruption policy.

Rural population decline has been observed in most developed and emerging economies but has been especially apparent in postsocialist countries. In this paper, we investigate the spatial patterns and the determinants of the rural population dynamics during the transition period from 1991 to 2010 in Tyumen Province, Russia, with the aim of better understanding the forces underlying depopulation. We use descriptive and exploratory statistical tools to analyze data from population censuses and district-level statistics of agriculture. Our results reveal distinct differences in the spatial clusters of the population increase and decline in the first and second decades of the post-Soviet era. We argue that these differences reflect the penetration of market relations into the countryside. The emergence of market forces initially advantaged the areas that were more suited to agriculture, which experienced population growth in the 1990s. Later, the drop in agricultural output, market-driven restructuring of farms, and introduction of labor-saving technologies reduced employment in agriculture. During the 2000s, labor opportunities in agriculture were no longer statistically related to rural population dynamics, while population dynamics in the villages have increasingly been determined by transport accessibility to larger markets, especially to the provincial capital. Governments need to be sensitive to these spatial and temporal population dynamics to foster opportunities in the countryside, avoid the negative side effects of depopulation on local economies and ensure the provision of social services.

Second home mobility is a well-known phenomenon in many countries, but is widely prominent in Russia, where millions of city-dwellers move to rural areas during the summertime. Combating long-term economic decline and depopulation, second home mobility creates a promising chance to revitalize the countryside. While this phenomenon is largely neglected by official statistics, we suggest using satellite imagery of night-time lights to investigate its spatial and temporal patterns. We did this with the example of Yaroslavl oblast in Russia. This region neighbors the Moscow Capital Region. It experiences a significant inflow of second home residents. By tracking the seasonal pixel-wise changes of night-time light radiance in monthly composites of satellite imagery from 2015 to 2019, we located hotspots of second homes and factors determining their spatial spread in rural areas. The results were evaluated with field research. Our results confirmed earlier conclusions that second homes’ locations in rural areas are largely determined by their proximity to Moscow, natural conditions, and transport accessibility. City-dwellers often choose small and even fully-abandoned villages for their second homes, which stresses the important role of second home mobility in preserving cultural landscapes. The proposed data and methods are limited by missing data for the northern regions during summer months and are more suitable for areas beyond the urban fringe where night-time lights data is not biased by the “overglow” of large cities.

This paper set out to reassess the effects of economic and social determinants of the probability of formal vocational training in India. Applying the four-level cross-classified logistic model to the 2011–2012 National Sample Survey data, the paper identified the association between formal training and ‘good jobs’ in large urban electrified firms that offer permanent employment and regular monthly salary to their skilled occupation workers. Nevertheless, India remains a country of severe training poverty. This study confirms that the traditional mindset of the society does contribute to the training poverty; however, this impact is much limited to the household level and religious groups, such as Christians, which are systematically excluded from formal training as compared to Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists. In contrast, the lower castes and deprived social backgrounds do not affect, as predicted by previous studies. Moreover, it is shown that unskilled males from the rural area of India were less likely to receive formal training as compared to educated single women

The creation of a social climate where all ethnic groups can harmoniously coexist is a central challenge for many countries today. Should we emphasize similarities and common ground or, conversely, recognize that there are important differences between groups? The current study examined relations between diversity ideologies (assimilation, colorblindness, multiculturalism, polyculturalism) and generalized and specific intergroup bias (against Chechens, Belarusians, Uzbeks, Chinese, and Jews and Muslims) among ethnic Russians (N = 701). In Study 1, colorblindness (ignoring differences) and polyculturalism (emphasizing interconnectivity) were associated with lower generalized intergroup bias and lower bias against Chechens, Uzbeks, and Chinese, but not Belarusians. Bias against Belarusians was lower among those who endorsed multiculturalism (emphasizing differences). In Study 2, multiculturalism was associated with higher implicit bias when the target was a Chechen but in general more proximal variables (positive or negative contact experience and perceived group similarity) were more robust predictors of intergroup bias than diversity ideologies. In Study 3, colorblindness and polyculturalism were related to lower levels of fearful attitudes against Muslims. Colorblindness was also associated with lower levels of Antisemitism in contrast to multiculturalism that had an opposite association. We place these results in the context of cultural distance and existing cultural stereotypes about different groups among the majority of Russians. The strengths and weaknesses of each diversity ideology for the mainstream cultural group are discussed. The results of the current study suggest that the most fruitful strategy for mainstream cultural groups for maintaining harmonious intergroup relations in diverse societies might be that of optimal distinctiveness.

The rapid and unplanned change to teaching and learning in the online format brought by COVID-19 has likely impacted many, if not all, aspects of university students’ lives worldwide. To contribute to the investigation of this change, this study focuses on the impact of the pandemic on student well-being, which has been found to be as important to student lifelong success as their academic achievement. Student well-being has been linked to their engagement and performance in curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular activities, intrinsic motivation, satisfaction, meaning making, and mental health. The purpose of this study was to examine how student perceptions of their degree completion and future job prospects during the pandemic impact their well-being and what role university support plays in this relationship. We used the conservation of resources theory to frame our study and to develop five hypotheses that were later tested via structural equation modeling. Data were collected from 2707 university students in France, Germany, Russia, and UK via an online survey. The results showed that university support provided by instructors and administration plays a mediating role in the relationship between the perceived impact of COVID-19 on degree completion and future job prospects and levels of student well-being. Student well-being is decreased by their concerns for their degree completion but not by their concerns for future job prospects. In turn, concerns for future job prospects affect student well-being over time. These results suggest that in a “new normal”, universities could increase student well-being by making support to student studies a priority, especially for undergraduates. Also, universities should be aware of the students’ changing emotional responses to crisis and ensure visibility and accessibility of student support.

The recently finalized Basel Framework continues allowing banks to use internal data and models to define risk estimates and use them for the capital adequacy ratio computation. World-wide there are above two thousand banks running the Basel internal models. However, there are countries that have none of such banks. For them there exists a dilemma. Namely, which transition path to adopt out of the two. The voluntarily one as in the EU or the mandatory one as in the US. Our objective is to take the investor perspective and benchmark those two modes. Thus, we wish to find whether there is a premium for any of them, or perhaps that they are equivalent. The novelty of our research is the robust estimate that investors prefer mandatory transition style to the voluntarily one. Such a preference is reflected in the rise of the mean return and decline in stock volatility for the transited banks in the US and right the opposite consequences in the EU. However, we should be cautious in interpreting our findings. Such a preference may not only be the premium for the breakage of the vicious cycle and the ultimate improvement in the banks’ risk-management systems and the overall financial stability. It may also hold true if and only if the mandatory transition for particular institutions is accompanied by a restriction for other banks in the region to transit. Our findings are of value primarily to the emerging economies like Argentine and Indonesia. 

This paper studies the indicators of public procurement efficiency as perceived by public buyers and suppliers and what barriers must be overcome for them to consider public procurement efficient. The analysis, based on an online survey of Russian procurers and suppliers in 2020, reveals that, despite the importance of fighting corruption and increasing competition, most procurers and suppliers consider the supply of high-quality goods and timely contract execution the most important criteria. The natural experiment with COVID-19 has mitigated the rigidity of the regulation problem but exacerbated the ambiguity problem. During the pandemic, public procurement contract execution worsened. To improve procurement efficiency, the regulator should clearly specify its requirements and consider the main participants’ interests.

During periods of financial turmoil, depositor behaviour is influenced by the economic information environment, which is largely formed by the media—at least for retail depositors. Therefore the severity of bank runs during financial crises, and their efficiency might be conditional on the volume of the bad news appearing in the media during a crisis. If the news flow remains unrestrained, then the probability of bank runs will increase due to the information sensitivity of depositors. Examining whether it is possible to reduce the severity of bank runs during a crisis by controlling the media, we use the panel data 28 countries from 2001 until 2016. We analyze the impact of media freedom on the growth rate of retail deposits: the major role in bank runs is usually played by unsophisticated individual depositors. Generally the results do not support the hypothesis that changes in the degree of media freedom directly influence behavioural strategies of retail depositors during financial crises. However information limitations may be an instrument to support the market discipline mechanisms: higher media freedom during crises seems to blur the information environment depositors make decisions in. Media restrictions could also prevent the financial literacy effect from dilution during financial crises, ensuring that market discipline is not further undermined.

National pride and social trust are often perceived and used as alternative grounds for social cohesion. While national pride is essentially exclusive, because shared only by compatriots, trust in social institution is not, and the general interpersonal trust measured as trust in strangers is inclusive by definition. These differences create an opportunity for a variety of interrelations between national pride and various dimensions of social trust, depending on how certain kinds of individuals and institutions are perceived in relation to a country’s identity. This paper presents the results of a research examining interrelations between national pride and social trust in Russia compared to other countries. The empirical data used in the research come from the most recent wave of the World Values Survey, released in 2020. The results show that in Russia, national pride is positively related to trust in all major social institutions, including even international organizations. This pattern is observed in most countries (with the notable exception of the USA, where correlations between national pride and trust in some institutions, such as the press and the UN, are negative). These positive correlations in Russia are the strongest for trust in the churches, the armed forces, and the government; in most other countries, the pattern is similar but much less pronounced: the relation to trust in other institutions is not that weaker. The relation of national pride to various dimensions of interpersonal trust reveals a deeper difference: unlike in most countries, in Russia, national pride has no negative relation to trust in people of another nationality or religion but is significantly negatively related to strangers. Thus, apparently Russian scoring high on national pride are more ready to accept people with any kind of identity, however different from their own, than people whose identity is unknown and undefined.

We consider a market with two sellers, each having one unit of identical product, who compete for potential buyers with one-unit demand and a private valuation of this product. First, firms simultaneously post their prices. Then buyers observe these prices and choose a seller to submit a request for purchase depending on their private valuation of the product. This framework is between the directed search theory and the theory of competing mechanisms. We prove that the private information about the consumer’s willingness to pay produces an equilibrium price dispersion and endogenous consumer separation.

The major stakeholders, including states (at least, in the global North) and transnational corporations (TNCs), have radically changed their attitude to the idea of mandatory human rights due diligence in the last decade. By asking what is behind these good intentions, and whether the mandatory corporate human rights due diligence models enforced so far are effective or represent an exercise in shooting blanks, and by combining a legal positivistic perspective with studies on governance and the production of knowledge, this article contributes to the legal and socio-legal assessment of these changes. Assessing the effectiveness of mandatory corporate human rights due diligence, this article discusses the inherent or implied features of this regulatory tool which restrict its ability to serve as an instrument to protect human rights. A special focus is made on two main restrictions that are specific for human rights due diligence: the regulatory boundary revealed in the auxiliary character of due diligence and its limed ability to serve as a standard of conduct, and the epistemic boundary, deriving from the conflicting role of companies as the architects and executives of knowledge production. To a certain extent, the legislative process can counterbalance some of these restrictions by setting up the substantive, precise obligations of companies, and by creating mechanisms of control and remediation. However, the analysis of nine different instruments reveals that neither states, nor the EU have used the potential of the regulatory force.

Our research is dedicated to identifying what allows schools operating in difficult social conditions to show good academic results. We answer this question through the conjugation of two theoretical frameworks: academic resilience and school effectiveness. We analyze several models of school effectiveness and compare resilient and struggling schools through them. The study uses a quantitative and qualitative mixed-methods design. Our main arguments are based on an analysis of interviews conducted with students, parents, teachers, and principals in different schools—3 resilient and 3 struggling. We conclude that the schools differ in the strategies they implement; the main problem facing struggling schools is not the lack of effective elements, but the presence of negative ones; in further studies of school effectiveness, it would be worth using an integrative model that combines both poles.

The paper discusses various aspects of digital environment and activity of enterprises from the Russian manufacturing sector in 2020 using the evidence from business tendency surveys. Based on aggregate sectoral and industrial assessments, such as the Digital Climate Index (DCI), the Digital Intensity Index (DII), the Digital Employment Index (DEI) and the Digital Vulnerability index (DVI), the dynamics of digital development during the COVID-19 crisis in 2020 is described. In general, according to the results obtained, we can conclude that, despite all the negative consequences and uncertainty associated, 2020 became a very significant point in terms of the digital transformation in manufacturing. Manufacturing businesses were both relatively resilient to the adverse business trends caused by the pandemic and were able to absorb the positive digital momentum generated by the pandemic.

In 2018, the official retirement age in Russia was abruptly raised from 60 to 65 for men and from 55 to 60 for women. The rise was motivated by the necessity to keep the deficit of the Russian Pension Fund, caused by population ageing and a shrinking labor force, under control. During years preceding this decision, the authorities had assured the population that no measures of this sort would be considered. The study assesses the initial causal effects of the 2018 increase in retirement age on the subjective well-being and economic sentiments of Russian individuals. Using the difference-in-differences and the synthetic control approaches, we show that people close to the retirement threshold and presumably most affected by the pension reform became less confident in the current and future economic situation in the country and in their personal future prospects and financial situation.

Confronted with COVID-19, high-income Gulf countries have done better than most of their middle- and low-income neighbours; Jordan and Morocco are also positive exceptions.

The most recent inflation data from the US and several other countries signal that consumer prices started to rise. The question remains open whether this is a temporary post-pandemic rebound or the beginning of a more persistent inflationary trend

This paper considers non-financial information disclosure impact on the cost of capital in the forms of cost of equity, cost of debt, and the weighted average cost of equity (WACC) in the BRICS countries. It was revealed that companies published non-financial report have lower cost of capital. Cost of debt, cost of equity, and WACC reduces after non-financial report publication. Six industries, where the cost of equity and debt capitals is lower for companies published non-financial reports, were determined: consumer discretionary, energy, industrials, information technology, healthcare, and materials. Moreover, according to the analysis, companies that issued non-financial reports have a lower cost of equity capital growth rate.

The economic characteristics of the COVID-19 crisis differ from those of previous crises. It is a combination of demand- and supply-side constraints which led to the formation of a monetary overhang that will be unfrozen once the pandemic ends. Monetary policy must take this effect into consideration, along with other pro-inflationary factors, in the post-pandemic era. It must also think in advance about how to avoid a policy trap coming from fiscal dominance. This paper was provided by the Policy Department for Economic, Scientific and Quality of Life Policies at the request of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) ahead of the Monetary Dialogue with the ECB President on 18 March 2021.  

This paper presents a forecast combination approach for short-term assessment of economic growth in Russia. Our method significantly expands the existing domestic academic literature and embraces most advanced nowcasting techniques. The key feature of our approach is forecasting the growth rates of components GDP by expenditure using scenario indicators and a huge set of high-frequency predictors. The total number of combined models is nearly 500. Comparing our approach with popular benchmark models over the period from January 2003 to March 2020, we conclude that our method has higher accuracy of short-term GDP forecasting. The findings of this research may be useful for the development of monetary and communication policy in Russia.

The Short-Term Mortality Fluctuations (STMF) data series provides an opportunity for analysis of intra-annual excess mortality, in particular, human losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, the STMF has a limitation caused by the nature of the collected original weekly death counts. In many countries, weekly death counts are available only by broad age groups or/and are too small and shaky. Moreover, the original age scales somewhat vary by country. Thus, the STMF data file presents weekly deaths and death rates by broad age intervals. This simplifies the usage of the STMF and helps to conduct analyses but limits the comparability of results across countries and time. The comparisons may be biased due to differences between the population age composition. This study addresses the problem by providing a method for the estimation of week-specific standardized death rates (SDRs) that combines the aggregated weekly mortality data with detailed annual data on mortality and population. This allows deriving annual transition coefficients for the transformation of crude death rates into SDRs. We show that the derived SDRs approximate well exact SDRs across time and countries.

In this study we analyze the convergence of GDP per capita from 2000 to2013 (current prices and euro exchange rates) for eight countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) of the European Union (CEE8). Some convergence indicators are also calculated for the CEE8 as a whole. The main purpose of this study is to shed some light on the impact of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) on regional convergence in advanced emerging countries, like the CEE8. The main result of random effects panel regressions for unconditional beta-convergence is that significant convergence is found for the whole period from 2000-2013, but not for sub-periods on either end of the sample, except for Hungary and Poland. This means that convergence in most CEECs is only significant if the GFC is included in the estimation period. The role of capital regions for the convergence process is an item for future research.

More than a half a century ago, Bela Balassa proposed his famous revealed comparative advantage (RCA) index which represents the intensity of exports and can be represented as the ratio of actual-to-expected trade. Today, the index is still applied in the majority of empirical comparative advantage studies, though many alternative indices that account for the demand dimension by capturing imports have been proposed, and theoretical considerations indicate that a proper RCA index should be based on net trade. However, these alternatives cannot be represented as the ratio of actual-to-expected trade. We develop a new net trade RCA (ntRCA) index which estimates the comparative advantage from net trade and can be presented as the ratio of actual-to-expected net trade. The index is interpreted as the relative ability of a country to gain from trade in a certain product.

The rule of law, understood as ideology and legal rules, is believed to be a competitive advantage of Western civilization, supporting its sustainable development. Yet it can also be viewed as a social norm of citizens who respect the law and follow its commands. How does this social norm emerge in different societies?  This question must be answered through the social history of the law in Western and non-Western societies from a comparative perspective. This paper outlines the main features of comparative socio-legal history and tests it on some significant historical examples. In the first part of the article, the authors propose a functional classification of legal systems into three ideal Weberian types—the law of judges, learned law, and the law of the authorities. It allows us to consider the origin of the social norm of the rule of law. In the second part of the article, the authors trace the transition from the ideal types to natural legal systems and identify the factors that determine the stability of the social norm of the rule of law where it originated. In the final part of the article, the authors conclude that, first, the social norm of the rule of law emerged in the societies where the law had been treated either as a means of resolving disputes (the law of judges) or as the rules of fair, correct conduct (learned law), for example, the Roman Republic, medieval England, continental Europe, and the Ottoman Empire. Secondly, the stability of the social norm of the rule of law seems to be explained by a "triangle" of factors, namely: 1) political competition where all participants understand the inevitability of compromise on the basis of the law, 2) law which is suitable for finding a compromise due to its internal merits, 3) a professional community of jurists who develop and apply law independently of the administration. Such a triangle is possible in any society where the law of judges or learned law prevails and where the majority of participants in the political process are ready to compromise based on the current law.