Faculty of Economic Sciences

New faculties, personnel development, internationalisation, and much more – these are all things on the agenda of the annual International Advisory Committee (IAC) meeting currently taking place in Moscow.

Tenured HSE Professor Fuad Aleskerov, who is the head of the Faculty of Economic Sciences’ Department of Mathematics, has become a member of the Informatics section of the Academia Europaea.

The winners are 16 staff members in seven ‘golden’ categories and 21 students in the ‘Silver Nestling’ category.  The winners of the ‘Golden Reference’, which is awarded to the most cited HSE scholar, have also been announced. The awards ceremony was held on November 27, on the HSE's birthday.

This week the next speaker in the FES International Research Seminar Series was Professor Jérôme Adda, Bocconi University.

Topic: Hiding Behind Fig Leaves – The Economic Consequences of Moral Hypocrisy

Abstract:We analyze a specific form of inter-personal deception: moral hypocrisy, i.e., saying one thing (trying to appear moral to others) but doing another (act immorally). We run a series of simple dictator game experiments. The dictator has three options: 1) she can directly implement a fair outcome; 2) she can directly implement an unfair outcome; 3) she can flip a coin (the “fig leaf”) in private to determine either outcome. The results are the following: i) Dictator behavior significantly changes when a fig leaf is available: many dictators are willing to apply a “fair” procedure but only if they can fudge the results of the coin flip. ii) The latter effect is stronger under increased publicity and also appears if the use of the coin is costly. iii) Moral hypocrites exactly know what they are doing. They do not deceive themselves but the receiver. iv) The availability of the (non-binding) coin option significantly reduces the number of fair allocations. v) As potential remedies against hypocritical behavior, we identify: ask subjects to provide more details about the coin toss; provide common information that the coin leads to unfair behavior; make the coin costly (this only helps partly). Our paper contributes to the debate on the origins of pro-social behavior. From an applied perspective, the effectiveness of (apparently) fair procedures - which are under the full control of the agent in situations which entail a conflict of interest and when social pressures to conform are high - must be challenged.

Topic: " Partisanship as Tradition: Critical Junctures, Collective Memory and Persistent Party Identification"

joint work with David Gomtsyan

Abstract: Party loyalty can be motivated by various forces. Sometimes it is driven by instrumental motives and ideological leanings. At other times, it is better viewed as an expression of more enduring social and cultural identities transmitted across generations. We study the case of Sasun Armenians to illustrate this latter view. Our paper traces the origins of long-term party identi cation to a critical juncture in the local history of Sasun, a mountainous region of the Ottoman Empire located in Eastern Turkey. During the Great Massacres against Armenians at the end of the 19th century, Armenian residents of Sasun received armed support from the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) to defend their villages from military attacks. With the help of the ARF rebels, survivors of the Armenian Genocide (1915-1917) from Sasun region settled in various villages in modern-day Armenia. We show that the descendants of Sasun migrants strongly embrace the local legacy of their ancestral contact with the ARF. They are not only more likely to name their children after the ARF rebels who helped Sasun people in their armed struggle but they also are more likely to vote for the ARF today, although the party was not active in Armenia during the seven decades of the Soviet rule. 

Over two hundred financial managers of large Russian and International companies attended the Summit of Financial Directors of Russia - the XV annual event aimed at sharing the experience of the heads of financial departments. The event took place on October 30-31, 2018.

On November 5-6, the 15th EIASM Conference on “Corporate Governance” took place in Brussels. Representatives of more than 15 countries came to the capital of Belgium to present their research projects and discuss new trends in the field of corporate finance.

Today was the third day of the Autumn school 'Current Trends in Decision-making Analysis' organized by the International Laboratory of Decision Choice and Analysis. The invited lecturers included outstanding academics and researchers Itzhak Gilboa, Theocharis Grigoriadis, Michel Grabisch, Gabrielle Demange, Saptarshi Mukherjee, Stefan Napel, Agnieszka Rusinowska, William Thomson, Katarína Cechlárová.

During the second day of the Autumn school on Current Trends in Decision-making Analysis participants heard the presentations by Michel Grabisch, Agnieszka Rusinowska, and William Thomson.