Department of Mathematics

Michele Valsecchi (NES) showed that economic sanctions are not an effective tool for reaching one of their primary goals and can actually backfire

Eugenia Chernina (HSE) explored how far individuals’ perceptions deviate from the true level of inequality and what factors shape the divergence.

Aleksey Oshchepkov explored the network (or parochial) corruption which is conditional on the social connections between bureaucrats and private agents. Using data from the Life in Transition Survey (LiTS) which covers all post-socialist countries? Aleksey found that network corruption is more persistent over time, less related to contemporary national socio-economic and institutional characteristics and has stronger historical roots than market corruption

Dmitry Veselov explored the effect of migration of Russian settlers on the intra-regional development in Kazakhstan using the 1897 census dataset of the Russian Empire and modern economic data to provide links between the density of the Russian population in Kazakhstan and the current level of economic development.

Koen Schoors studied how institutional quality moderates the relationship between generalized trust and preferences for redistribution. It has been well established in the literature that generalized trust is conducive to greater support for redistribution because it reduces expectations of cheating and free-riding among others.

Irina Levina studied evidence from Russian firms to explore whether decentralization of firms can be successful under weak institutions. She introduced the concepts of real decentralization for the delegation of decision-making authority in firms to professional people hired though open competition, and of cautious decentralization – for the delegation to people hired through connections. Irina demonstrated that really decentralized Russian firms are, on average, significantly more likely to implement investment.

Gerhard Toews analyzed the consequences of sending "enemies of the people" to the Gulag. He showed that areas around camps with a larger share of enemies among prisoners are more prosperous today, as captured by night lights per capita, firm productivity, wages, and education.

Natalia Naumenko studied the impact of the 1933 Soviet famine on population and urbanization patterns and argued that the shortage of labor during the crucial years of rapid industrialization hindered the development of cities in areas struck by the famine. 

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.

Inna Zaitseva studied players' incentives to exert different levels of effort in different games. The hypothesis of her research suggests that players can express their loyalty to the values of their club by increasing the level of effort in matches, which are considered as principal for the club. One of the explicit criteria for principal matches in football is a derby status of a game. This research demonstrates, that players in Bundesliga in season 2017-2018 exerted a greater level of effort in home derby games, which supports the idea of players’ loyalty to club’s values.