Topic: Enemies of the people
co-author: Pierre-Louis V ezina (Dept of Political Economy, King's College London)
Abstract: Enemies of the people were the millions of intellectuals, artists, businessmen, politicians, professors, landowners, scientists, and affluent peasants that were thought a threat to the Soviet regime and were sent to the Gulag, i.e. the system of forced labor camps throughout the Soviet Union. In this paper we look at the long-run consequences of this dark re-location episode. We show 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. Our results point in the direction of a long-run persistence of skills and a resulting positive effect on local economic outcomes via human capital channels.
Topic: Demographic Consequences of the 1933 Soviet Famine
Abstract: Using recently discovered archival data, this article studies the impact of the 1933 Soviet famine on population and urbanization patterns. It documents that, although most of the direct victims lived in rural areas, the famine had a persistent negative impact on the urban population. In fact, the rural population gradually recovered while urban settlements in more affected areas became permanently smaller. The paper argues that the shortage of labor during the crucial years of rapid industrialization hindered the development of cities in areas struck by the famine. Thus, the timing of the shock to population appears to be an important factor. While established urban networks tend to recover from large temporary negative shocks, the lack of people during construction and rapid growth might have a permanent negative impact.
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.
Topic: "Moneyball game" and players' incentives in football
Abstract: The idea of “Moneyball” phenomenon originates from a number of cases in baseball when labour market undervalued specific player skills. Later on, in football was found an evidence of undervaluation of players’ effort, measured as the distance covered during a match. This fact raises a question on players incentives to exert different levels of effort in different games. The hypothesis of this 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.
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.
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.
On November 7, the Autumn school on Current Trends in Decision-making Analysis opened. The event is organized by the International Laboratory of Decision Choice and Analysis. Among the invited lecturers there are outstanding academics and researchers: Itzhak Gilboa, Theocharis Grigoriadis, Michel Grabisch, Gabrielle Demange, Saptarshi Mukherjee, Stefan Napel, Agnieszka Rusinowska, William Thomson, and Katarína Cechlárová.
Topic: Varieties of Authoritarianism Matter: Elite Fragmentation, Natural Resources and Economic Growth
joint work with Alexander Libman (Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, ICSID HSE)
Abstract:A broad literature suggests that political regimes matter for the growth effect of natural resources. However, while several studies have concentrated on the difference between democracies and autocracies in this respect, an important topic overlooked so far is the differences between varieties of authoritarian regimes. This study uses the political variation across sub-national regions of the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin to understand how differences in the extent of elite fragmentation in autocracies affects the influence of resource abundance on the economic growth in the short run. We find that polities with fragmented elites underperform those with consolidated elites and link this effect to higher intensity of rent-seeking and higher costs of fights over rents due to the shorter time horizon of the elites
