Topic: "Elections, Protest and Trust in Government: A Natural Experiment from Russia"
co-authored with Timothy Frye
What influences a level of trust between a government and citizens? It seems that one of key factors that determine it is fair elections. However, according to some studies, in autocracies post-election protests play an important role in the development of the trust of population. For instance, in Russian, an attitude of citizens toward the government is significantly improved in case such protests are not forbidden by the authorities. On the seminar dedicated to the article «Elections, Protest and Trust in Government: A Natural Experiment from Russia» the professor of NRU HSE Ekaterina Borisova spoke about that in more detail.
Due to the ability to influence people’s sentiments, mass media is often called the fourth power. Because of this, government usually tries to establish some sort of censure in order to control information provided to the population. However, what is the effect of mass media in political sphere without such control? Particularly, how does it affect turnout? In course of experiments it was revealed that in Russia the presence of independent TV in a region increases turnout in it. The professor of NRU HSE Michael Rochlitz spoke about this and other results on the presentation of an article «Does Independent Media Matter in a Non-Democratic Election? Experimental Evidence from Russia».
Millions of people around the world watch football championships, rooting for a country team, and national team players strive for victory in order to earn fame for themselves, for their country and not to let their fans down. How can a team win a football match? According to some researches, together with players’ talent one of the components of the success is a level of social capital in the country, which positively influences the quality of team performance. Presenting an article «The role of social capital in collective action problem: the case of national football teams», the professor of NRU HSE Inna Zaytseva spoke about this result in more detail.HSE Seminar on Political Economy
What is the most efficient way to organize procurement? On the one hand, outsourcing procurement procedure to authorized agencies, which operate in the competitive environment, must lead to a decrease in costs. On the other hand, inasmuch as they belong to public sector, using such organizations do not solve such problems as corruption in sphere of procurement. On the presentation of an article «Corruption perception and competition in public procurement: empirical evidence from Russian regions» the professor of HSE Elena Podkolzina told wether it is better for a procurer to organize procurement himself or delegate this procedure to authorized agencies.
HSE’s Faculty of Business and Management and Faculty of Economic Sciences were in the top three of the faculties most sought after by employers in Russia.
Many people lie about their income. And regardless of wether an income is high or low, people who excel at the tasks are more inclined to conceal their real wage. During experiments dedicated to that question, researches came to the conclusion that there is a specific type of highly productive employees who are prone to cheating. Presenting an article «Who Cheats: Experimental Evidence from the Lab», the professor of University of Oxford Raymond M. Duch spoke about this interesting result in more detail.
On the one hand, producers benefit from the big marker, on the other hand, competition between firms is higher on it. In what way does agglomeration of firms affects their effectiveness and the level of competition among them? In Russia elasticity of firm-level productivity to the city size is higher than the one in the developed countries, however, there is no evidence of competitive firm selection. Presenting an article «Agglomeration effects in Russian manufacturing», the professor of RANEPA Tatyana Mikhailova spoke about the result in more detail.
People have different preferences for income redistribution. Some people support it as they believe it helps to decrease the level of social inequality while others are satisfied with the status quo and they are against redistribution. According to some research, preferences for redistribution are influenced by individual characteristics like sex, age, income, education. However, there are some other factors, for instance, social institutes. In countries with poor social institutes people with high incomes are more inclined to support redistribution as they can more easily avoid taxes. Presenting an article «Institutional Quality and Social Policy Preferences», the professor of HSE Israel Marques spoke about the experiments on studying this effect.
Millions of people died during 1932-1993 famine, which engulfed the majority of regions of the USSR. Ukraine was particularly affected by the catastrophe and primarily its regions which had been considered to be the most productive ones. What could be the reason for the fact that the highest mortality was observed in the most prolific areas? It can be explained by at least two effects of the collectivization of Soviet agriculture that both decreased incentives of peasants to work and led to the overprocurement of grain in the very productive regions. On the 6th of December the professor of Northwestern University Natalya Naumenko presented an article «Collectivization of Soviet agriculture and 1932-1933 famine», discussing this result in more detail.
The phrase «He who owns the information, owns the world» is familiar to us all. However, is completeness of information always a good thing? It turns out that in the principal-agent model this is not so. Transparency can decrease the willingness of agents to act in the most efficient way and provide incentives to behave in order to put themselves in a favorable light. The professor of Warwick University Niall Hughes spoke about this in more detail, presenting an article «How Transparency Kills Information Aggregation: Theory and Experiment».
