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».
In the modern world gender roles often differ from the ones that dominated in the developed societies hundred years ago. Nowadays work and own career are goals for both men and women. Thereby here comes a question how this alternation in the family structure affects children. In what way does employment of a mother influences her child in the first years of a life? According to some preliminary results, if a woman is a full-time employee, the cognitive outcomes of her child are lower than of the one whose mother is not fully employed. Presenting an article "Fertility, Maternal Employment and Children's Cognitive Achievement: a Structural Approach», the assistant professor of HSE Anna Yurko spoke about these results in more detail.
What is relationship between a level of democracy in a country and nutrition of its population? According to the data, the higher is consumption of protein in the country, the higher is the probability that it will become more democratic. It can be explained by the fact that the share of the macronutrient in a food ration of the population is a proxy to a size of the middle class, which is a key element for democratization. The assistant professor of HSE Andrey Shcherbak spoke about this interesting result, presenting his article «The recipe for democracy? Improvement in diet as a structural prerequisite for political change».
Politics encompasses omnifarious spheres of social life, facing various problems in every of them. How can ordinary citizens not be confused by all these political issues and prioritize properly? In what way do people form their political views about what a solution to a problem is more preferable? Probably, a person shapes their opinion basing partially on the position of the preferred party. On the 1st of November the assistant professor of London School of Economics and Political Science Thomas J. Leeper presented an article «If Only Citizens Had a Cue: The Process of Opinion Formation over Time», discussing this hypothesis in more detail.
Why are Russians inclined to be tolerant of the high level of social inequality? How does interpersonal trust influence their preferences for redistribution? HSE research fellow Denis Ivanov discussed this in «Bridging or Bonding? Preferences for Redistribution and Social Capital in Russia».
On September 29 a research seminar on political economy took place at HSE. Andrew Little (Cornell University) spoke on 'I Don't Know'.
