“Wish the Joint NES-HSE Program in Economics continue producing excellent students like him”

The Faculty of Economic Sciences is proud to congratulate Nikita Melnikov (a soon to be graduate of Joint HSE - NES Program in Economics) whose article, co-authored with Prof. Sergei Guriev (Sciences Po, Paris)  is published at American Economic Review:  Guriev, Sergei and Nikita Melnikov. 2016. "War, Inflation, and Social Capital." American Economic Review,106(5): 230-35.

Here is what Sergei Guriev, Professor of Economics, Sciences Po, Paris says about his co-author:

- “Nikita contacted me a year ago suggesting that we work on an empirical project. We looked at panel of Yandex search data in 2014 - a very dramatic year in Russia history. An antique saying has it that a man's life is incomplete unless or until he has tasted love, poverty, and war.* In 2014 Russia went through love affair reunifying with Crimea, war in East Ukraine , a spurt of inflation and dramatic depreciation of the ruble. So we tried to trace Russians’ sentiment and its effect on social capital through the internet search data exploiting a difference-in-differences strategy - and found a number of interesting results.

Coincidentally, I was invited to submit a short paper on modern Russia to the AEA Annual Meeting - and this paper fit very in an exciting panel with a paper by Maxim Boycko and Robert Schiller and another paper by Daniel Treisman. While working on this project I was very impressed by Nikita’s econometrics skills, economics intuition and critical thinking - all the key qualities of a modern academic economist. I should say that in an addition to this paper Nikita produced a completely different and independent research paper that became his undergraduate thesis. I am very happy that Nikita has been admitted to a few top PhD programs and wish the Joint NES-HSE Program in Economics continue producing excellent students like him.”
                                                                                                   * Christopher Hitchens (2005). Love, Poverty and War

Nikita is one of the undergraduate students who is going to get his bachelor diploma on June 27, 2016. Starting Fall 2016 Nikita will start his Ph.D. studies at Princeton University.