Publications

As a result of the global warming, the situation in the Barents Sea leads to several important consequences. Firstly, oil and gas drilling becomes much easier than before. Therefore, it may raise the level of discussions on disputed shelf zones where the deposits are located, especially near to Norway-Russia sea border. Secondly, oil and gas excavation leads to potential threats to fishing by changing natural habitats, which in turn can create serious damage to the economies.

We construct a model, which helps to highlight potential disputed territories and analyze preferences of the countries interested in fossil fuels and fish resources. We also compare different scenarios of resource allocation with allocation by current agreement.

We consider the initial-boundary value problem for the 3D regularized compressible isothermal Navier-Stokes-Cahn-Hilliard equations describing flows of a two-component two-phase mixture taking into account capillary effects. We construct a new numerical semi-discrete finite-difference method using staggered meshes for the main unknown functions. The method allows one to improve qualitatively the computational flow dynamics by eliminating the so-called parasitic currents and keeping the component concentration inside the physically reasonable range (0,1)$. This is achieved, first, by discretizing the non-divergent potential form of terms responsible for the capillary effects and establishing the dissipativity of the discrete full energy. Second, a logarithmic (or the Flory-Huggins potential) form for the non-convex bulk free energy is used. The regularization of equations is accomplished to increase essentially the time step of the explicit discretization in time. We include 3D numerical results for two typical problems that confirm the theoretical predictions.

We consider the regularized 3D Navier-Stokes-Cahn-Hilliard equations describing isothermal flows of viscous compressible two-component fluids with interphase effects. We construct for them a new energy dissipative finite-difference discretization in space, i.e., with the non-increasing total energy in time. This property is preserved in the absence of a regularization. In addition, the discretization is well-balanced for equilibrium flows and the potential body force. The sought total density, mixture velocity and concentration of one of the components are defined at nodes of one and the same grid. The results of computer simulation of several 2D test problems are presented. They demonstrate advantages of the constructed discretization including the absence of the so-called parasitic currents.

In this article, we consider the problem of planning maintenance operations at a locomotive maintenance depot. There are three types of tracks at the depot: buffer tracks, access tracks and service tracks. A depot consists of up to one buffer track and a number of access tracks, each of them ending with one service track. Each of these tracks has a limited capacity measured in locomotive sections. We present a constraint programming model and a greedy algorithm for solving the problem of planning maintenance operations. Using lifelike data based on the operation of several locomotive maintenance depots in Eastern polygon of Russian Railways, we carry out numerical experiments to compare the presented approaches.

The personal role of sub-national rulers is crucial for regional development in countries with weak institutions. This paper studies the impact of regional governors’ tenure in office and their local ties on procurement performance in Russia. To identify the causal effect, we construct instruments for governor’s tenure by exploiting the regional vote share of ruling party in past parliament elections. We find the evidence that governors who do not have pre-governing local ties in the region (outsiders) demonstrate predatory behaviour, compared to governors with local ties (insiders). Namely, governors-outsiders restrict the competition at awarding stage significantly more than governors-insiders. Moreover, for governors-outsiders this restriction becomes stronger with tenure in office, while governors-insiders do not demonstrate such negative tenure effect. We argue that this restriction of competition by governors-outsiders cannot be explained by the intention of better contracts execution: the delays in execution and the probability of contract termination either increase or keep stable with tenure for governors-outsiders and these outcomes decrease with tenure for governors-insiders.

Bachet’s game is a variant of the game of Nim. There are 𝑛 objects in one pile. Two players take turns to remove any positive number of objects not exceeding some fixed number 𝑚. The player who takes the last object loses. We consider a variant of Bachet’s game in which each move is a lottery over set {1, 2, . . . ,𝑚}. The outcome of a lottery is the number of objects that player takes from the pile. We show that under some nondegenericity assumptions on the set of available lotteries the probability that the first player wins in subgame perfect Nash equilibrium converges to 1/2 as 𝑛 tends to infinity.

This article investigates the role of boards in founder-managed firms with concentrated ownership in emerging markets. The literature frequently suggests that in this type of companies, boards have little influence on the corporate decision making. The article conducts a case study of AFK Sistema—a large Russian founder-managed firm with concentrated ownership. We observe that, contrary to the expectations, in this company, the founder provided real authority to the board, at the same time focusing on recruiting independent (mainly foreign) members. Based on this case, we argue that selectively empowering boards in this type of ownership setting could be beneficial for the firm: Selective empowerment is a source of intrinsic motivationfor the independent board members, making them proactively search for new projects and assist in their implementation on behalf of the firm. As a result, the company can overcome a number of important barriers in its development.

What characteristics of firms give them the confidence to invest in settings rife with expropriation by local officials? Empirically, firms in the developing world often face the threat of expropriation from local agents of the state rather than a centralized autocrat. Because policing local officials is costly, the state cannot easily credibly commit to doing so. This has negative consequences for investment. We argue that one solution is to allow firms to approach the state directly to ask for intervention. Not all firms are equally able to successfully get the attention of the state, however, so this mechanism only works for some. We develop an argument about the firm-level characteristics – large-scale employment, political connections, foreign ownership, and business association membership – that should make the central state more attentive to calls for help. Because firm with these characteristics are more likely to secure intervention against predatory bureaucrats, the latter are less likely to try to expropriate them. These firms’ investment decisions should be less sensitive to local expropriation than other firms. We test this argument using data on cases of decentralized expropriation across Russia’s regions and firm-level data from a cross-regional, large scale survey of Russian firms.

It is an important feature of a monotone measure that it is not additive in general. In the paper, we propose the mathematical tool, based on canonical sequences of monotone measures, for analyzing additivity of monotone measures on subalgebras and give a way of generating such monotone measures. It turns out that the generating rule can be considered as an effect of a linear operator defined on the set of monotone measures. We also investigate in what cases the sequence of such operators behaves commutatively and preserve continuity properties from the generating monotone measure.

Over the past years, there is a deep interest in the analysis of different communities and complex networks. Identification of the most important elements in such networks is one of the main areas of research. However, the heterogeneity of real networks makes the problem both important and problematic. The application of SRIC and LRIC indices can be used to solve the problem since they take into account the individual properties of nodes, the possibility of their group influence, and topological structure of the whole network. However, the computational complexity of such indices needs further consideration. Our main focus is on the performance of SRIC and LRIC indices. We propose several modes on how to decrease the computational complexity of these indices. The runtime comparison of the sequential and parallel computation of the proposed models is also given.

Researchers have long tried to define the impact of corporate diversification on firm value. Academic papers mainly concentrate on the effects of corporate diversification in mature markets while its consequences in emerging capital markets are less explored. This article presents the results of an empirical analysis of corporate diversification strategies of a sample of companies from BRIC countries that expanded via acquisitions during 2000–2013. We contribute to the existing literature by examining the effects of corporate diversification on firm value during the pre- and post-crisis periods. In line with other studies, we distinguish between related and unrelated diversification and in contrast to them we single out and separately analyze horizontal, conglomerate and vertical acquisitions. Based on a sample of 319 deals initiated by companies from BRIC countries, we found positive (3.32% and 9.01%) and statistically significant cumulative abnormal returns for conglomerate acquisitions during the pre- and post-crisis periods, correspondingly. We also found that the market reacts positively and statistically significant to the announcements of horizontal and vertical integration only during the pre-crisis period.

In recent years corporate international diversification has become a widely used growth strategy for companies from both developed and emerging markets. Nevertheless, academic papers provide contradictory results on whether the influence of international diversification on firm performance is positive or negative. This chapter presents the results of an empirical analysis of corporate international diversification – performance relationship on a sample of companies from BRIC countries, which expanded geographically in 2005-2015. We contribute to the existing literature by applying a new methodology to identify the performance effects of corporate international diversification based on an economic profit measure. The results indicate that there is a non-linear relationship between the degree of international diversification and economics profit spread. Additionally, for BRIC companies international diversification on average does not have a significant impact on expected long term performance, measured by Tobin’s Q.  

Usually DEA methods are used for the assessment of the regions disaster vulnerability. However, most of these methods work with precise values of all the characteristics of the regions. At the same time, in real life, quite often most of the data consists of expert estimates or approximate values. In this regard, we propose to use modified DEA methods, which will take into account inaccuracy of the data. We apply these methods to the evaluation of wildfire preventive measures in regions of the Russian Federation.

This research advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that interpersonal population diversity, rather than fractionalization or polarization across ethnic groups, has been pivotal to the emergence, prevalence, recurrence, and severity of intrasocietal conflicts. Exploiting an exogenous source of variations in population diversity across nations and ethnic groups, as determined predominantly during the exodus of humans from Africa tens of thousands of years ago, the study demonstrates that population diversity, and its impact on the degree of diversity within ethnic groups, has contributed significantly to the risk and intensity of historical and contemporary civil conflicts. The findings arguably reflect the contribution of population diversity to the non-cohesiveness of society, as reflected partly in the prevalence of mistrust, the divergence in preferences for public goods and redistributive policies, and the degree of fractionalization and polarization across ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups.

We consider the problem of individual manipulation under incomplete information, when voters do not know a full preference profile. Instead, voters know the result of an opinion poll (the outcome of a poll information function π, e.g. a list of scores or a set of winners). In this case, a voter has an incentive to misrepresent her preferences (π-manipulate) if she knows that she will not become worse off and there is a chance of becoming better off. We consider six voting rules and eight types of poll information functions differing in their informativeness. To compare manipulability, first we calculate the probability that there is a voter which has an incentive to π-manipulate and show that this measure is not illustrative in the case of incomplete information. Then, we suggest considering two other measures: the probability of a successful manipulation and an aggregate stimulus of voters to manipulate, which demonstrate more intuitive behavior. We provide results of computational experiments as well as analytical proofs of some effects observed.

The transition from a short-term cost-plus tariff regulation to either a long-term rate-of-return or long-term price cap regulation in Russia started in 2009 and was completed in 2012, causing substantial changes in investment over the course of the reform. We estimate panel data of 46 Russian electricity distribution entities with a dynamic investment model using the system generalized method of moments and addressing potential endogeneity issues. We show that, despite the noncredible regulatory policy, the transition from short-to long-term regulation had a positive and significant effect on the investment rate of regulated entities. The specific long-term regulation design applied in Russia from 2008 to 2017 (either rate-of-return or price cap) had no effect on the investment rate. These results are important for the introduction of changes in regulatory frameworks in developing countries.

This paper analyses the link between the efficiency of regional higher education systems and the rates of regional economic development between 2012 and 2015 in Russia. The efficiency scores are calculated at the institutional level using Two-stage Semi-parametric data envelopment analysis. Then, the scores are aggregated at the regional level. We formulate an economic growth model that considers the efficiency of regional higher education systems as one of the explanatory variables. As an econometric method, we employ a robust GMM estimator. The findings highlight a positive, and statistically significant effect of higher education institutions efficiency on the regional economic growth. We also found negative spillover effects.

Noncooperative discounted stochastic n-person games are considered; the payoffs at each step are represented by trapezoidal fuzzy numbers. The existence of stationary Nash equilibrium strategies is proved.

In this paper, we consider the distribution of the supremum of non-stationary Gaussian processes, and present a new theoretical result on the asymptotic behaviour of this distribution. Unlike previously known facts in this field, our main theorem yields the asymptotic representation of the cor- responding distribution function with exponentially decaying remainder term. This result can be efficiently used for studying the projection density estimates, based, for instance, on Legendre polynomials. More precisely, we construct the sequence of accompanying laws, which approximates the distribution of maxi- mal deviation of the considered estimates with polynomial rate. Moreover, we construct the confidence bands for densities, which are honest at polynomial rate to a broad class of densities.

We present direct logarithmically optimal in theory and fast in practice algorithms to implement the tensor products finite element method (FEM) based on the tensor products of the 1D high-order FEM spaces on multi-dimensional rectangular parallelepipeds for solving the $N$-dimensional Poisson type equation $-\Delta u+\alpha u=f$ ($N\geq 2$) with the Dirichlet boundary conditions. They are based on the well-known Fourier approaches. The key new points are a detailed description for the eigenpairs of the 1D eigenvalue problems for the high order FEM as well as the fast direct and inverse algorithms for expansion in the respective eigenvectors utilizing simultaneously several versions of the FFT (fast Fourier transform). Results of numerical experiments in 2D and 3D cases are presented. The algorithms can serve for numerous applications, in particular, to implement the tensor product high order finite element methods for various time-dependent partial differential equations (PDEs) including the multidimensional heat, wave and Schrödinger ones. %