Fiscal transparency has been consistently identified as a key feature of efficient fiscal policy and a prerequisite for good public governance. However, measuring fiscal transparency remains an empirical challenge, and extant literature on developing countries is still sparse. To that end, this...

This paper revisits the issue of law enforcement and the design of monetary sanctions when the public law enforcer's incentives depart from those of a benevolent authority, which is the most frequent assumption made in the literature on crime deterrence. We first consider the case an elected...

In June 2013, the ruble was slightly devaluated with a view to increasing ruble budget revenues amid slow-down in economic growth. A.Ulyukayev was appointed a new Minister of Economic Development, replacing A. Belousov, which most probably means an attempt to observe moderation in government...

In July 2013, Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny was sentenced to fi ve years in prison. It appears, however, that he would be allowed – on procedural grounds, since no appeal hearing has been held yet – to run for mayor in mayoral elections in Moscow on September 8, 2013. A...

In August, Victor Ishaev was dismissed from his post as Russia’s Minister for the Development of the Far East – his extravagantly costly approaches to solving the region’s problems without having made even a feeble attempt at setting any priorities, had finally infuriated both the RF...

In March 2014 Russia announced the accession of Crimea based on the results of the referendum held on 16 March 2014. In response the U.S. and EU introduced visa sanctions and a ban on the possession of assets in their jurisdictions for Russian officials (and in the U.S. this also extended to...

The situation in Ukraine ratcheted up sharply in April 2014 in the Dontesk and Lugansk Regions, where armed insurgents seized the regional administration buildings. Negotiations in Geneva between officials from Russia, Ukraine, the United States, and the European Union came to an agreement on...

The top news story of November was the indirect polemical dispute between Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, centered on the RF Investigative Committee’s attempt to restore at least one of its previous established powers – the right of investigators to open tax fraud cases without a request...

We investigate one possible explanation for observed rates of corrupt behavior namely that individual decision makers who frequently engage in illegal actions may underestimate the overall probability of being caught. This might in particular be true for petty corruption where small amounts of...

In November 2012, RF Minister of Defense Anatoly Serdiukov, accused of abetting corruption in his ministry, was sacked from office; former Deputy Minister of Regional Development was arrested; criminal proceedings against the managers of Rostelekom and the former top officials of the RF Ministry of...