We examine the impact of natural resources on economic growth in Russia’s regions since the introduction of the mineral tax in 2002. Using novel measures of natural resource rents produced in, but not necessarily appropriated by the regions (mineral tax collections), we demonstrate that...

We use the 2005-2012 data for Russian regions to show that higher regional institutional quality strongly benefits institutionally-dependent manufacturing sectors in terms of both gross output levels and growth rates. Unlike the existing literature on this topic, which uses cross-sectional or...

We investigate the relationship between the key labour market indicators: productivity, real wages, and unemployment rate. The analysis is based on quarterly data for the period Q1 1995 to Q3 2013. Period free of crises (early 1999 to mid-2008) is additionally considered to check the crisis...

An important condition for the transition to the free float and inflation targeting regime is the ability of the Russian Central Bank to pursue an active independent policy of interest rate adjustment. The purpose of this investigation is to analyze the effect produced by the exchange rate...

The paper evaluates short-term implications of pension reforms made in 2010, and long-term scenarios of pension system development. We find that if size of pension transfer is fixed, prolonged fall of the replacement rate is expected, which makes situation politically unsustainable. Keeping flat...

The factors that determined substantial cross-country variation of output decline during the recent recession are discussed. The regression analysis is performed for the sample of 172 economies, as well as for the sub-samples of developing and oil-exporting economies. Regression results indicate...