The main idea of liberalism – the inviolability of “inalienable human rights” – is considered in a historical context, not as an eternal principle, but as a changing moral and legal norm. It is argued that the economic success of the West during the transition to capitalism is associated...

Sachs, Warner (1995) were among the first to claim that «resource curse» is real and that resource abundant economies do indeed grow more slowly than the others. Hundreds of papers were published since then supporting the «resource curse» thesis and offering new explanations of mechanisms...

We analyze data on sustainability of democratic regimes in resource rich countries and suggest a two-period model to explain why resource abundance may lead to instability of democracy in some countries, but does not create any difficulties for democratic system in other ones. Our central idea...

There are two innovations in the paper as compared to the previous literature on democracy and growth. First, we consider not only the level of democracy, but also changes in this level in the 1970s-1990s as measured by increments of Freedom House political rights indices. Second, the...

In our previous papers (Polterovich V., Popov V., 2007; Polterovich V., Popov V., Tonis A., 2006) it was shown that democratization (increase in the political rights index of the Freedom house in 1970-2000) can negatively affect economic growth, if the quality of institutions at the beginning of the...

В статье рассматривается международная кластерная политика стран Балтийского региона с целью выявления предпосылок зарождения международных кластеров....

An article about the origin, evolution and laws of formation of enterprise systems in the social environment of modern industrial society. The author analyzes the fundamental differ-ences between business and enterprise systems, proving the thesis of the monopolistic nature of corporations in...

The influence of civic culture is considered on the effective choice of the reform plan which is defined as a sequence of interim institutions that "connects" the initial institution with final, desirable for reformer. Accounting for prevailing values, characteristics of mass behavior and...

In 2007 Russian voters elected representatives to the State Duma under new electoral procedures that President V. Putin had instituted. A presidential election followed in 2008, won by D.Medvedev, leading to Putin's new role as prime minister. To many observers, the reforms and election...

Russian abstract: Наша работа в журнале «Электоральная политика» , посвященная американским выборам, привлекла благожелательное внимание автора – либертарианца,...