Why are some lobby groups less benign in their external effects than others? Nearly three decades ago, Mancur Olson (1982) proposed that less-encompassing lobby groups with their constituents collectively representing a narrow range of sectors are more apt to seek the types of subsidies,...

Russia has witnessed a high number of bank failures over the last two decades. Using monthly data for 2002-2020, spanning four election cycles, we test the hypothesis that bank failures are less likely before presidential elections. We find that bank failures are less likely to occur in the...

Russia does not release information on the numbers of mobilized and recruited men or casualties of war in Ukraine. In this small note, I propose to use information from regional banking data as a proxy for analyzing the regional incidence of Russian mobilization. Some regions have seen rapid...

GDP forecasters face tough choices over which leading indicators to follow and which forecasting models to use. To help resolve these issues, we examine a range of monthly indicators to forecast quarterly GDP growth in a major emerging economy, Russia. Numerous useful indicators are identified...

The papers in the present SUERF Study is a selection of the papers presented at a SUERF Workshop and Special OeNB East Jour Fixe held at Oesterreichische Nationalbank in Vienna on 23 January 2009. In his opening remarks (chapter 2), Ewald Nowotny, Governor of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank...

This paper examines two regions of the Russian Federation, Novgorod and Pskov, to compare how differences in economic policy affect economic development.Despite common histories, geography and natural resources, Novgorod committed early on to policies that would attract foreign investments in...

The paper analyses fiscal competition for mobile capital between identical regions in a transition country.A framework similar to Keen-Marchand (1997) is used to analyse welfare effects of regional competition.It is shown that in very early transition when the share of the old sector is...

This empirical note uses publicly available Goskomstat data to investigate income growth and convergence across Russian regions. Using data for 1992-2001, we find strong sigma divergence simultaneously with beta convergence. he results indicate that per capita income in Russian regions may be...

This paper reports first results from a survey of 404 middle-sized and large manufacturing firms from 40 Russian regions in April-June 2003.We examine the extent of social service and infrastructure provision by the firms and the firms assessment of the quality of public infrastructure and the...