Publications

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.

Commodity exporting economies display procyclicality with the price of commodity exports. Although financial frictions may amplify commodity price shocks, how they do so for net exporters is unclear. Using Russian data from 2001-2018 we estimate a small open economy New Keynesian model with a banking system and leveraged domestic firms who issue secured debt and may default on their unsecured domestic debt. The collateral constraint and default generate financial intermediation wedges that vary endogenously over the business cycle, amplify the estimated contribution of commodity price shocks, and reduce the importance of investment and discount factor shocks. With financial frictions, optimal policy is characterized by monetary policy with a lower inflation and GDP target, but has a significant role for targeting the creditto-GDP ratio through a combination of macroprudential tools.

The low temperature transport of electron, or vibrational or electronic exciton towards polymer chains turns out to be dramatically sensitive to its interaction with transverse acoustic vibrations. We show that this interaction leads to substantial polaron effect and decoherence, which are generally stronger than those associated with longitudinal vibrations. For site-dependent interactions transverse phonons form subohmic bath leading to the quantum phase transition accompanied by full suppression of the transport at zero temperature and fast decoherence characterized by temperature dependent rate k2 ∝ T3/4 at low temperature while k2 ∝ T2 for site-independent interactions. The latter dependence was used to interpret recent measurements of temperature dependent vibrational energy transport in polyethylene glycol oligomers.  

This paper presents a model of strategic competition between universities that accounts for the existence of positive spillover effect from -education (peer effect). It was demonstrated that in the presence of peer effect strategic competition results in inefficient student allocation between the two universities (biased to the high-quality university) and excessive quality differentiation. The model is used to analyze the implications of government funding policies as well as admission and quality regulation. It was demonstrated that traditional schemes of institutional funding and students’ financial aid programs like tuition fee subsidy, quality investment subsidy, or total cost subsidy reduce social welfare. At the same time, an introduction of provision of tuition-free education for the best students combined with a per-student grant provided to the university improves both students’ and social welfare. It was also demonstrated that tight admission regulation is not socially desirable while the introduction of minimum quality standards makes society better off.

The history of research in finance and economics has been widely impacted by the field of Agent-based Computational Economics (ACE). While at the same time being popular among natural science researchers for its proximity to the successful methods of physics and chemistry for example, the field of ACE has also received critics by a part of the social science community for its lack of empiricism. Yet recent trends have shifted the weights of these general arguments and poten- tially given ACE a whole new range of realism. At the base of these trends are found two present-day major scientific breakthroughs: the steady shift of psychology towards a hard science due to the advances of neuropsychology, and the progress of reinforcement learning due to increasing computational power and big data. We outline here the main lines of a computational research study where each agent would trade by reinforcement learning.

Strong-Δ-Rationalizability introduces first-order belief restrictions in the analysis of forward induction reasoning. Without actual restrictions, it coincides with Strong Rationalizability (Battigalli, 2003; Battigalli and Siniscalchi, 2003). These solution concepts are based on the notion of strong belief (Battigalli and Siniscalchi, 2002). The non-monotonicity of strong belief implies that the predictions of Strong-Δ-Rationalizability can be inconsistent with Strong Rationalizability. I show that Strong-Δ-Rationalizability refines Strong Rationalizability in terms of outcomes when the restrictions correspond to belief in a distribution over terminal nodes. Moreover, under such restrictions, the epistemic priority between rationality and belief restrictions is irrelevant for the predicted outcomes.

Multiple units of property, each owned by a seller with a private value, are perfect complements in a private redevelopment project. The paper develops a mechanism for assembly of property which (i) allows compulsory sales, (ii) does not require any transactions unless the property assembly takes place, (iii) is ex-post budget-balanced, (iv) guarantees a minimum compensation to each seller, and (v) seeks to maximize the joint welfare of sellers. The mechanism is shown to converge asymptotically, as the number of sellers grows, to the seller first-best at a high rate. The mechanism requires very little knowledge about the distributions of seller valuations, and is robust to incorrect specification of distributions of both seller or buyer valuations by the market maker.

This paper presents a public procurement transaction cost evaluation using a large-scale survey of procurers and suppliers. The study was conducted in Russia in 2017. The results of the survey confirmed that the lower the contract value, the more expensive the procurement procedure. An empirical analysis of factors impacting public procurement cost evaluation also revealed considerable differences between respondents with and without experience in complex procurement procedures. The paper makes an important contribution to the academic literature by elaborating a new approach to public procurement cost evaluation, as well as providing an empirical evaluation of direct transaction costs of public procurement.

The survey-based approach to the evaluation of public procurement costs described in this paper can be used by other countries and regions. Although the average overall transaction costs for public procurements in the case study country amounted to about 1% of the total value of concluded contracts, this figure was 6.6% to 8.1% for small purchases. This figure exceeds the budget saving from competitive procurement and calls for a need to simplify regulations around smaller procurements. This analysis of the procurement costs on Russian data will allow other developing countries to avoid the mistakes made in Russia, as well providing a way to realistically and affordably measure their procurement transaction costs.

This paper provides a status-based explanation for convertible securities. An entrepreneur with status concerns inducing risk-taking decides how to finance the firm and how to dynamically manage it. Solving analytically for the optimal security, we find that it is substantially similar to a convertible security. Our model can explain why convertible securities are mainly issued by start-ups and small firms, as we show that their salient characteristics, higher volatility and dynamic flexibility, accentuate incentives to issue convertible securities. We also provide analytical results relevant to quantifying how status concerns affect credit risk, an established factor behind security choice.

Economic predictions often hinge on two intuitive premises: agents rule out the possibility of others choosing unreasonable strategies (‘strategic reasoning’), and prefer strategies that hedge against unexpected behavior (‘cautiousness’). These two premises conflict and this undermines the compatibility of usual economic predictions with reasoning-based foundations. This paper proposes a new take on this classical tension by interpreting cautiousness as robustness to ambiguity. We formalize this via a model of incomplete preferences, where (i) each player's strategic uncertainty is represented by a possibly non-singleton set of beliefs and a (ii) rational player chooses a strategy that is a best-reply to every belief in this set. We show that the interplay between these two features precludes the conflict between strategic reasoning and cautiousness and therefore solves the inclusion-exclusion problem raised by Samuelson (1992). Notably, our approach provides a simple foundation for the iterated elimination of weakly dominated strategies.

We study the consequences of misreporting in settings where ambiguity-averse investors face uncertainty about two aspects of the firm: productivity and reliability of the information system. We show that the joint presence of these two sources of uncertainty distort the firm’s investment choices in opposing ways, leading to over-investment by large firms (to signal productivity) and under-investment by small firms (to signal reliability). Our analysis suggests that uncertainty regarding the reliability of financial statements affects both the level of the market-to-book ratio and its association with firm size. In addition, we show that, under plausible circumstances, reductions in uncertainty can be detrimental to social welfare: lower information asymmetry about reliability always encourages more aggressive misreporting and boosts investment, thereby exacerbating the possible over-investment problem facing some firms.

The paper investigates under what conditions it is optimal to exclude some motorists searching for parking from occupying a vacant parking bay. Privileged parking is found to be optimal if motorists are heterogenous and can steer their search towards or away from such parking. The socially optimal allocation of privileges and search strategies are characterized. The second-best pricing policies in the presence of cruising-for-parking externality are described; short-term parkers should always be allowed to take the first vacant bay they find. A model extension studies technologically modified “special needs” parking. Unlike existing policies that make such parking exclusive for special-needs motorists, the optimal policy makes it available for an extra fee to anyone, while increasing the number of special-needs bays so that even the initial users are better off.

In the future world of self-driving vehicles, intersections will be managed by computers that send individual commands to each passing vehicle. This paper proposes to make traffic priority contingent on self-reported value of time of vehicle occupants. A model of two merging roads with stochastic traffic is developed. Algorithms for calculation of optimal exit sequences, accounting for time value heterogeneity, are characterized. Welfare costs of limited planning horizon are assessed. Incentive compatible scheme of payment for priority is calculated. The winners and losers of the proposed mechanism are described. Optimality of traffic volume and composition under optimal exit regulation is established.

Predictions under common knowledge of payoffs may differ from those under arbitrarily, but finitely, many orders of mutual knowledge; Rubinstein's (1989) Email game is a seminal example. Weinstein and Yildiz (2007) showed that the discontinuity in the example generalizes: for all types with multiple rationalizable (ICR) actions, there exist similar types with unique rationalizable action. This paper studies how a wide class of departures from common belief in rationality impact Weinstein and Yildiz's discontinuity. We weaken ICR to ICR-lambda, where lambda is a sequence whose n-th term is the probability players attach to (n-1)-th-order belief in rationality. We find that Weinstein and Yildiz's discontinuity remains when lambda_n is above an appropriate threshold for all n, but fails when lambda converges to 0. That is, if players' confidence in mutual rationality persists at high orders, the discontinuity persists, but if confidence vanishes at high orders, the discontinuity vanishes.

We provide epistemic foundations for permissibility (Brandenburger, 1992), a strategic-form solution concept for finite games which coincides with the Dekel-Fudenberg procedure, i.e., the elimination of all weakly dominated strategies, followed by the iterated elimination of strictly dominated strategies. We show that permissibility characterizes the behavioral implications of “cautious rationality and common weak belief of cautious rationality” in the canonical, universal type structure for lexicographic beliefs. For arbitrary type structures, we show that the behavioral implications of these epistemic assumptions are characterized by the solution concept of full weak best response set, a weak dominance analogue of best response set (Pearce, 1984).

In this paper, the Kalman linear filter method is used to decompose non‐synchronous observations of the realized volatility of financial indices (NIKKEI 225, FTSE 100, S&P 500) into unobservable global and local components. It is shown that the volatility of the New York S&P 500 index is a global component, while the Tokyo NIKKEI 225 index, on the contrary, is more sensible to the local news. It is shown that the largest contribution to the global component comes from the observation interval from the closing of the London Exchange to the closing of the exchange in New York (16:30 and 21:00 UTC, respectively). Starting from about 2012–2014, the contribution to the volatility of the global news market is growing from the interval from closing the exchange in New York to closing the exchange in Tokyo (from 21:00 to 6:00 UTC). This can be attributed to the recently increasing influence of the economies of Asian countries (China, Japan, Korea) on the world economy.

The ageing population in Russia has led to a shift from distributive pay-as-you-go financed pension system into a multi-pillar one. In 2002, individuals were given the opportunity to form and manage their individual pension funds. Since then, reforms have continued. The purpose of this paper is to reveal how the views and attitudes of working-age Russians regarding retirement have changed over a period (2005-2018). Research was done using the survey data «Monitoring of the financial behavior of Russians (2009-2018)» (NRU-HSE), «Monitoring of financial activity of population (2005)» (ZIRCON) and Initiative Study of NAFI (2007). Despite the demographic, economic, and institutional changes that have taken place, individual pension strategies have not changed for the better, fewer Russians are confident in 2018 that they will have enough money for living after retirement, the number of those who expect to receive additional income has reduced, financial retirement strategies have not become common.

The textbook contains a course of macroeconomic theory of introductory and intermediate levels and includes a standard set of topics studied in the baccalaureate of economic universities. In an understandable way it expounds the fundamentals of macroeconomic theory and macroeconomic policy: presents the definitions of the basic concepts and terms; outlines the key formulas; provides the thorough explanation and interpretation of macroeconomic relations and of the mechanisms of macroeconomic processes. The textbook gives the comprehensive analysis of the most important macroeconomic models, including dynamic ones, which apparatus is provided in the form accessible to readers with different levels of mathematical background. The analysis of various options for macroeconomic policy includes a detailed intuitive description of the mechanisms and consequences of each policy in the closed and in the open economies, and for different time periods: short-run, medium-run and long-run. For clarity and visibility, the theoretical statements are illustrated by logical chains, diagrams, tables, numerous graphs and statistical data, most of which relate to the Russian economy. The theory is accompanied by numerical problems with solutions, explanations and comments that not only gives insight of what formulas and how are to be used for solving typical tasks, but also contributes to deeper understanding of the theoretical material.

The textbook consists of two parts. Part I includes eight chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 have an overview character; they provide an idea about the subject and the methods of macroeconomic analysis and the key macroeconomic variables. Chapters 3–8 are devoted to the theory of aggregate demand; they deal with the models of the goods and money markets and describe the consequences of macroeconomic policy in the closed economy in the short run.

Part II included nine chapters. Chapter 9 addresses the labor market in order to derive aggregate supply. Chapter 10 describes the model of aggregate demand and aggregate supply and analyzes the consequences of exogenous shocks in the short run and in the medium run. Chapters 11–13 focus on the problems of macroeconomic instability — unemployment and inflation. Chapter 14 considers the factors and models of the long-run economic growth. Chapters 15–17 contain the theory of the open economy and examine the implications of the stabilization policies in the open economy.

This book is intended for undergraduate students of economic faculties; students of non-economic specialties, studying macroeconomics; macroeconomic theory teachers; applicants of master's programs of economic universities; attendees of professional retraining courses and further training faculties, as well as for all who are interested in macroeconomic theory and macroeconomic policy.  

Abstract

Evolution of political preferences occurs under the influence of institutions and some other factors. The term “political” was chosen just for concreteness and brevity of exposition. The results can be easily extended to some other social preferences and supporting institutions. In this model at the setup an individual joins a party but as time progresses she adjusts her endogenous political views accordingly with her utility function. Dynamics governing changes are provided by a partial differential equation similar to a diffusion equation. Party allegiance changes are random and they take the form similar to mutations in biology. The steady-state distributions on the political spectrum interval can be described by the Airy functions. Initial uniform distribution of individuals on the political spectrum interval is influenced by the governing party and the two political groups that emerge in society (“left” and “right’ political movements). Finally distribution becomes three peaked with the maximum distribution values coinciding with the formally declared political doctrines of the institutions. In the steady-state the share of the central party members will relatively increase compared with the other individuals.

Key words: evolution of preferences, political doctrine, steady-state distribution, eigenvalues problem.