2016. vol. 20. No. 2

In this paper, using the RLMS – HSE data for 2006–2013, we explore two interconnected forms of labour mobility: vertical intrafirm promotions and horizontal inter-firm transitions. Our focus is on the dynamics and driving factors of this mobility, on how the latter relates to accumulation and utilization of the human capital, and what are payoffs in wage terms to job changes. During the period under study, about every fifth worker changed annually their employers or moved to new positions within firms. The external mobility was almost three times higher than the internal one, and promotions were much more frequent than demotions. Gradually the intensity of mobility tended to decrease. Averages hide considerable variation in mobility across groups: men generally are more mobile than women, youth are more mobile than older age workers and higher educated workers are more stable than less educated. One can speculate about the division on "movers" (those who are in permanent job-to-job motion), "careerists" (workers climbing up the job ladder within the same organization), and “stayers” in status-quo over years.

Labour mobility emerges as a rational strategy that matches wage to productivity. Job-to-job moves lead to higher wage but may disrupt stability of labour relations. Before changing job externally mobile workers earn on average a little lower than the prevailing market rate, while internally mobile get the market wage. Return to the external mobility decreased gradually, eroding incentives to voluntary inter-firm transitions.

There is a large consensus in the literature on the negative impact of corruption on economic growth and development. Due to its illegal and covered nature, the analysis of corruption is challenging to economists. The lack of data is the main barrier for researchers. Experimental approach allows to generate the required data and could become the most promising approach to study the determinants of corruption and to test the possible anti-corruption measu­res. In this paper we present the wide survey of the experimental evidence of corruption. In the first part we make the brief introduction into the experimental economics approach. The second part reviews in details the game-theoretic сorruption models. We find out that the lion’s share of these models has a standard design based on the simple two-agents’ interaction through bribe­ry. In the third part we discuss the main findings encountered by the literature that use experimental techniques to study corruption. In particular, we analyse the cultural and gender difference in the propensities to engage into corruption behaviour, income and monitoring effects, factors that influence one's tolerance of corruption. Finally, in the last part we discuss advantages and disadvantages of the experimental approach for corruption studies.

The article researches a real estate markets with the aim to find objectively justified patterns for the following real estate market indexes: pricing, rate of rent, and capitalization ratio appraisals. Authors of the article introduce a new method of estimation of these indexes. This method is based on a stochastic model in which the main stochastic component is a random vector with jointly normal distributed terms: logarithm of prices of sales and logarithm of rates of rent. The introduced method is applied for monitoring of objectively justified indexes for real estate markets. Statistical processing of Saint-Petersburg real estate market data results that the empirical distributions of the prices significantly fit to the two dimensional lognormal law of distribution. For establishing statistical hypotheses accordance the authors use Kolmogorov – Smirnov test of fit. The modern standards of appraisal in EU, UK, USA, Russian Federation uni­quely treat real estate market value as follows: “ For the aim of establishing of the market value one determines the most probable price with the following necessary conditions. At this price the real estate object could be sold on the date of estimation in the open competitive market, when the parties to the deal behave reasonably, having full access to all necessary information, and the price of the deal is not affected by any force majeure circumstances ” . The market value is defined as a numerical characteristic (mode) of density of distribution of a random value: price of supply or price of bargain. In the article the capitalization ratio appraisals is a random value with conditionally lognormal distribution under condition that the price or the rate of rent is known. The paper gives examples of empirical distributions of prices of supplies, prices of bargains on the street retail markets for Saint-Petersburg in 2013. The examples of calculation of the capitalization ratio appraisals are also given. The article proves that the capitalization ratio appraisals has a non-trivial probabilistic nature and it is not a constant. The article also proves that in the frame of the introduced stochastic model of pricing under assumption of the joint lognormality of the price of sale and the rate of rent two most used estimations of the market value equal, where the first one is based on the gain approach and the second one is base on the comparative approach. Consequently, a corresponding procedure of concordance this two approaches is not needed.

This paper analysis the impact of centralized monitoring enlargement in a large public organization on incentives for efficient activity of organization’s departments, which have dif­ferent levels of financial autonomy. We analyze the data of the large public organization during 2008–2013. The efficiency of departments’ activity was measured by competiveness of their procurements and delays in contract executions. All departments of the organization were clas­sified as budget-funded departments and autonomous departments that have more financial autonomy. From the wide spectrum of procured goods we have selected two types of procured services that were often procured by autonomous and budget-funded departments: printing ser­vices and data collection services.

The results show that during the period of standard monitoring, the autonomous departments had more efficient procurements compared to the budget-funded departments. After enlargement of centralized monitoring the differences in performance indicators are insignificant for these types of departments. Our explanation for this result is that enlargement of centralized monitoring increases efficiency in budget-funded departments, but it may produce additional costs and decrease incentives for autonomous departments.

We analyze liquidations and mergers of mutual funds in the United States, the biggest mutual fund’ market in the world. As asset management industry grow, we have more of mergers and liquidations of mutual funds in the market place. We compare funds delisted within asset Management Company and survived funds within the same management company by using matching procedure. For each of the delisted funds we find all survived funds with similar investment style and Total Net Assets (TNA) within the same management company. We show that asset management companies liquidate relatively small funds by TNA with poor performan­ce record and with large asset redemptions. Asset management companies tend to merge larger funds and liquidate smaller funds. Moreover, liquidated funds are younger and have smaller expense ratio comparing to merged funds. Our results emphasize the idea that asset management companies tend to clean out its performance record by closing underperforming funds. We also analyze management company liquidations. Median liquidated management company consists of only one fund and has about $10 million under management (as compared to median asset management company TNA of $300 million). According to regression analysis, smaller size of TNA, lower yearly inflows (larger outflows), and smaller expense ratio are associated with higher probability for management company to be liquidated.

The paper considers the factors of investment activity of Russian companies before and after the global financial crisis of 2008–2009. Given the growth of non-financial corporations debt under the general monetary tightening accompanied by the stagnation of investment in fixed assets, the roles of financial constraints and debt overhang are investigated. We also raise the question about the influence of the government participation in the company’s capital on investment behavior. In order to identify the phenomenon of debt overhang we provide a new indicator and show its advantages over others previously used in studies. We estimate investment functions using annual panel data on financial indicators of Russian public companies for the period from 2000 to 2014.

The results show differences in the investment behavior of firms before and after the crisis of 2008–2009: the weak influence of financial constraints before the crisis turned into statistically and economically significant thereafter. The behavior of private companies and state-owned ones differs much. State-owned companies have relatively soft budget constraints and are almost not subject to debt overhang, while the post-crisis decline in investment of private companies, according to our estimates, is 14% due to the aggravation of the problem. This result means that in the post-crisis environment of limited financial resources state-owned companies’ borrowing can crowd out borrowings of other companies, and thus crowd out private investment.

The presence of debt overhang may have implications for monetary policy: central bank has an additional argument in favor of softer policy. The central bank also has to take into account the heterogeneity of economic agents: the major "burden" of tight monetary policy falls on the market segment, while state-owned enterprises get advantages of their easier access to financing.