2018. vol. 22. No. 1

The share of import in Russian food trade decreased significantly after the establishment of the food ban for the wide list of countries of 2014. This decline could not go unnoticed by the Russian households. Therefore, the aim of this research is to study the changes in the structure of consumer demand for food products associated with food embargo. Estimations are obtained by the model based on the QUAIDS and Working – Leser models. The originality of the research lays in the construction of the individual prices vector. Traditionally models based on AIDS use aggregate price indicators, such as regional CPIs, but prices are the result of consumer choice, so they can not be aggregated at such a high level. However, individual purchase prices should not be used as well, because of the problem of endogeneity. This study presents a method of estimating individual prices, so they are both differentiated by income groups and other households’ indicators and cleared from the endogeneity. The results demonstrate that the introduction of an import ban caused structural shifts in consumer demand for food prod ucts. The growth of the absolute value of price elasticity may be explained by the lower quality to gether with higher prices of food products on the new market. The rise in the income elasticities means fall in the demand for luxury goods, because of the low ruble exchange rate and overall economic instability. The growth of economies of scale means that households changed their consumption strategies to save their welfare. However, these changes are present for the city population, while farmers seem not to lose their well-being at all. Furthermore, a more thor ough analysis showed that after the shock in 2014, the indicators started to get closer to their initial values. This may be the result of adaptation or the increase in the effectiveness of import substitution. In this regard, the research gives Russian food safety positive prognosis in the long-run, but only if the quality and the variety of food products are improved.

This article focuses on the estimation of the hybrid New-Keynesian Phillips Curve with different kinds of price indices. This helps not only to find to what extent inflation in Russia reacts to the change in the phase of real business cycle, but also to estimate the ratio between agents with rational and adaptive expectations. Such knowledge might be crucial for monetary authorities, because the effectiveness of their policies depends on the understanding of inflation dynamics. Incorrect estimates of the share of rational economic agents can lead to errors in the conducting of monetary policy, which, in turn, may reduce the credibility of central bank amongst population and negatively affect the effectiveness of the future policy conduct.

The study uses three different measures of inflation based on the following indexes: the GDP deflator, the CPI, and the GDP deflator, net of export. The main method of estimation is the continuously updating general method of moments (CUE), which has a smaller bias on finite samples and more valid values of the Hansen J-test for the over identification compared to the standard generalized method of moments. Altogether, this makes the inference more valid.

The main conclusion is that it is the dynamics of inflation calculated on the basis of the GDP deflator, net of exports, that is best described by the Phillips curve equation, and that the output gap is significant and has a positive sign which is consistent with the theory. Mayhap this is due to the fact that the prices of imported and exported goods are not explicitly included to this measure of inflation, that is, it can be referred to as some "internal" inflation. Also, an important result is a slightly greater weight of forward looking expectations in the formation of the inflationary process.

In recent years the dynamic Easterlin Paradox has been confirmed for many European countries as well as for the USA: satisfaction does not depend on real income in the long run. In this paper we test this hypothesis for Russia, in particular we test two main mechanisms of the paradox: adaptation to changes in income and social comparison effect. In order to do that we specify two ARDL-type models and use the RLMS NRU HSE dataset for estimating their parameters. It is shown that there exists only the short run association between agents’ real income and satisfaction with their financial situation even though the dynamics of these two variables was very similar in the past 20 years. Moreover, authors confirm that satisfaction with income is of autoregressive nature itself and it tends to reach and maintain some constant level in the long run. Therefore, these results indicate in favor of the adaptation mechanism and hence the presence of the Easterlin Paradox in Russia even though the social comparison effect is statistically insignificant. The positive co-movement of the aggregate variables might be explained by the massive negative shocks during the 90s which brought down the income and satisfaction. These results are most applicable in the analysis of social inequality, social tension and instability rather than of the effects of economic growth itself.

The banking crises of the last decade and the devastating effect of banks’ bankruptcies on the economy forced regulators to pay more attention to internal risk measurement systems and also to risk measurement models as a part of these systems. Thus, in accordance with the requirements of both the Basel Committee (bcbs128, bcbs152) and the Bank of Russia (483-P and 3624-U), the validation of risk measurement models is an integral part of the Internal Capital Adequacy and Assessment Process (ICAAP) and Internal Ratings-Based (IRB) approach. Howe­ver, standard backtesting procedures, which are based on the independence of observations, are often inconsistent due to a long forecasting horizon and, accordingly, overlapping observations. [Ruiz, 2014] proposed to correct the statistics’ distributions and take into account the dependence of observations, using a set of risk factor replicas. Meanwhile this is difficult with unknown data generating process. This paper provides an analysis of several bootstrap meth ods (e.g. block bootstrap and maximum entropy bootstrap). It estimates its ability to simulate risk factor time-series with original properties, and therefore to be used for correction of statistics’ distributions in the absence of independent observations. Analysis of every method is made in terms of preserving the distribution of risk-factor, its time structure and inter-factor correlation. Thus, the use of the maximum entropy bootstrap provides different outcomes depending on whether it is applied to time series in differences or in absolute values. Nevertheless, in both cases, the resulting statistics tends to distort the backtesting procedure both by accepting the incorrect model, and by rejecting the correct one. The use of block bootstrap methods can also lead to inaccuracy, but, generally, it provides more conservative results. Using intersections in the process of creation of simulated series allows reducing this mismatch.

In this article we discuss the practice of implementing and evaluating public programs in the Russian Federation. Federal public programs in the period from 2011 to 2017 were surveyed. We present the results of empirical analysis of programs, their descriptive characteristics, and the overall situation with public programs, and the quality of their implementation. We revealed the relationship between the dynamics of socio-economic development and achievement of the program targets. Also we clarified the link between the level of public programs implementation by federal executive bodies and the effectiveness of implementation their other functions. The system problem is that the target indicators of public programs are developing now by the responsible executor, proceeding from the simple and fast reporting. As a result, the indicators are process-oriented, but not result-oriented. We suggest use the programs implementation effectiveness as an indicator of the effectiveness of the public authorities and their managers, including organizational and staffing decisions making by the President and the Government of the Russian Federation. We also recommend complement the existing methodology with the regulatory impact assessing at the stage of developing programs and the actual impact assessing after their completion. Also should be developed a methodol ogy for assessing the "sensitivity" of the spheres of regulation to the program mechanisms. We offer to enter the maximum number of target program indicators and prohibit their change during the program implementation period. It is necessary to provide the possibility of changing the financial support of programs in the period of their implementation, taking into account the achieved target indicators. These measures will make it possible to target responsible executors of the public programs to achieve the final results and to evaluate their activities in a comprehensive, regular and comparable manner.

The research is devoted to the investigation into dynamics of countries’ participation in consumer electronics global value chains caused by operations of its leading manufacturers. Sector that is under study ranks among the most important high-tech industries of the world economy, which generates considerable volume of added value created by producers and suppliers from different countries of origin. This fact lets identify the most important trends of value added redistribution on the global level. The hypothesis states that in spite of outsourcing of standardized operations to developing countries and emergence of leading Asian producers, the distribution of value added within the global consumer electronics sector is biased towards industrialized countries. In the research we study the models of global value chain formation implemented by companies from different countries, we analyze statistics presented by the OECD and the WTO that reflects the movement of value added across borders on the countries’ level, investigate present trends influencing the sector in order to uncover perspective directions of value added distribution between countries. As a result, the suggested hypothesis is confirmed. There was found a concentration of knowledge base accounting for the highest value added in the group of industrialized countries. At the same time, the share of value added originating from developing countries has remained almost unchanged. The findings of the research could be applied both by the authorities to develop effective industrial policies, as well as by separate companies seeking for new competitive advantages.