2020. vol. 24. No. 3

This paper aims at analysis of drivers, features and achievements of the large-scale reform of the Russian electric power sector accomplished during the period 1998–2008. The analysis includes main tasks completed at each phase of the reform – starting from preliminary phase devoted to improving operational efficiency of subsidiaries of the Holding company RAOUES of Russia (the first phase) to competitive restructuring of the Holding company and starting the mechanism of wholesale electricity and capacity markets (the second phase). The major unresolved issues of the reform were analyzed, as well as problems of maintaining dynamism and consistency in the further steps of the reform implementation and partial deterioration of the reform environment following the abolishment of the RAO UES of Russia – the Electricity reform Headquarters in the country were pointed out.

We noted the importance of further steps to complete the electricity reform in Russia based on clear long-term vision of the technological development of the electricity sector, taking into account modern tendencies in transition towards intelligent energy systems. These tendencies may lead to the profound changes in the electricity market structure and rules, as well as to the new paradigm for development of the electricity sector.

Important recommendations on mechanisms of transition from the current state of the electric power sector towards its future vision were formulated, as part of a holistic project approach.

It was emphasized that it is electricity consumers who has to be the major driving forces in the forthcoming phase of the electricity reform.

Modern society has to cope with the problem of energy choice, concerning conventional and renewable sources of energy via electrifying many dimensions of economic activities. No one source of energy evades costs, and conceptual framework and methodology for commeasuring costs and benefits are in a great demand. With this purpose in mind, methodology of cost-benefit analysis has been proposed as the synthesis of quantitative and qualitative methods for comparative assessment of energy alternatives. Quantitative analysis focuses on monetized estimations of energy impacts on environment and population health, and deals with subsidies, shadow prices and time value of money. Qualitative analysis concerns important factors, hardly possible to estimate in monetary terms, but significant for reaching meaningful goals, e.g. the common good. In this context, the perspective of applying value approach to assessing energy alternatives has been demonstrated. As a very vivid case for examining the proposed methodology, there has been chosen a vast megaregion – Siberia, rich in fossil fuels and possessing high potential of renewables, first of all, solar and wind energy. On the basis of empirical data and evidences, concerning three particular power plants, located in Siberia – coal-fired, gas-fired and solar PV, there have been elaborated monetized estimations of true value of three alternatives of electrici­ty generation in megaregion.

When developing DSGE models, which will be used to analyze the fiscal or monetary poli­cy, it is important to take into account all the features observed in these data. If the model does not match the data, the estimates become inaccurate, and the conclusions drawn become unreliable. An important characteristic of data that is often given little attention is the presence of trends. Typically, trends are either removed using various filters or modeled. In the first case, a large amount of information is removed from the data, which leads to a significant decrease in the accuracy of parameters’ estimation. In the second case, only the trend in the labor productivity is most often used. Modeling only one trend means that, for example, the components of GDP in real terms should grow at a single growth rate on average, which is actually far from the case. This problem is especially relevant for developing countries, including the Russian Federation.

In this work, Russian data is analyzed in which significantly different average growth rates of GDP components are found. An approach is proposed to simulate sector-specific non-statio­nary productivity. The obtained estimates allow to conclude that the inclusion of additional trends helps to achieve better performance in sense trend-cycle decomposition of the data observed. Also, the simulation analysis shows that using the model without additional trends leads to a significant decrease in the parameter estimation accuracy. Thus, it is crucial to take into account the presence of trends in the data while creating practice-oriented DSGE models.

In this study, we estimate the contribution of the risk premium shock to the dynamics of the main macroeconomic variables along with other shocks that are crucial for the Russian economy. The relevance of the discussion on risk premium is caused by the crisis of institutions in Russia and the introduction of economic sanctions. The low quality of institutions, in particular the protection of property rights and the judicial system, increases the risk premium and undermines investors’ interest in the Russian economy. The imposition of economic sanctions, especially against specific companies, also leads to some restrictions on operations and increases the risk premium. All this may result in losses in real macroeconomic indicators such as output and investment.

The main tool used in this work is a structural vector autoregression model with an exo­genous variable. Using short-term restrictions, we identify 3 types of shocks: output shocks, investment shocks and risk premium shocks. To take into account terms of trade shocks, which play a key role for the Russian economy, we use the price of oil as an exogenous variable, as it is the main driving force for the terms of trade. In this case, the shocks of the risk premium, conditionally on other factors, characterise the institutional and political component. As an alternative exogenous variable, we use the index of global real economic activity, which is a proxy for the dynamics of world demand.

As a result, it was discovered that the risk premium shocks had a significant positive effect on output and investment. The negative impact of these shocks in the dynamics of real variables was noticeable in crisis periods, including the period of economic sanctions. Howe­ver, the overall contribution was moderate. The main driving force behind the dynamics real variables were the terms of trade and output shocks. Also, in 2015, negative investment shocks played an important role.

A multinational corporation usually invests in foreign countries in two modes of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) encompasses, Greenfield-FDI (GFDI) and Merger & Acquisition (M&A). Mostly Asian countries have experienced improved economic growth from the incoming Green­ field-FDI. The existing studies reveal that GFDI plays undeniably a very important role in the process of economic growth and economic development of a host country's economic performance. Thus, the goal of this study is to know the effect of GFDI inflow on education, health, living standard, and economic development for Pakistan, while using data set from 1990–2018. This study used the Correlation matrix, Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF), and Philips Peron (PP) tests for unit root, Auto Distributive Lag model (ARDL), and Error Correction Model (ECM) as estimation techniques. The empirical results indicate that there exists a long-run relationship between GFDI, health, and economic development by Human Development Index (HDI) only. In the long-run GFDI, remittances, and foreign trade have positive, while foreign aid by Official Development Assistance (ODA) and inflation rate negatively affect the life expectancy index, which might mean negative health effects. These findings suggest some important policy measures can be adopted to take more benefits of FDI and stimulate economic growth and socio-economic development.

The article discusses the problems of budget financing of patronized goods in the sphere of culture, education and science, the peculiarity of which is the presence of the well-known pat­tern of «Baumol's disease» or «Cost Disease». A theoretical analysis and empirical calculations were presented, which confirmed this pattern on the example of Russian theaters. A concept was proposed, – «technological productivity», which, in the author’s opinion, was more consistent with the content of «the cost disease» and with the phenomenon of performance lag in perfor­ming arts from overall productivity in the economy, which determined the impossibility of their market self-sufficiency. In contrast to the standard theory, according to which financing of pat­ronized goods is interpreted as government actions, aimed at compensating the expenses of producers of these special goods and services, this work uses a different approach, according to which the budget funds allocated to producers of patronized goods should be considered qualityof services. It was shown that the equilibrium conditions for the patronized goods can state pay­ment for the recoverable social usefulness of the corresponding goods and serve as a theoretical justification for determining the total (gross) income of their producers in the form of the sum of revenue and budget subsidies, which is also consistent with the system of national accounts.

To measure the real value of total income, the components of which are deflated by different price indices, a composite index was proposed in its simple, parametric and normative form, and the dynamics of real total income and the full performance of theaters in the period from 2001 through 2018 were calculated. The article presented a methodology for the monetary as­sessment of the social utility of patronized goods in the cultural sphere – the size of the budget subsidy, which is based on the normative principle of equality between the growth rate of total labor productivity in performing arts organizations and the growth rate of productivity in the economy. On its basis, the dynamics of the minimum level of budget subsidies to theaters were calculated and the sizes of their underfunding in certain years of the period from 2001 through 2018 were determined.