2021. vol. 25. No. 4

Since 2014, Russia is under the EU-sanction and counter-sanctions policies. Agri-food embargo as Russian restrictions on import of agriculture and food can be considered as an incentive for the development in agriculture. In 2015–2018, employment in agriculture stabilized although a continuous decline was observed over the past decades. We hypothesise that counter-sanctions had a positive effect on employment in the industry. We apply difference-in-difference approach and estimate the effect on panel data for the regions of Russia for 2005–2018. A positive effect of the agri-food embargo is revealed in 2016, when the number of people employed in agriculture increased by 3,2 percentage points. It is explained by the accelerated growth in agricultural output in 2015 and the lagged growth in industrial employment rate. In regions that are key producers of agricultural products, the impact of counter-sanctions on agricultural employment was lower relative to the other regions. This can be linked to lower developed production technologies demanded labour to a greater extent. Additionally in 2015, the effect of coun­ter-sanctions is found for the group of regions with a significant presence of agricultural holdings. This can be explained by their high financial and technological capabilities to adapt. For 2017 and 2018 no significant effect of counter-sanctions was found. Thus, the counter-sanctions had a positive but short-term impact on agricultural employment. We associate the short-term effect with the uncertainty of expectations regarding the length of the sanctions period, which prevents investment into the industry.

Since 2014 the government of Russia proceeds the consolidation of Power Grid Industry. The consolidation aim is to reduce the number of Power Grid operators for decrease the electricity distribution tariffs. The first stage of consolidation process had been finished in 2017, but the estimation of its impact on tariffs yet has not been made. Partially this estimation is restricted by the lack of consolidation transactions data and the peculiarities of the power grids’ tariff regulation legislation. This article proposes the developed approach to quantify the impact of power grid industry consolidation on the regional total costs. The approach is based on the natural monopoly costs subadditivity condition. To demonstrate the consolidation effect on regional distribution grids maintenance expenditures we suggest to use following indicators: operational (controllable) expenses per unit; other (non-controllable) expenses per unit; total costs per unit for power grid operators, involved in the consolidation.

The analysis of the data collected over the 2015–2020 in the Vologda Oblast, the Republic of Buryatia and the Udmurt Republic demonstrates, that consolidation of the power grid assets has not lead to decrease the regional total distribution costs in the short term. It could be a consequence of both the absence of cost subadditivity effect in the electricity distribution regional markets, and the special features of tariff regulation. Vologda region consolidation results make possible to assume a delayed positive effect from the Power Grid Industry Consolidation in the medium term. The proposed method could be used for estimate the tariff impact of different consolidation cases as well as for the development of measures for the second stage of consolidation.

The Russian rail sector, being one of the largest in the world, plays an extremely important role for the country's economy. For this reason, the problem of choosing the optimal organi­zational model is particularly crucial in the case of Russia. The country has already implemented some reforms the sector. Liberalization, partly repeating the European experience, began in the early 2000s. The economic management was separated from the government administration and independent operators appeared. However, a significant part of the initial reform plan was not implemented or was implemented only partially. Is it reasonable to bring this plan to completion? Which market structure is the most efficient? Which reforms contribute to the development of rail freight and which have a negative effect? The experience of which countries is the most relevant for Russia? The purpose of this article is to find answers to these questions. The first part of the article provides an overview of the rail freight markets of various countries. In particular, it considers European countries, as well as China and a number of countries in the North and South America, including the United States. The second part contains an overview ofscientific studies, that compare various market structures and asses the results of certain re­forms. The third part examines the history of the Russian rail sector and describes its current state. In the final part of this article various scenarios for further development are discussed.

Auctions have been celebrated as the best tool for efficient allocation of resources. Howe­ver, no auction is good for all circumstances and every case needs an individual treatment. In this paper, we study the 2019 Russian crab quota auction, which raised 142 BLN rubles and became the largest auction in Russian history. We describe the auction format and compare it to alternative formats both theoretically and empirically.

The multi-item auction was separate (to compete for each of the 40 items participants needed to register to a separate unit-item auction and to pay a deposit) and sequential (biddingfor an item began only when bidding for the previous item was finished). As alternatives, we consider common auction (each participant registers for the number of items he wishes to buy and pays a corresponding deposit) and parallel auction (bidding for all items take place simultaneously and end only when bidding stops for each item).

As comparison criteria we use (1) efficiency – items are allocated to those who value them most, (2) auctioneer's revenue, and (3) manipulability – participants' ability to win by using sophisticated strategies. (1) and (2) are standard comparison criteria, while (3) is new and we propose it as a new tool for assessing the auction's robustness against the participants' undesirable strategic behavior such as lobbying, espionage and collusion. To do that we first define so-called straightforward strategies – bidding up to one's value (like truth-telling in direct auctions), and then estimate the regret of using the straightforward strategy as opposed to using an optimal (sop­histicated) strategy. The higher the regret, the more manipulable is the auction.

As a result, we recommend using the common parallel auction, which has a few advantages compared to separate sequential auction used in 2019: it is more efficient, less manipulable and more robust to mistakes in setting the reserve price.

Belarus is one of Russia’s main trade partners and a member-state of the Eurasian Economic Union. In this paper we evaluate this economy’s progress in diversifying its exports and increasing the level of economic complexity during 1993–2018. We observe that the level of economic complexity was advancing in Belarus within a few years which followed the recession of the 1990s, but then the growth alternated for stagnation. We also use complexity metrics which is designed to assign a higher value to an economy in case it exports more to richer places, to show that Belarusian complex exports are highly geographically concentrated. Belarus economy sells more of its complex products to a small group of its geographical neighbors, all sharing the status of Soviet republics in the past. Without attracting more foreign direct investment, the future of exports from this country is associated with moderate product diversification and stagnant geographical coverage. If instead Belarus follows a policy alternative, it might gain a viable opportunity to enter new geographic markets. The precondition for this result is receiving more foreign direct investment and new technologies that might help Belarus standardize its products accordingly to access new markets and thus allow the geography of Belarusian exports to broaden.

This present article contributes to the literature on country classification by investigating the pattern of government expenditure across countries. Here we adopt a k-means clustering technique on indicators reflecting the actual situation of government expenditures. The variables used for the classification include GNI per capita, government effectiveness, subsidies, and other transfers, compensation of employees, goods and services expense. After implementing the unsupervised classification technique, four clusters of countries were selected. We have identified variables that vary less within a particular cluster, though the variation is higher between clusters. Our algorithm allows dropping those variables which are less relevant for identifying the clusters. By allowing for multi-criteria simi­larities in the classification, the possibility of sourcing differences in government expenditure and economic growth across countries could be enhanced. Also, our proposed method helps to study the nature and characteristics of each cluster and thereby describe the clusters in terms of the variables involved. The homo­geneous clusters of countries that are being observed are likely to help future public expenditure-related research. Our study can help establish a relationship between govern­ment expenditure and economic growth in the future.

Education is a crucial aspect of the worldwide reaction to climate change. It aids younger generation realize and approach the effect of global warming, inspires changes in their points of view and comportment and aids them adjust to climate change-similar tendency. This paper develops a two-period overlapping-generations model featuring taxing revenues to finance education and environmental externalities, and studies how an uniform tax rate on both labour income and interests on savings, affects the capital accumulation and the quality of the environment. How does public spending on education affect the environment? We analyze this question by studying the comparative static analysis at the stable steady state equilibrium. Under this framework, results show that public spending on education leads from one hand to capital decreasing and from the other hand has an effect on the environmental quality and this effect depends on the share of human capital in production. In particular, there is a critical proportion of the share of human capital equal to 0,14 above which public spending on education influence negatively the environment, and below which the tax rate reacts inversely with a positive impact on the quality of the environment.