From April 13 to 15, the annual April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development will be held. Section A, Macroeconomics and Economic Growth, is hosted by HSE University, under the supervision of Ilya Voskoboynikov and Yevsey Gurvich. In this section, representatives of different countries and organizations will discuss a wide range of issues related to macroeconomic shocks, the crisis from a cross-country perspective, price dynamics, monetary policy, economic growth, and human capital. The honorary speaker is Bart van Ark, Professor of Productivity Studies at the Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS) at the University of Manchester. His report, "Why do the economy, business, workers, and society need productivity growth?", focuses on the slowdown in global productivity growth over the past 15 years, reasons for the slowdown, and measures that could revive it. Bart van Ark says to do this, the economy must become more receptive to innovation, which requires a coordinated effort from business, government, and individual workers. There is also a need for a better understanding of the extent to which, and how, productivity growth contributes to people’s welfare.

The World KLEMS initiative brings together representatives from different countries and organizations who develop indicators of cross-country economic performance comparisons at the level of individual industries and conduct research based on these. On March 9 to 17, 2021, the 6th World KLEMS Conference was held in a virtual format for the first time.The conference addressed issues of the global productivity slowdown, the post-pandemic growth outlook, and the measurement of growth and productivity in the context of new economic activities and globalization. Projects from countries and groups of countries included in the World KLEMS Initiative—Asia KLEMS, EU KLEMS, and LA KLEMS—were widely presented. A separate section was devoted to the EU KLEMS project, including Russia and Eastern Europe.

Researchers trying to compare economic data of the USSR and capitalist countries face questions of the comprehensiveness, accessibility, and reliability of data on Soviet economic production and growth. At an online seminar hosted by the HSE University International Centre for the History and Sociology of World War II and its Consequences, Assistant Professor Ilya Voskoboynikov (Faculty of Economic Sciences, HSE University) presented an overview of available approaches to studying the absolute size of the Soviet economy and its growth rates.

On November 5, the Laboratory for Systems Analysis of Industrial Markets of the Center for Industrial Markets Research of the Institute for Applied Economic Research, RANEPA held an open, general-academic online seminar “Decomposition of Russia's GDP growth rates - methodological features and results”.

The Russian economy is, modifying Winston Churchill (1939), “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”; Russian economic performance is volatile. In the last three decades its institutional environment changed from a command to a market economy. Its industrial structure shifted from overinvestment in manufacturing and agriculture in the late 1980s to market services and mining. Trade conditions seem to be unpredictable. This is a sensitive issue for the economy, which depends on oil and gas exports. How can one understand the Russian development pattern over its centuries-old history and, possibly, outline Russia’s prospects for the future?

On November 3, the Russia KLEMS group held a regular seminar about double deflation (DD) and its impact on ideas about Russian economic growth, 2003–2016, taking into account the experience of Russia KLEMS.

On September 18, Ilya Voskoboynikov presented his report “Recovery experiences of the Russian economy Implications to the Indian Economy” at a seminar organized by the Research Institute of the State Bank of India, "Experience of the post-crisis recovery of the Russian economy".

The work was published in the WP3 series "Labor market issues" and studies the global recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Estimates suggest Russian GDP in 2020 will fall by 2–8%, meaning the current crisis may be more severe than the crises of 1998 and 2008. In the coming years, the Russian economy will have to recover and enter a new long-term growth trajectory. What sources and sectors can make this happen?

The 7th issue of “Voprosy Ekonomiki”  (Questions of Economics) contains the speeches of the participants of “Long-term economic growth in Russia: prospects for recovery” round table, which took place on April 12 as part of the “April XXI” conference. The publication includes materials by Natalia Akindinova, Marek. Dabrovski, Alexandr Shirov, Dmitry Belousov, Ilya Voskoboynikov and Evsey Gurvich.

The seminar was held on June 26, 2020 as part of a regular series of seminars. The seminar considered methods of the experimental construction of time series for indicators of the intermediate consumption of energy, materials and services. The time series cover from 2003 to 2016. It is built on the basis of the official published indicators of SNA, tables of the use of goods and services, and deflators of domestic production and imports relative to the previous year