Vladimir A. Bessonov

Russian statistics are scarce, inaccurate, ormissing – and therefore misleading, rather than helpful. Their limited temporal depth makes any reliable long-term projections of the country's socio-economic development impossible, according to the report 'Russian Statistics: What Do They Preserve for History?' by Vladimir Bessonov, Head of the HSE’s Laboratory for Research in Inflation and Growth

Russians are failing to cope with debt; small town economies are lagging behind; the Russian market is not favourable for a defined-contribution pension system, and Russian statistics are unsuitable for analysis – these were the top 15 most interesting papers from the HSE's XV April Conference, according to Opec.ru

Elite motorists pose a mortal threat to the public; Russians are blowing their chances of building good public institutions; social media can bury politicians; reasons why our society is morally unstable and why expensive medical equipment is available but unused – these were the HSE's 13 most interesting and relevant research projects in 2013, according to Opec.ru.

Official statistics fail to capture – in fact, they simply ignore – the development of Russia’s high-tech industry. This distorts macroeconomic indicators and negatively impacts the quality of the government's decisions. Vladimir Bessonov has authored the report: “In Search of Information and Communication Technologies: The Quirks of Russian Statistics and Economic Measurements”

On 19 and 20 June 2008, the final conference of the EU KLEMS project on “Productivity in the European Union: A Comparative Industry Approach” was held at the University of Groningen (the Netherlands). The conference marked the completion of a 4 year research project by a consortium of 16 research institutions across Europe, having led to the creation of a large database on growth and productivity accounts at industry level for individual EU member states, various EU aggregates, Japan and the United States.