At Columbia University in New York, a seminar on ‘The Political Economy of Russia’ was held jointly by the International Centre for the Study of Institutions and Development at the Higher School of Economics and the Harriman Institute at Columbia University.
Implementing a sales tax will not help the regional budgets. The excessive tax burden will drive business into the ‘shadows’ and raise the price of goods and services. In addition, retailers will see turnover fall, reducing profits and investment activity. This forecast was included in ‘Macroeconomic Analysis of the Impact of Changes in the Tax Rate on the State Budget and Market Participants’ by the Director of HSE’s Centre of Development Institute Natalia Akindinova.
Federal and regional maternity benefits such as 'maternal capital', larger child allowances, and other measures introduced since 2007 to improve the country's demography have led to more births, but have not yet contributed to effective fertility rates in Russia. A paper bySergey Zakharov and Thomas Freyka in the HSE's new Demographic Review journal examines Russia's reproductive trends over the past half-century in an attempt to make projections concerning the future effects of the country's demographic policies.
After the Russian Unified State Exam (USE) was introduced, additional exam preparation did not lose its popularity. While there was previously a preference for tutors from the university a student had selected, now students are finding instructors ‘off the street’ to prepare them for the USE, Ilya Prakhov, Research Fellow in HSE’s International Laboratory for Institutional Analysis of Economic Reforms (LIA), uncovered in his study, ‘The Dynamics of Investment and the Return on Additional Pre-entry Coaching’.
On September 25 a presentation of the Russian Science Citation Index (RSCI), of which HSE is a partner, took place. The purpose of the project is to integrate Russian academic journals into the international exchange network of scientific information. RSCI has listed 1000 journals, based on bibliometric indicators and expert reviews, to go on the Web of Science platform.
When people have a choice, they can either rely on their own information or on that received from those around them. The more emotional an individual's relationship with their own data, the higher the likelihood that, when making a decision, they will be led by that rather than by other people's opinions. This also applies to investors' activity on the financial markets – as research by HSE Psychology Faculty Dean Vasily Klyucharev, and researchers from the University of Basel Rafael Huber and Jörg Rieskamp.
One third of all graduates from regional colleges and universities plan to move elsewhere. Most would like to relocate to another Russian city, while some 7% of graduates are planning to leave the country, according to the study 'Migration Intentions of Graduates of Russia’s Regional Higher Educational Institutions' by Elena Varshavskaya, Professor at the HSE's Department of Human Resources Management, and Olga Choudinovskikh, Director of the Centre for Migration Policy.
A cardio-undershirt, a cyber piggy bank, a flying advertising platform, and other unexpected inventions were all the result of the second FabLab Weekend hackathon, which was carried out by HSE’s Prototyping Centre. Participants had just 48 hours to create a prototype of a useful technological product ready to enter the market. The final presentation took place on September 22, when the winners were announced.
The HSE Institute of Regional Studies and Urban Planning held a panel discussion entitled ‘Developing Cities and Infrastructure’ as part of the Russian-Japanese forum ‘Points of Intersection: Business, Technology, Culture’ that took place in Moscow. The discussion focused on development opportunities in Moscow and the adoption of solutions to urban problems already applied in Tokyo.
