Research & Expertise

The informal economy is a global phenomenon found in both developed and developing countries. There remains no consensus among academics about how the informal sector impacts overall economic growth. Elena Kalmychkova and Alexander Lipanov of Lomonosov Moscow State University and HSE University examined the informal economic sectors of former Soviet republics and found that regardless of any potential negative impact, these informal economies eventually helped people adapt to a post-transition free market environment.

The international conference ‘Korea Uncovered: Global and Local Challenges (late XIX – mid XX century)’ is underway at HSE University on October 7–8. Why do they say that Korea was discovering the world and opening up during this period? The HSE News Service talked about the issues discussed at the conference with its organisers and participants.

HSE University researchers have found that complex phonological tests involving several cognitive processes predict dyslexia better than simple ones. This may happen due to the fact that Russian-speaking children with dyslexia generally do not have difficulties distinguishing speech sounds. However, it’s not enough to use only phonological tests to reliably diagnose the causes of reading disorders. The results of the study were published in the Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research.

On October 6, Dr Wang Wen, Executive Dean of Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies (RDCY) and Vice President of Silk Road School, Renmin University of China (RUC), will speak on 'China-Russia Cooperation: Opportunities and Challenges' at HSE University. In the run-up to the event, the HSE News Service talked to Dr Wang Wen about the current state of Sino-Russian economic relations.

Economists from HSE University and the Vienna University of Economics and Business have figured out why, all else equal, trading goods across borders can be more expensive than trading the same goods within state borders. They argue that one of the reasons is underdeveloped infrastructure in border regions. Their study was published in the Journal of Urban Economics.

HSE staff members are participating in the ‘Russian Cultural Heritage: Intellectual Analysis and Thematic Modeling of the Corpus of Handwritten Texts’ project. This is aimed at developing a methodology for the automated analysis of manuscripts, eliminating the need for manual processing. HSE News Service spoke to Ekaterina Boltunova, project manager, Professor, Head of the Laboratory 'Russia’s Regions in Historical Perspective' at HSE Faculty of Humanities.

Scholars from the HSE Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience have translated the Emotional Contagion Scale into Russian and validated it on Russian-speaking participants. It was the first study of how people unconsciously ‘catch’ other people’s emotions using a Russian sample. The results of the survey, which involved more than 500 respondents, demonstrate that women are more inclined to imitate emotions of others than men. The study was published inFrontiers in Psychology. 

HSE researchers have proposed a new neural network method for recognising emotions and people's engagement. The algorithms are based on the analysis of video images of faces and significantly outperform existing single models. The developed models are suitable for low-performance equipment, including mobile devices. The results can be implemented into video conferencing tools and online learning systems to analyse the engagement and emotions of participants. The results of the study were published in IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing.

Researchers from HSE University and the Pushkin Institute have demonstrated that pairwise comparisons work better than rating scales for measuring motivation. The reason is that many people cannot rank their motives in a hierarchical fashion. The study findings are published in Frontiers in Psychology.

Assistant Professor of the HSE Faculty of Economic Sciences Natalia Khorkina and Master's student in Economics Valeria Gritchina examined the relationship between physical activity and life satisfaction among young Russians aged 16 to 25 to gain a better understanding of the role exercise can play in young adults' subjective well-being. The researchers found that being physically active tends to contribute to a positive outlook on life, but mainly for men.