On November 13-14 a meeting of the Executive Committee and the Scientific Advisory Committee of the World Values Survey Association was held at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. The main mission of the meeting was the design of the master questionnaire for the new wave of the World Values Survey to be launched in 2017. World Values Survey scholars are also participating in the LCSR 5th International Annual Research Conference 'Cultural and Economic changes under cross-national perspective' which is currently underway at HSE. Christian Haerpfer, President of the World Values Association, has talked to HSE News Service about the survey and the preparation for its new wave.
While helping build consumer trust in credit institutions, deposit insurance can prompt bankers to engage in risky and opportunistic behaviour; larger banks tend to be more cautious and do a better job managing troubled assets, according to Natalia Gorelaya, Associate Professor at the HSE Faculty of Economic Sciences’ Department of Finance.
In Russia, the demand for migrant workers is highest in economically developed and resource-extracting regions, in areas with low population density, and in construction and industrial companies. Employers prefer to hire low-skilled migrants with no education beyond secondary school and limited work experience of less than a year, since these workers are much cheaper than locals. These are some of the findings from a study by Elena Vakulenko, Assiant Professor at the Department of Applied Economics, HSE Faculty of Economic Sciences, and HSE student Roman Leukhin.
The level of education has a direct impact on young Russians’ chances of getting a job. Young men and women with some post-secondary education – in particular those with higher education – experience a shorter transition to their first employment and a fairly low risk of staying unemployed, while those with just nine year of compulsory secondary school – in fact, 20% of Russians under 29 – are likely to remain unemployed for prolonged periods, according to Elena Varshavskaya, professor of the HSE Department of Human Resources Management.
In the near future, the number of migrants from Central Asia coming to work in Russia will increase – particularly from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, countries where remittances from their citizens working in Russia stand at almost half of their respective GDPs, according to a joint study by the Eurasian Development Bank (EDB), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the HSE Laboratory for Comparative Social Research (LCSR), and the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS).
Companies with decentralized management systems are, on average, more effective than firms where the CEO tries to control everything. The risk of centralization is higher if the company is managed by families. These were the main findings of the recent research by Irina Levina, research fellow at the HSE Institute for Industrial and Market Studies.
More than one in three Russian CEOs hold more than one academic degree, making them stand out dramatically compared to the general public. By going back to school and pursuing lifelong learning, senior executives expect to increase their knowledge, human capital and income, according to Sergey Solntsev, Senior Research Fellow at the HSE Laboratory for Labour Market Studies.
Social networks have been found to influence academic performance: students tend to perform better with high-performers among their friends, as some people are capable of inspiring others to try harder, according to Maria Yudkevich, Sofia Dokuka and Dilara Valeyeva of the HSE Centre for Institutional Studies.
The lower a person's resilience, the greater their alienation from themself, other people, and society. In turn, self-alienation and a lack of personal relationships can cause one to approve of military action as a solution to international conflicts, according to Olga Gulevich, Associate Professor of the HSE School of Psychology, and Andrey Nevruyev, postgraduate student of the same department.
Ambiguous attitudes held by the heirs of Russian moguls may affect the future of the country's big businesses. On one hand, the children of wealthy Russian business owners have an excellent headstart – they are well-educated and generally share their parents' values. Yet on the other hand, they are not likely to become selfless workaholics. Instead, they tend to be more hedonistic than their parents and less inclined to devote their entire life to building the family business. Most Russian business heirs expect to retire early and switch to hobbies, recreation and entertainment in their mid-life. Elena Rozhdestvenskaya, professor of the HSE Faculty of Social Sciences, is the first Russian researcher to study the mindsets of heirs of biggest Russian fortunes.
