of construction companies reduced their headcount in the second quarter of 2014. This information comes from a new monitoring survey of the business climate in the construction industry conducted by the Centre for Business Tendency Studies at HSE ISSEK.
The data book is issued for the first time by HSE ISSEK together with Federal State Statistics Service and presents the main trends in information society development in the subjects of the Russian Federation.
— the level to which the business confidence index in retail trade has risen. This information comes from ‘The Business Climate in Retail Trade,’ a report by the Centre for Business Tendency Studies at the HSE’s Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge.
Enterprise statistics are closely connected to R&D, innovation, and ICT statistics. Experts specialising in these fields attendedInternational Seminar on Industrial Statistics held in Vienna on 11—13 June. Natalia Kovaleva, director of the ISSEK’s Centre for Statistics and Monitoring of Education, presented a review of Russian enterprise statistics, and spoke about the institute’s research in the area of statistics and monitoring economics of knowledge.
Russian Cluster Observatory’s experts Yevgeny Kutsenko and Sergei Artemov commented on major new features of the 2014 budget policy regarding providing support to innovative territorial clusters, announced on 9 June at the meeting held at the RF Ministry of Economic Development. From this year onwards, federal subsidies increase to 2.5 billion roubles, and all 25 pilot clusters are now eligible to this money.
On May 29-31, the International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development (ICSID, HSE) held an international conference on ‘Regional Heterogeneity and Incentives for Governance’ in Pushkin, St. Petersburg.
St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF–2014) was held on May 22—24 under the motto "Sustaining Confidence in a World Undergoing Transformation". Ozcan Saritas, the leading research fellow at HSE ISSEK Research Laboratory for Science and Technology Studies, participated in its panel session “Will Technology Hollow out the Global Middle Class?”.
In the June Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) ranking, the Higher School of Economics took the lead among Russian economics institutes and centres for the first time in the ranking’s history.
This data book continues the series of publications by HSE Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge (HSE ISSEK) dedicated to information society statistics. It presents statistical data on ICT infrastructure, the content and media sector and the activities of ICT sector enterprises. In addition data collected in business tendency surveys is provided offering assessments of the activities by enterprises rendering ICT services. Special sections contain indicators of ICT usage in the business enterprise sector, public sector, by public authorities, households, and individuals.
Lifelong learning is increasingly common in Russia. One can assume looking at the booming global business of online education with platforms such as Coursera, EdX, and Udacity, and various webinars and video lectures that the internet serves as the main channel of lifelong learning today. In Russia, however, the World Wide Web comes second to more traditional ways of learning. So Konstantin Fursov and Elena Chernovich, research fellows at the HSE's Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge (ISSEK), found in their study Monitoring Innovative Behaviour in the Russian Population in 2013
