We revisit and critically reevaluate the widely accepted modernization hypothesis which claims that per capita income causes the creation and the consolidation of democracy. Existing studies find support for this hypothesis because they fail to control for the presence of omitted variables....

In his Annual Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly on 30 November 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin underscored Russia's goal to catch up with the world average growth rates by 2019–2020. As a reminder, the IMF projects 3.7% for the average annual growth rate of the global economy...

In the euro area, there is mixed evidence that the GDP per capita of lower-income economies has been catching up with that of higher-income economies since the start of monetary union. The significant real convergence performance of some of the most recent members contrasts with that of the...

The RF Ministry of Economic Development presented three scenarios in its socioeconomic development forecast for 2016, which envisaged that the GDP decline trajectory would hit its lowest point in 2015 (-3.9%), and the rate of GDP growth would be fluctuating somewhere between (-1.0) and 2.3% in...

The results of the estimates obtained using the Gaidar Institute method of decomposing Russia's GDP growth rates show that in 2015 all of the components of economic growth rates will make them negative. Furthermore, the current economic contraction is mostly of structural nature induced by the...

The results of the estimates made using a method developed by the Gaidar Institute for decomposing Russia's GDP growth rates show that economic contraction in 2015 is determined by structural causes, according to the two scenarios within an updated forecast of the Ministry of Economic...