Perfect competition provides the model of a frictionless economy, in which price-setting economic agents behave independently of each other, abandoning to the market the coordination of their individual decisions. The implications of this model are extensively presented in the traditional price...

By 1999, Russia's economy was growing at almost 7% per year, and by 2008 reached 11th place in the world GDP rankings. Russia is now the world's second largest producer and exporter of oil, the largest producer and exporter of natural gas, and as a result has the third largest stock of foreign...