By analyzing individual-level data on the alcohol consumption of Russian males, this paper finds evidence for a longstanding persistence of habits towards certain type of habit-forming goods. Males who grew up in the USSR are accustomed to vodka – the most popular liquor during the Soviet era...

For the last twenty years Russia has confronted the Mortality Crisis- the life expectancy of Russian males has fallen by more than five years, and the mortality rate has increased by 50%. Alcohol abuse is widely agreed to be the main cause of this change. In this paper, I use a rich dataset on...

In a federation, local policies with inter-regional spillovers depend on the extent and the nature of local capture. Local lobbyists who have multi-regional scope internalize inter-jurisdictional externalities to a larger extent than the lobbyists with interests in a single region. In...

How does regulatory capture affect growth? We construct measures of the political power of firms and regional regulatory capture using micro-level data on the preferential treatment of firms through regional laws and regulations in Russia during the period 1992-2000. Using these measures, we...

The paper provides evidence that the welfare effect of decentralization in countries with weak democratic institutions depends on the multi-jurisdictional vs. single-jurisdictional span of interest group lobbies. Weak democracy leads to capture of local authorities. Captors who have...

In this short paper we attempt to assess the results of Putin’s centralization and anti-corruption measures on the overall level of state capture in the Russian regions as well as on the balance of power between different interest groups. We proceed by, first, describing the results of...

What determines the enforcement of deregulation reform of business activities? What are the outcomes of deregulation? We address these questions using an episode of a drastic reform in Russia between 2001 and 2004 which liberalized registration, licensing, and inspections. Based on the analysis...

How does the effect “state capture” depend the identity of the captor? We use a dataset on preferential treatment of selected firms by regional legislature and regulatory agencies in transitional Russia to show that the most effective and the least benign captors are “federal oligarchs”...