We assess the short-term effects of the two recent economic crises, the Great Recession and the collapse of the USSR, on the elderly mortality in Russia. According to our study, crises have led to an increase in mortality with quantitatively similar elasticities of death with respect to GDP fall...

This paper utilizes a large-scale natural experiment aimed at increasing fertility in Russia. Motivated by a decade-long decrease in fertility and population, the Russian government introduced a sequence of sizable child subsidies (called Maternity Capitals) in 2007 and 2012. We find that the...

We use two quasi-natural experiments, the rapid expansion of many markets after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Anti-Alcohol Campaign in 1986, and a migrants research design to identify highly persistent habits in food and alcohol consumption. Large shocks to product availability and...

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...

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”...